Does anyone else try and actually speak or pronounce their conlang or is it all on paper?

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Mándinrùh
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Re: Does anyone else try and actually speak or pronounce their conlang or is it all on paper?

Post by Mándinrùh »

A newer recording of me speaking Image Atili: XIV CBB Conlang Relay, Ring A Torch 9 (Atili/Mándinrùh)

Recording

Nesyar’os, nemanovi omen l’ otanuyodoné ronal bigzus asri. Mitani urusim dyo ita raranhalo la kinwostanvante. Kavóÿk! Nenkazba l’ uwoynva ïsasumlené el balamuno lez uno nazbin t’ asumleni.
Nita ryo asdelewé nazbini kimna mal uno nazbin raz asri; si bigzus ranhalo la duzasenkitubid. Usim warudoné vavazdendam raz unvi mano l’ ukimnoza uwoynva azbïsasoboben. Mwanmwan! Bigzus ni kinastomumvas; s’ azbakinosrivahkubzëda. “Ëzú l’ amanleni?” osrikënesi.
Abigzusvanté balamuno kimnavi mano l’ ëzú duzïsasoblené ranhalo l’ asumleni. Imá witamad astayuoyn. “Adkazba omeni umbi duzosho, arabrizi dwenu.” bigzus ïsosdekím.
Kimna uno tëbin uvadzetva osrutabat; si duzasridiné osbanda. Womenva osnëminkím “Ete okavra es l’ astomilené ikí ezdostuba.”


Translation notes
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Visions1
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Re: Does anyone else try and actually speak or pronounce their conlang or is it all on paper?

Post by Visions1 »

So I have some stories about all this.

I've been conlanging for a long time. When I was 11 (I think) I started making up a language. (Gosh, I need to post it here as an archive.) One of the words - /oɬɛkokɛ/, meaning to bleed/wound someone, meaning to kill them, spelled crazily but I'll write that here one day please G-d - sounded like the last name of a girl in my grade (boys and girls had seperate classes in my grade). So I went around reading what little I had written (a few lines of translation of the fairytale "the three dancing princesses") to kids from my class. Now this girl heard the word and though it meant her last name, and she was disappointed with what it meant. I read it more to the girls in my class, since the boys were more interested in sports than arts and sciences and probably wouldn't even listen.
A while later (months maybe?) I found a paper left in the girls classroom - a list of one thing each girl didn't like. I think two of them - I remember that one girl for certain - mentioned that languages thing. I honestly suspected the whole letter was addressed to me, since a fair deal (though not all) applied to me (I was pretty blind to social things). For some reason it didn't bother me, despite the fact I wasn't a very happy person at that age.

Something more recent: A few months ago, I read this language I made about 9 months ago to my friends. It was monosyllabic, tonal, had a small phonology with consonant clusters, and was developing OVS word order.
I read them some lines in it and one guy just burst out laughing and said it was the best laugh he had in a long time. It basically reignited my love for that lang.

One thing that really gets on my nerves in conlanging is when you hear the lang, but the speaker sounds either totally stilted (like "orc-talk" that high fantasy likes to use, or "elvish", or "a couple random words that resemble demonic Javanese") or his own accent just comes through too much (say he speaks English, and the vowels and consonants come out that way). I have this same aversion when hearing people try to learn new languages and mess the enunciation, though I'll admit it's not a kind thing to feel.
This is one of the reasons I like Dzougedan so much - you can pronounce it with an English background and it'll still sound as it should. In fact, it's better if you speak English or Dutch natively for it.

In general, I read out my languages to myself, at least somewhat.
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Re: Does anyone else try and actually speak or pronounce their conlang or is it all on paper?

Post by lurker »

Making Commonthroat unutterable by the human vocal tract has actually freed me from a lot of the hangups I had with previous conlangs. I was always abandoning them because they sounded too artificial, as though the phoneme distribution was lopsided. I tried using word generators but I could never get any of my past conlangs to sound the way I wanted.

I'm happy with a very broad qualitative description of how Commonthroat sounds, like a dog trying to speak Mandarin in its sleep.
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thethief3
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Re: Does anyone else try and actually speak or pronounce their conlang or is it all on paper?

Post by thethief3 »

I pronounce the words in my head but generally not allowed. Amarin is easy to pronounce relative to my other languages as i do struggle with pronouncing non-english sounds.
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Re: Does anyone else try and actually speak or pronounce their conlang or is it all on paper?

Post by Khemehekis »

thethief3 wrote: 09 Mar 2024 08:47 I pronounce the words in my head but generally not allowed. Amarin is easy to pronounce relative to my other languages as i do struggle with pronouncing non-english sounds.
You mean "aloud", right?
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Re: Does anyone else try and actually speak or pronounce their conlang or is it all on paper?

Post by Arayaz »

I mumble words to myself often to see how they sound. The time I spoke the most conlang at once, though, was, of course, in the audio relay.
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Re: Does anyone else try and actually speak or pronounce their conlang or is it all on paper?

Post by _Just_A_Sketch »

I usually try to pronounce something any time I see a phonetic transcription. So naturally, I also pronounce every word I make, often several times.
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Re: Does anyone else try and actually speak or pronounce their conlang or is it all on paper?

Post by DV82LECM »

I try to utter what I randomly think can be translated, all the time. I have been starting to bring it up in conversation to people. I enjoy being able to chat about it offline, too. Happy to say, I have even gotten to record myself saying long swathes of it.
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Re: Does anyone else try and actually speak or pronounce their conlang or is it all on paper?

Post by Knox Adjacent »

I often sound out words and example phrases to get a feel, but predominantly it's just Notepad. Always has been.
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Re: Does anyone else try and actually speak or pronounce their conlang or is it all on paper?

Post by eldin raigmore »

When I come up with a new word, I usually try to pronounce it the way my con-speakers would; but I don’t practice it enough.
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Re: Does anyone else try and actually speak or pronounce their conlang or is it all on paper?

Post by Dormouse559 »

My conlangs tend to be pronounceable for me — with at most maybe one or two features that are on the edge of my comfort zone — and I do pronounce them. With many of my Translations Forum posts, I’ll practice saying them dozens of times until it feels fluid. But I can never shake the feeling that my American accent is still there.
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Re: Does anyone else try and actually speak or pronounce their conlang or is it all on paper?

Post by Pabappa »

Admittedly, my insistence on distinguishing between long vowels and a sequence of two short vowels make Play a difficult language for me to pronounce, despite its relatively simple phonology (11 consonants plus /a i u ə ā ī ū/). There is no limit to how many vowels can occur in a row, so even sequences like /aaāa/ are legal, although I've made them less common than they would be going by chance by forcing the insertion of one of /v b p/ "if it could have been there".
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Re: Does anyone else try and actually speak or pronounce their conlang or is it all on paper?

Post by Visions1 »

You could use pitch, hiatus, differing phonetic realizations (e.g. ɪ vs. i:) (I can't remember which word, phonologic, phonemic, phonetic, ach), epenthesis (say /h ʔ ʕ ɰ j w/ etc.), or anything else that looks like it might work.
A combination is natural I think (e.g. Inuktitut's pitch accent). Maybe look at Japanese.
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