If natlangs were conlangs

[Arayaz]

Yeah nah that is a very odd analysis. I'd say
/b d ɟʝ g/

With /b d ɟʝ g/ → [β~β̞ ð~ð̞ ʝ~j ɣ~ɰ] / V _ V

Yeah, everyone likes to say /b d g/, but in reality, in most dialects, <b d> have no such surface form. dejad de andar is /ðɜˈχað ðe anˈðaɾ/.

I was pretty sure the author of Spanish had said the fricative realizations were restricted to certain environments, and insisted that /b d ɡ/ were the phonemes?

[Mándinrùh]

I was pretty sure the author of Spanish had said the fricative realizations were restricted to certain environments, and insisted that /b d ɡ/ were the phonemes?

Ah, yeah, they said that, but that's not how they actually pronounce it in the example recordings.

[HolyHandGrenade!]

What this entire thread shows is that natlangs are often messy in ways we conlangers would consider bad design

Any “bad design” is a good design if justified by reasonable diachronic changes

[VaptuantaDoi]

Yeah nah that is a very odd analysis. I'd say
/b d ɟʝ g/

With /b d ɟʝ g/ → [β~β̞ ð~ð̞ ʝ~j ɣ~ɰ] / V _ V

Yeah, everyone likes to say /b d g/, but in reality, in most dialects, <b d> have no such surface form. dejad de andar is /ðɜˈχað ðe anˈðaɾ/.

I'm sorry but I just don't believe you

[Omzinesý]

What I hate about the conlang is that they artificially made /ɨ/ a phoneme. I bet they intended to have /ɨ/ as a phoneme, since Kirillitsa - the Russian script - has a separate glyph for it. I think something went not as planned while they were developing the sound changes from Old Russian to Russian, & then they basically were like "/ɨ/ isn't phonemic because /i/ always comes after soft consonants & /ɨ/ always after hard consonants, but wait /ɨ/ is actually phonemic because aparrently it comes word-initially in some rare loan names, & since both /i/ & /ɨ/ unconditionally appear in the same environment /ɨ/ is a phoneme". The names given sound unnatural even in the conlangs they're "borrowed" from. It's so artificial! I would've been more fine if you just said like "the glyph for the sound [ɨ] remains 'cause historical spelling"!

Usually conlangers just design a phoneme inventory at first. I think they also decided that /ɨ/ is a phoneme in the beginning. Then they wanted to preserve palatalization/velarization and ended up always using ɨ after hard consonants. When they realized the opposition between i and ɨ is going to be allophic, they just forced it be phonemic because they had already fallen in love with the table of vowel phonemes. Because conlangs always have thousands of words that just don't appear anywhere and are waiting for being found up, they just though that they will find up the words later but forgot, and thus the opposition is that weak.

[YoungConlanger]

(...) Because conlangs always have thousands of words that just don't appear anywhere and are waiting for being found up, they just though[t] that they will find up the words later but forgot, and thus the opposition is that weak.

Of course they forgot. All their memory went into creation of the Russian's brain-melting vowel reduction system & all the baroque sound changes that lead to it.

[Arayaz]

/uj I wonder what the inverse thread, "if conlangs were natlangs" would look like.