KaiTheHomoSapien wrote: ↑07 Aug 2021 19:13Do most of you prefer using <k> as opposed to <c> to represent the /k/ sound in your languages?
Depends on the aesthetic. Usually I use <k> because it just feels more natural, being Finnish, and because it's the one used more in most of the languages I'm into.
Also, I can't help but think of /s/, /t͡ʃ/ or /t͡s/ if I see <c> before front vowels, the specific one of those three being determined by which language the overall vibe of the orthography feels like haha. I agree with Pabappa that <c> also feels Celtic, but more like Romance or just straight-up Latin if the orthography has more of that vibe.
Even with Latin, though, I just think the classical pronunciation sounds weird because I was first exposed to <c> in English and tried to learn Spanish and French in my teens and early twenties, so... uh.
And yeah, my first conlang was also a romlang so that further solidified the idea that <c> must have different pronunciations before back and front vowels even in conlangs.
It was a terrifyingly bad romlang, I realised that very early on, but a part of me wants to look at my notes and start working on it again just for the cringe... but I might have a cringe attack if I tried. Well, not that technically <k> doesn't have "different pronunciations before back and front vowels" even in Finnish, since it is more back before /o/ especially and more front before /i/ especially, but... I mean, it's literally like [k] and [k̟] or maybe [k̠] and [k̟ʲ] at the absolute extremes (I know I occasionally back /k/ a little tbh, but it's inconsistent and only if I'm talking fast and/or really relaxed I think) and no one could ever suggest that they're anything other than the same phoneme /k/.
Also, like Sal said about it being perceived as "civilised", to me it can have that snobby elitist "high class" vibe but it really depends on the rest of the orthography. This wasn't something I thought about consciously until an absolutely braindead white supremacist user on a certain site claimed that "white languages use C and non-white languages use K", like wtf???? Even all the Germanic languages use <k>, like... bruh. He was Portuguese (or maybe Brazilian), so at least it wasn't like his own native language used <k>, but it was still an absolutely shocking level of ignorance and idiocy
(it was also one of the countless things that really hammered it home how insane the alt-right is, making it easier for me get out of that rabbit hole before falling in too deep). That made me realise it was something I'd heard Latin geeks say in less explicit terms, although I'm not sure if they'd meant it in a racist way. Still, the kind of elitist attitude like "C is more sophisticated than K" seems pretty common among people who're obsessed with Latin... not people who're just learning Latin, but the kind of Latin geeks that think it's in every way the best language in the world and have long rambly debates about how to pronounce it in the most authentic classical way that delve into borderline spirituality, you know?
So, it really depends on the vibe of the language. If it's a romlang or celtlang, then <c> makes perfect sense. Same if conically its orthography was devised by missionaries or something or they wanted to emulate a European vibe or whatever.
Pabappa wrote: ↑07 Aug 2021 20:10then later for the glottal stop (it sort of looks like ʔ, albeit backwards)
I've also occasionally used <c> for /ʔ/ because it looks similar to Arabic ء, or for /ʕ/ because it looks kinda similar to Arabic ع (which may be why that's what <c> is used for in Somali?), or vice versa, then using <ɔ> for the other sound if it had both. Not in any conlang I've gotten to a point where it was worth posting anywhere AFAICR, though...
Using <c> for /d͡ʒ/, like in Turkish, is something that would make me cringe outside Turkish or languages whose orthography is directly influenced by that of Turkish, though.
The absolute worst sound to use <c> for, though, would be /p/. Like, that just wouldn't make any sense.