well, the "ão" diphthong is easy as fuck to me to pronounce but i've never seen a native english speaker pronounce it correctly. so yeah. i don't even know why i'm saying this since i have no trouble pronouncing either ts or pf. i really don't like pf though.
100th like! I knew giving someone the ability of getting the 300th like would pay off! What I did is get the 299th like so someone else could get the 300th!
As a German who grew up with grandparents speaking Hungarian, Polish and Jiddish, and who had Latin in school and learned Italian, French and Spanish for fun, this was quite funny to watch, especially as you dropped the 'pf' and struggled to roll the R 😅
i think even the plain old english speakers were a bit confused. bw is not easy, pf and ts is not hard (although i may be aspirating it unintentionally) and technically we have the alveolar trill in some dialects of English although those dialects have sadly fallen out of use. i mean. why would we have a way of describing, which is to roll my r's, it if we didn't have it in English
I'm an Irish teacher (Gaeilge), and also speak many other languages. I've been constructing languages since I was 7 yrs. old (43 years). Most of my life I couldn't even describe to people what I was doing, and if I could, they would think me crazy, so I just kept it to myself. I'm overjoyed to see other people with the same hobby, and interacting with each other.
@@probablynotyou9286 nope, the rule is definitely unrounded vowels. there are languages in the world with only unrounded vowels (like alekano which has /e i ɑ ɤ ɯ/)
8:27 My native language is Polish, wich has /ts/ (typed as 'c' like in Esperanto) and I'm study Japanese. And I know that Poles sadly say tsunami like in English :( They don't know that This is like 'cunami'. 2022 UPDATE: I'm now a fluent Esperanto speaker but I give up learning Japanese. Maybe I try again later.
Amadeusz Terczewski Cool! I’m learning Japanese too! Of course, I practically have to, considering my aunt and cousins only speak Japanese and refuse to learn English.
@@user-tk2jy8xr8b Oh, sorry that I answer like 6 month later, dude... I mean Denis-san (Dienis or Denis?) Yeah, Polish language should have it's own transtription of Japanese just like Russian has! They say: "Polish using latin alphopet so it MUST use Hepburn's system! But I know languege wich also uses litin and has it's own transcription for Japanese. I'm writing about the Eperanto! (*Anthem starts playing:* "En la mondon venis nova sento, tra la mondo iras forta voko...") It's like: ch -> ĉ j -> ĝ or ĵ sh -> ŝ ts -> c w -> ŭ y - j And in Polish we distinguish sounds: [ʃ] "sz" (sh/ш) and [ɕ] "ś" or "si" or just "s" in "si" (Japanese "sh') [ʧ] "cz" (ch/ч) and [t͡ɕ] "ć" or "ci" or just "c" in "ci" (ћ/Japanese "ch") [ʤ] "dź" (j/џ) and [ʥ] "dź" or "dzi" or just "dz" in "dzi" (ђ/ Japanese "j") [z̪] "z" (z/з) and [ʣ] "dz" (ѕ or Japanese "z") So hepburn to Polish ortography (with "śi" instead of "si" etc.): ch -> ć j -> dź sh -> ś ts -> c v -> w w -> ł y -> j z -> dz So eg.:「ごちそうさまでした」"Gochisōsamadeshita" "гоцисōсамадесіта", "goĉisōsamaseŝita" would be: "Goćisōsamadeśita" But when write in Polish I do something another: 「ごちそうさまでした」gochisōsamadeshita (czytaj: goćisoosamadeśta) "Czytaj" means "read [as]" Theres suble o instead of ō and shita is śta :)
@@amadeosendiulo2137 Right, czytaj is читай, isn't that cool how Slavic langs are mutually (at least to some degree) intelligible? Too bad we have no letters for [ʑ], [t͡ʂ], [d͡ʐ], [d͡ʑ], [d͡z], [d͡zʲ] and [t͡sʲ], which makes lang asymmetric. I would transcribe your example ごちそうさまでした (\ɡo.tɕi.soː.sa.ma.de.ɕi.ta\) as гочсо-осамадэщта, but система Поливанова (Polivanov system), used in Russian, would give готисоусамадэсита (/ɡo.tʲi.sou.sa.ma.de.cʲi.ta/) which doesn't look adequate to me
+Daniel Nýdrle uvular trills are actually relatively rare and many consider it a difficult sound to produce. it is more commonly realized as a fricative/approximate. alveolar trills are far more common/universal.
***** The english "r" is actually very uncommon. I don't know any other language containing this sound. I prefer sticking to my rrrrrrrrrrrras! (Which is coincidentally the bavarian word for "intense")
Some tips for your phoneme inventory: 3:02 Adding diphthongs with the shwa might also make it sound interesting. 3:13 Having all voiced plosive is very rare, but having all voiceless plosives is not that uncommon, just take a look at the Polynesian languages. (Na'vi's inventory was also mildly inspired by Polynesian languages). However, having a voicing distinction in fricatives, but not plosives, is extremely unlikely without having voiced plosives as some sort of allophones. 4:00 Not having the glottal stop is also completely fine. 4:52 /ʍ/ is actually a fricative. It is also labio-velar, meaning you can place it in the labial or velar column (or both) instead of placing it outside of the chart. 5:52 You don't need to add the velar fricative: consonant symmetry is a tendency, not a rule. Some phonemes like plosives tend to follow it more than, say, fricatives and especially approximants. And having some asymmetry can definitely make things interesting. Tips for organizations: You can condense your phoneme inventory to just 4 places of articulation: labial, coronal, dorsal, and glottal. This is become some places of articulation like bilabial and labio-dental, or palatal, velar, and uvular never overlap. Also: you might wanna specify that /ɹ/ is an English /ɹ/. Since the way /ɹ/ is pronounced in English is actually sth like a postalveolar approximant, rather than alveolar.
My mother tongue has a rolling r and I can't pronounce it. It's called a 'speech defect' but I could speak languages that don't have it just fine, so it's more like a language defect.
Me: "Alveolar trill is nice. I could do that." Artifexian: "I can't pronounce alveolar trills. Let's do bilabial trills instead, it's really easy to pronounce." Me: "Bfff... bvvvv... bwwwww... crap..."
but of course i can pronounce the ALVEOAR TRILL. Now it is not fair to make a language that includes a sound that i CANNOT pronounce and EXCLUDE a sound that i CAN pronounce.
They are ubiquitous in all slavic, neopatin and germanic languages, they are in Altayic, Finno Ugroc, Chinese and Japanese, what do you mean found in a single percentage? Maybe you missed a not.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 What are you talking about? Only like 4 germanic languages have dental fricatives, and I don't think any of the other languages you mentioned have them. If they do, I doubt they have them as _phonemes_ Edit: I just quickly checked through at least 40% the Wikipedia pages for the languages in the language families you listed. Literally none of them have dental fricatives mentioned even as allophones. I've never even heard of those language families having dental fricatives (except for germanic languages) The only languages on the list I know have dental fricatives are Icelandic, Faroese, Elfdalian, and English, most of which are closely related. Also the Germanic languages in general are highly unique when it comes to phonetics
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 What are you talking about? Only like 4 germanic languages have dental fricatives, and I don't think any of the other languages you mentioned have them. If they do, I doubt they have them as _phonemes_
+Artifexian what is your opinions on french/german/english grammar ? which would you judge to be harder ? and for what reason ? I'm a native french speaker, and I have the most issues with french grammar, German to me is easy enough but the length of words and the case ending stuff is a bit annoying. To me, the easiest language is English, as everything is really intuitive, no need to learn grammar really, just write what sounds best and it's usually right (unless your pronunciation isn't on point, so having an accent ruins the fun here) Great videos, keep doing awesome work, it's really fun to watch :)
+Mickaël Morgen I can't speak french so I won't comment on it's grammar but I find German very difficult. Not so much the compound words but more the gender stuff! Der, die das...drives me mad. English, in this regard, is by far and away the easiest of the bunch.
Artifexian for the gender stuff in german I just choose what sounds best, mostly right, the more annoying thing is when writing in English for example but you have your brain switched on German ... and you start writing stuff like Englisch ... sch sch sch SCH EVERYWHERE >:c
+Mickaël Morgen Haha...can't say I've ever had this problem :) Because I've lost most of my German, I can't rely on 'it feels right' my brain has forgotten that feeling. Endlessly frustrating.
2:58 That's Cranky from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic! I actually found these videos while looking for inspiration for an FIM fanfic... I have four distinct cultures I'm working with: PONIES - a fractious and wide-spread race. Ancient languages are based off of Norse (Earth Ponies), Gaelic (Pegasi), and Old French (Unicorns), but "Standard" is a heavily tinkered with English with a lot of loan words. (humans were involved. Nuff said.) GRYPHONS - hearty mountain folk that are very much based on the kingdoms of Germany. Very High-Fantasy-Gothic. CHANGELINGS - heavily inspired by ancient India. Changelings are shapeshifters, so their voiceboxes can make a HUGE variety of sounds. Though they intentionally try to keep their language as simple as possible, for trade if nothing else. (a bit like the video!) THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE - A Pony kingdom stuck in a time loop for 1000 years. Their language is more... horsey. Chuffs, neighs, etc., are used as context clues, vocal punctuation, and verbal shorthand. They never encountered the humans that helped create Standard. - I'm not very far along, but I love the channel so far!
xidnaf please make a video on the phonetic inventory, i mean about what the categories mean, how all the letters are pronounced and why sometimes there is no letter for a combination
I made up a own language called "Silgne" based on English, which is totally easy, because it's 100% phonetic and has the easy grammar rules of English... I spent over 2 years working on it, and finally it's kinda done :D
English speakers don't pronounce "ts" ???????????? - leT'S go - the tesTS are hard - it geTS cold - place your beTS - saturated faTS - I love caTS - iT'S weird - thaT'S not cool - I read KaTE'S blog - human righTS - lighTS off - loTS of videos - she texTS him everyday - United StaTES of America - he beaTS his opponenTS - the greatest hiTS of the 80's ...
Most of those examples are consonants clusters not affricates. A good example of the ts affricate is in pizza. My dialects and the General Avery American dialect pronounce the first syllables ending in the ts affricate.
Ah; having watched this playlist for the fifth time (and this video in particular) I finally have the phonetic inventory for my own language... Just commenting to say thanks for making this subject accessible : ) .
7:45 the uvular trill also is commonly realized as a fricative, and [x] is commonly uvular, so they work together for sound symmetry, being analyzed as [x] and [ɣ] or [χ] and [ʁ] or even [ʀ̥] and [ʀ], which I think is really neat
I'm on the other side of the Pacific from Japan. (ie: Canada.) Tsunami is "Sunami," but my hometown Tsawwassen is "Tawwassen". We're not even consistent with our inaccuracies.
In my high school Spanish class, they didn't tell us about all the allophones, lack of aspirated consonants etc. I was always complimented on my pronunciation. Then I tried talking to an actual Spanish speaker and they informed me how bad my accent was.
@@wintergray1221 I imagine. Spanish is very easy to pronounce because of that, probably the easiest romance language in that regard, but grammar...that's a whole different story because it's incredibly precise in conyugations.
@@balamstudiosWhy did you mention grammar, if they were talking about their problems with the pronunciation? Also, Spanish is definitely not the easiest Romance language to pronounce, it's probably not even the easiest Ibero-Romance language.
Who the hell can pronounce the bilabial trill??? Even the uvular trill is easier than the bilabial... okay maybe I'm a little biased bc I'm from Germany And why is [pf] so hard? It's just [p] and [f]. Okay us northern Germans don't pronounce /pf/ the way it should be pronounced but we can do it too! And last but not least: trills are awesome (except the bilabial one)! Edit: well, that aged like milk... Why did I ever hate on [ʙ]? I love it and it's seriously easy to produce...
I loved this video! I lost it at "teet" instead of "teeth"! Probably because my family's form Dublin, but we're Southside, and not using th is more North? But my uncle's do... I don't know, but I really really enjoyed this video, love you and Xidnaf!
You brought up the point about you not being able to roll you "r"s and I have an idea. There is a myth that Castillian Spanish has a "lisp", because one of the Spanish kings had one, and the nobles joined in, thus making a "lisp" seem aristocratic. Granted, this myth is debunked by a quick google search, but I think that it could be applied to your language, maybe... King Edgar the Magnificent could not roll his "r"s, so the nobles and aristocrats joined in. This is why the posh people of Artifexia do not roll their "r"s, but the peasantry and the people in the far-off land of Xidnafia, generally do. Either that or keep things the way they are, but I thought that may be a case if you were to talk about sound shifts, though that would only need to be brought up of you were to go as far as to talk about making a whole language family, and I undrestand that that is a VERY long way down the road. /Rao/!
+Tsharli Foster (AdrenalineVan) I'm Spaniard and I don't know anything about a king having a lisp. If americans think we have a lisp, I think that's probably because in standart Spanish (the one they speak at the news) the "z" and "c" are indeed pronounced like the "th" in "thank you".
Homeworld-Gamers That's what I meant. It's not actually a lisp, but when a "th" sound is made and spelled like a "c" it may sound like one to foreigners, leaving room for jokes. Also, you probably haven't heard of the king because it is a myth.
@@adrenalinevan It's funny to me. It sounds like a lisp, but I've also heard Spaniards not have it either. I liken it to the Canadian "eh," where they may not register it but is obvious to an American.
I've literally learned more about language/lingual sound structure in this 10 minute video than I have than in five years of studying English at school. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. None the less, stupendous video!
Honestly, as an English speaker, I was able to pronounce "ts" and "pf" when I first saw them, and it took me a while to realize things like "ch" or "j" were even affricates. I almost get not being able to roll your r's, but "pf" is like the easiest thing in the world. Also, I think I do a glottal stop not only between vowels but also at the start of words that ought to begin with vowels, to the extent that I have to add a faint "h" to *not* have a glottal stop. Is that weird?
+Artifexian I certainly enjoyed this - great collab! Personally, I'm partial to palatals; I imagine a lot of language nerds have some specific articulation they like to nerd out over ^^;;
This is one of my favorite things ever! Also, if you want to include just one more sound, the welsh "ll" sound is lovely. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_and_alveolar_lateral_fricatives
+Leslie Colton I like that sound...but it just doesn't fit with my idea of what this language will be. Perhaps my next language could be a lateral heavy language.
It only make sense to include schwa if the language is stress timed, mind. A syllable timed language will tend to lack lack a schwa in its vowel inventory.
Just wanted to say thank you for the videos. I've been on a binge of them lately and it's inspired me to start work on my own (I do have fantasy races but no languages to go with them :p).
Wow I speak German and exactly the moment the other guy asked „Does any language even have pf“ I thought of the German word Pferd even before you mentioned it! This was really weird. Also here other examples Pflaume(plum), Pflanze(plant), Pfiff(whistle), Pfeife(pipe) and Pfand(deposit)
One of my conlangs, Arthean, has only 2 plosives; /b/ and /d/. I have reasons for this. /t/ and /p/ lenited into /θ/ and /f/ respectively, while /k/ and /g/ both turned into /h/ (alongside /x/ and /q/).
Wonderful video. Im making my first conlang with little to no prior experience in linguistics. I’ve been learning as much as I can as I’ve went along but it still tends to be hard, and i can say that your video, while still being technical and educational, was wayyyy more understandable and helped A TON. Even though i was using a different base language than you (Icelandic), what you instructed wasn't exclusive to English. Subbed =). P.s. the uvular trill is my mortal enemy. I sound sickly.
This is what I came up with for my language. Vowels: a, i, u, o Diphthongs: ai, au, ao, ia, iu, io, ua, ui, uo, oa, oi, ou Consonants: m, n, ŋ, p, t, k, ʔ, f, v, θ, ð, s, z, ʒ, x, ɹ, j, ʙ, r, ʀ, l Non-Pulmonic: ʘ, ǂ, ǁ Affricates: t͜s, p͡s, k͜θ I'm afraid I did to much adding and not enough subtracting, but maybe it's just a really primitive language.
Vowels - Monophthongs: e o a ɒ ə ɜ ɪ i ʊ u Diphthongs: ɪə ʊə eɪ ɒɪ oʊ aʊ Consonants - Plosives: pʰ p tʰ t ʈʰ ʈ cʰ c kʰ k ʔ Fricatives: ɸ β s z ʂ ʐ ç ʝ x ɣ Nasals: m n ɳ ɲ ŋ Approximants: β̞ ɹ ɻ j ɰ Phonotactics - 1. (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C) 2. Onset and Coda - All consonants 3. Nucleus - All vowels 4. Onset - Fricative + Plosive/Nasal + Approximant 5. Coda - (Obstruent + Sonorant) or (Fricative + Plosive) There, it's a bit formulaic and English-friendly but I'm happy with it.
+Artifexian Just subscribed so I can see where this will go in future updates! I've been trying my hand at making conlangs for a few years now but haven't been able to get beyond the phonology stage (plus a rough outline of grammar without actually "plugging it in" so to speak). Hopefully this channel will help give me some guidance. Funny thing, one of my languages has the same vowel system that your's has right now! I'm always nervous when someone gets the same ideas as me because I don't want to seem like I'm stealing anything lol
Apparently, affricates are insanely easy for me to pronounce. Maybe it's because I've spent a LONG time practicing the "tl" from Aztec. I also LOVE the "ts" from German, it's one of my favorite sounds! I can't roll my "R's" though, which really annoys me. I can flip them like no other. I LOVE learning how to pronounce other languages. I did it in chior growing up all the time.
Then take a look on some Slavic langauges, [ts] is so important we decided that 'c' will not stand for [k] or [s] but for [ts], but tough luck if you can't roll your r's, there isn't a Slavic langauge that doesn't have rolled r
I want to learn how to roll my "r's" so badly. Ever since seeing "That 70's Show" episode, I've always wanted to have someone roll their r's in my mouth while kissing my to see if it would help me learn how to do it...
I'm new to conlanging, but it seems interesting and I want to give it a try! Here's the phonetic inventory I came up with for my unnamed conlang. If someone would review it, that would be amazing! Vowels: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /y/ Diphthongs: /ai/, /aʊ/, /ia/, /ie/, /io/, /iy/, /oi/ Consonants: Nasals: /m/, /n/ Plosives: /p/, /b/, /t, /d/, /k/, /g/, /ʔ/ Fricatives: /f/, /v/, (I might switch those with /ɸ/ and /β/), /θ/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /ʁ/, /h/ Approximants: /j/, /w/ Flaps: /ɾ/ (I love this sound) Trills: None, but watching this makes me want to add /B/ and maybe /r/. Thoughts? Laterals: /l/ (Is this too similar to /ɾ/?) Affricates: /tʃ/ Thanks for reading my comment! ^_^
+Matthew Late Your conlang idea's phonology seems interesting. May I suggest using a retroflex or alveolar approximant instead over the alveolar flap? It keeps it a bit different from the lateral if you're worried about it sounding too similar. But other than that, everything seems pretty much in order! Good luck with the conlang! :)
+Brett Pittman I like the idea of the approximant, but I just love that flap! If anything I'll probably drop the lateral. Any thoughts on the bilabial fricatives?
+Matthew Late Quite an interesting phonology. If you want to add a trill, may I suggest the bilabial trill or retroflex trill? They give your language a unique sound. Also, would it be okay if you take a look at my constructed language? It is not a solid phonology, and is subject to change. Vowels: /a/, /e/, /ɪ/, /o/, /u/, /a:/, /e:/, /ɪ:/, /o:/, /u:/, /a::/, /e::/, /ɪ::/, /o::/, /u::/ (written as a, e, i, o, u, y, á, é, í, ó, ú, â, ê, î, ô, û (/e:/ is also written as ) Diphthongs: /aɪ̯/, /e͡ɪ/, /u͡ɪ/, /a͡ʊ/, /o͡e/ Consonants: Nasals: /m/, /n̪ˠ/ (hard), /nʲ/ (soft), /n/, /ŋ/ Plosives: /p/, /b/, /t̪ˠ/ (hard), /d̪ˠ/ (hard), /tʲ/ (soft), /dʲ/ (soft), /t/, /d/, /k/ Fricatives: /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /s/, /ʃ/, /x/, /h/ Taps: /ɾˠ/ (hard), /ɾʲ/ (soft), /ɾ/ Approximants: /l/, /j/, /w/ Notes: and have merged into /ɪ/, where y used to be /y/. is always unmarked. The laterals /l̪ˠ/ and /lʲ/ have been lost (though I am considering bringing them back). If you could review it, that would be great!
+Aar Pug Well, I'm certainly not the best person to ask, because I have absolutely no experience in linguistics, but I'll do my best! What's the difference between /t̪ˠ/, /tʲ/, and /t/? I know that the bracket thing makes it dental, but what do the little /j/ and /ɣ/ do? I'm assuming the colons indicate vowel length. That's a cool idea. It seems strange to me that you have/k/ but not /g/. That said, my conlang has /θ/ and not /ð/, so it'll probably work. I like that flap! Once again, not sure about the diacritics, but any conlang with /ɾ/ is an instawin in my book! Sorry I can't do a better job, but maybe someone with more experience will come along and look at this too. :)
+Matthew Late +Matthew Late +Matthew Late +Matthew Late Thanks for the review! The hard consonants indicate velarization, the soft ones indicate labialization, and the plain ones are standard IPA. Also, there is a /g/, I forgot to write it though :(. Also, a small sample, the numerals from one to twelve: man tûn nîn canar lepan enués otep toloc netev ceic ceicman ceictûn If you want to talk more, tell me :)
Huh... makes me want to go back and make a conlang for a story I'm writing, instead of just pointing out "they're using a different language". Might make naming things more consistent.
Artifexian What would that entail? Deciding on sounds, and I'm guessing words, but not really sure beyond that. I imagine I wouldn't need too much of a grammar or anything.
+109Rage Ye, so a naming language would require a phonology and (some) words but little to no grammar. Basically, you'd develop the language to the point where you can name things on a world map but not beyond that.
Artifexian Interesting. Guess I'll look at things I've already named in my world, maybe try to build the phonology from that (and/or retcon some of the names) and go from there.
For the made-up language that I'm trying to design, for a people that managed to "thrive" amidst a war-torn environment where time and clear communication were of the essence, I've set a few goals: - The words would need to be pronounceable with as few syllables as possible, so that sentences could be spoken within as little time as possible. Ideally, most words could be pronounced with but a single syllable. Thus, I'm willing to enlarge the language's alphabet in order to accommodate a wider variety of vowels and consonants, as well as the addition of more exotic things, like trills (lots of them!), glottal stops, vowel tones (like what Mandarin Chinese uses), and even click consonants. - The words would need to be easily audible, even in a noisy environment, and/or among the hard-of-hearing. Thus, there'd be no distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants like "d" and "t", "g" and "k", "ch" and "j", "f" and "v", and "s" and "z" to name a few. There may also be no distinction between nasal sounds like "m" and "n" even! Also, the amount of vowels, consonants, and tones would need to be kept very distinct, so caught-cot dilemmas would need to be avoided. - The spelling of words would need to be strictly accurate in terms of pronunciation, so as to be easy to learn. So, a phonetic writing system could suffice, which could be either an alphabet or an abugida (although given the importance of tone, and how commonly syllables within a word would be structured, I'm leaning more towards an abugida). - An alternate logographic writing system could be developed to provide a common basis of cross-linguistic understanding, even if they have different words for the same thing, such as "trash" and "garbage". (See Blissymbols as an example of this.) Here's what I'd like to use in my own made-up language: - 10 vowels with their own letters, specifically "a" as in "flan", "ah" as in "flat", "au" as in "frond" (try saying it in a deeper French accent to avoid the caught-cot dilemma), "eh" as in "fed", "ee" as in "feet", "ih" as in "fit", "uh" as in "fun", "o" as in "phone", "oo" as in "foot", and "u" as in "flu". - Diphthongs and triphthongs galore! Of course, none of them would be written with their own letters, but would be made from a permutation of the 10 vowels, resulting in such diphthongs as "ae" as in "blade", "eeah" as in "fiat", and "eeau" as in "yaw", as well as such triphthongs as "eeaho" as in "meow", or "oae" as in "sway". - 5 tones for the vowels: a flat tone, a rising tone, a falling tone, a rising then falling tone, and a falling then rising tone. - As for the consonants, as I mentioned before, I'd like for the language to make no distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants, so "p" and "b" would be used interchangeably, and would use the same letter. The same would go with "d" and "t", both versions of "th" (as in "thin" and "this"), "g" and "k", "s" and "z", "sh" and "zh", "ch" and "j", and "f" and "v". There would also be no distinction between "m" and "n", or "q" and "k", and consonants such as "w" as in "won", or "y" as in "yes" can be done away with since they sound so similar to "o" as in "phone", and "ee" as in "feet" respectively. The "l" and "r" sounds would remain unchanged. - With regards to the addition of more exotic consonants, the "kh" sound, as in "loch", is a given, as would be the addition of a plosive glottal to separate vowel sounds, though it could be used interchangeably with a "h" sound. There would also be an alveolar lateral fricative "sth" sound added in, which would sound like a combination of the "sh" and "th" sounds. Perhaps most unusual would be the addition of about 8 non-pulmonic consonants, specifically a kissing sound, a lip-smacking sound (as in expressing an eagerness to eat), a popping sound, a raspberry sound, and 4 different clicking sounds (ranging from the "tsk tsk" sound to the "clop clop" sound). - Trills galore! In addition to the "bb" and "rr" trills, there could be "tt", "thth", "kk", "ss", "shsh", "chch", "ff", "khkh", "sthsth", "hh", and "ll" sounds. Like with the diphthongs and triphthongs, they wouldn't have their own letters, but would instead be expressed in writing by having two of the same untrilled letter together. Sadly, I didn't think that you could possibly trill with nasal stops like "m" or "n", so they were omitted as well. The resulting phonetic alphabet would not be an alphabet at all, but rather, would be an abugida, that would have 10 vowels with 5 tones; 14 pulmonic consonants, each with a trilling variant (except for the "m"/"n" sound); and 8 non-pulmonic consonants, for a total of just 32 letters in the alphabet. However, from those 10 vowels could come up to 90 diphthongs, and up to 810 triphthongs! Multiply all of the monophthongs, diphthongs, and triphthongs by the 5 tones, and you get 4550! In this particular abugida, each syllable would begin with a consonant (either a non-pulmonic consonant, non-trilled pulmonic consonant, or trilled pulmonic consonant), have up to 3 vowels chained after that syllable, and end with another consonant, with a line or wave crossing over the syllable in order to determine that syllable's tone. When combined with any of the 35 possible consonants (the aforementioned 14 pulmonic consonants, 13 of which may or may not be trilled, plus the 8 non-pulmonic consonants) that would appear before and after the vowels, and you could get up to 5,573,750 possible single-syllable words! And I didn't even need to distinguish between voiced and unvoiced consonants! I doubt that any modern-day language would even need that many different words in their vocabulary, but perhaps, like with Spanish, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs could be altered in some fashion? I might also be able to do away with the tones, to get a language that can be better spoken in whispers, while still possibly having a single-syllable word for just about anything conceivable.
Sillyto delete the affricate series because /pf/ is so “difficult”, but the argument is particularly ridiculous for /ts/. [ts] is way more common than people consider, just check the frequency in English of the word pizza in food related contexts for people age < 40 or, well, anything in -t in the plural. If anything, only a mild adjustment and practice session would be required to get someone to pronounce it easily in onsets as they're already produced V_#, and V_V.
Ah, the uvular trill... I never liked that sound, even though it's featured in my mother tongue. Weird, eh? That was a very useful video; "how to choose sounds for a conlang?" is a question that's always bothered me, and probably other conlanger-wannabes as well.
+Ysgramornorris From what I've seen, generally you don't want to spend too much time on it, the time spent during this video is probably all you want to spend unless you want to create a phonological history.
+Trevyn Case It's not really a matter of time. I often find myself unable to decide what sounds I want, and how I "should" go about choosing sounds. How do you go from "I want my language to sound roughly like this" to "I'll plug this and that phoneme in" is the real problem.
Fun video! When I was a teenager my little sister taught me how to roll my Rs. She had me walk around all day saying "ada" (sounded like "uh-DUH") over and over. Started on a Friday and by Sunday afternoon, the D in the middle there started motorboating into "uh-DRRRRRRAH" and suddenly I was trilling my Rs. I have recommended it to anyone I meet who can't trill their Rs ever since.
so, I started a conlang and decided to just use 97% of the English Phonetic Alphabet because I thought it would be easier for me. I also didn't know how the IPA worked so that didn't help. And I designed 90% the writing system for it already and I'm thinking I should do a mass rework. I think I'll keep the non-alphabetical symbols like the possessive symbol and the questioning symbol which are both said as actual (monosyllabic) words. I'm glad I found your channel Artifexian.
So, I’m an absolute beginner at conlangs (and also very dyslexic). And I now absolutely bugger all about language. I would really like to get into it and develop my own, but while these videos are absolutely excellent, I’m really struggling with keeping up with all of these terms and symbols for sounds and stuff, and i just feel like… everyone already knows what it all means/refers to and I don’t 🙃 I sorta feels like when, you’re trying to teach your grandma how do click on something on a computer, but she doesn’t even know what the mouse is? Only it’s me. I’m grandma. Do you have any videos or recommended resources that go over the absolute basics of wth everything is, like terms etc? 😅
Same. Ik starting with choosing your language's sounds is the way to go, but the terms are honestly just,, a struggle. (you worded it really well already, so i just copied your phrasing, lol). Tho i'll take a look at the playlist @boredishfish2717 reccomended.
Alveolar approximants are very interesting! Also, is the bilabial trill really that easy? I find that I have to kinda "co-articulate" it with my tongue between my teeth, which I don't think is correct.
+rzeka I think so. It's that brrrr sound babies make when they flap their lips together. Or the sound we make to imitate tractor engines. Or (kinda) the way we flap our lips together when we are exhausted - you know for you deeply inhaled. When producing the bilabial trill the tongue should not be in between the teeth. It should be lying in a relaxed neutral position in the mouth.
Artifexian I thought so. I can make the sound in isolation, but in the middle of a word it just comes out as a bilabial fricative, unless I stick my tongue between my teeth. I guess I'll just practice more.
I recently got back into trying to make a conlang, and by complete coincidence picked out almost the exact same vowel inventory as this, but with *u* rather than *o*
Oh yeah, I can do those too, pretty easily. It's actually funny that I see your reply now, because I just learnt how to make the /x/ and /γ/ sounds properly.
how would you write the glottal stop "ʔ" ?as it's only between vowels, should you write it as a letter, or as a diacritic around the second vowel? would /ao/ be written "aʔo" (or aho" or "aö" (or any other way)? Also, how shoud you pronounce "aoi"? as /aʔoʔi/ , /aʔoi/, /aoʔi/ or even a strange /ai/ diphthong , with a glide that passes by the sound /o/ (is that even possible Oo)
+Baconaro It could be written any number of ways, from an Apostrophe " ' ", an ‘okina " ‘ ", to a Hyphen "-", to the actual Glottal Stop letter "Ɂ ɂ", to even weirder options, like "7", à la Squamish, or "q", à la Maltese. If it's a diacritic, a circumflex could be used over the second letter. Give it a bit of a Filipino orthographic flavor. My personal favorite is the ‘okina, but that's just me. I suspect there would be stress over either the "_o_" or the "_i_" to indicate whether or not it's /aoʔi/ or /aʔoi/. If I were writing this, I'd have it be something like a rounded version of "_ai_", perhaps as /ɶy/ or something, or a more-closed version of "_ao_", like "_æʊ". Additionally, the final "_i_" could become a "_j_" in scenarios like this, making it /aoj/ or something, or perhaps the "_o_" could become like a "_w_", and make it /awi/.
+Baconaro I like what Na'vi does: the apostrophe represents the glottal stop. So, "ta", "ta'a", "ta'a'a" etc. Don't know if I'll allow triphthongs but if I do "aoi" would simply be /aoi/.
SO, as someone who lives in a very multi-lingual country, I can pronounce all of the letters on this list after just one or two tries. Rolling my Rs, that voiceless vealer fricative sound symbolised as x, the ts sound, the pf sound. Actually, the only language sounds I CAN'T replicate easily, aren't on this particular type of list! I guess I kind of assumed everyone could pronounce these, but now that I know I'm special, I am most chuffed.
alongside piraha, nuxalk from british columbia also has a three vowel system with /o/, which descends from proto-salishans four vowel system with /a/, /i/, /u/, and /ə/, of which both are remarkably similar to this.
I'm goin' thru de playlists an' I coul'n't stop laughin' here. Aye'd love it if yoo two did more collabs tugeva. Heck, dey don' ev'n need t' be on-a serious topic!
YEA! I absolutely love that the ship had the number 1729. It is a personal favorite of mine. I think 420 might be my favorite integer, but not for any if the drug or birthday reasons. 420 is the smallest number divisible by all the natural numbers:. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7. Remove divisibility by 7 and we drop to 60. We got divisibility by 6 for free from 2 and 3. So the next such distinct number down, the smallest natural number divisible by 1, 2, 3, & 4 is 12. I love that easy divisibility is built into our system for denoting time.
Sort of, but only at the end of syllables. Putting it at the beginning is weird for English speakers. Same issue for "ng". We use other language sounds, just not as part of language. Japanese "f" is the sound we make when blowing out a match. The first consonant of "Xhosa" is the sound we use to tell a horse to go. And so on.
I was going to say that alveolar trills are overrated and that uvular trills are where its at! Thank god that's where we ended up in the video By the way, English native speakers, is saying /ts/ really that difficult?
I’m pretty sure most English speakers already know how to pronounce “ts.” It’s literally everywhere. There were two in those 2 previous sentences, the c in pronounce and the ts in it’s
Everyone: Fuck the bilabial trill, none of my homies can pronounce the bilabial trill Me, imitating a motor vehicle: 🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️
Today, I learned "ts" and "pf" are hard to pronounce for some people.
+Fidel Squire they're so easy, I never thought people would have a hard time with those either.
well, the "ão" diphthong is easy as fuck to me to pronounce but i've never seen a native english speaker pronounce it correctly. so yeah. i don't even know why i'm saying this since i have no trouble pronouncing either ts or pf. i really don't like pf though.
***** oh yeah, i'd never put that in a conlang.
My conlang has pf, ts, kx
100th like!
I knew giving someone the ability of getting the 300th like would pay off! What I did is get the 299th like so someone else could get the 300th!
No Xidnafs were hurt during the making of this video.
xD
You sure about that?
One was
Not physically
you sure?
"Let's add the bilabial trill," they said. "It's easy to pronounce," they said.
I know right?!
Ever tried to imitate a 2-stroke engine when you were younger? It's pretty much that. Force air out of closed lips so they vibrate.
I cannot pronounce the bilabial trill
Pf is hard to pronounce they said
And yet [ts] is hard?
When Xidnaf was talking about how the “ts” sound is hard, he literally used it in “pronounce”.
צ
The 'ts' sound, not a [t] followed by a [s].
@@terner1234 ץ
@@stratis5360 שנינו צודקים
@@terner1234 אני בקושי מכיר את העברית
As a German who grew up with grandparents speaking Hungarian, Polish and Jiddish, and who had Latin in school and learned Italian, French and Spanish for fun, this was quite funny to watch, especially as you dropped the 'pf' and struggled to roll the R 😅
i think even the plain old english speakers were a bit confused. bw is not easy, pf and ts is not hard (although i may be aspirating it unintentionally) and technically we have the alveolar trill in some dialects of English although those dialects have sadly fallen out of use. i mean. why would we have a way of describing, which is to roll my r's, it if we didn't have it in English
I gave up on spanish because I couldn’t pronounce half the words correctly since I can’t roll my r’s :(
Yiddish.
@@beefairy8620 it just takes practice and you need a relaxed mouth to properly pronounce it(which might your issue)
@@papaicebreakerii8180 yeah it’s actually one of the easiest sound for me to makes
I'm an Irish teacher (Gaeilge), and also speak many other languages. I've been constructing languages since I was 7 yrs. old (43 years). Most of my life I couldn't even describe to people what I was doing, and if I could, they would think me crazy, so I just kept it to myself. I'm overjoyed to see other people with the same hobby, and interacting with each other.
Go deas, a mhuinteoir
I mean Gaeilge is such an unusual language that it can inspire You (my first writing system was a substitute for Gaeilge's horrific Romanisation
"pf"? Does that even exist in human language?!
Xidnaf, my god!. My home town's name starts with a Pf :(
PFFFFFFFFt
@@amberjl6689 i laughed and now i've lost years off my life soan
Pftburg?
a street where near i live is "pfrimmers chapel"
@@johncenaplayingstarcraft9580 pfff rimmers chapel
1:44 "at least one unrounded vowel"
*highlights the only rounded vowel*
Oops.
I think it's saying the opposite
@@probablynotyou9286 nope, the rule is definitely unrounded vowels. there are languages in the world with only unrounded vowels (like alekano which has /e i ɑ ɤ ɯ/)
@@muffinhead2164 I meant pointing out what not talking about if that makes sense
@@muffinhead2164 that's a cool inventory I will now use it for my clong
YES after hours of work i finally have my phonetic inventory done!.
onto swear words
YES
did you put in the grammer?
Pf you.
It’s great because nobody can pronounce it
8:27 My native language is Polish, wich has /ts/ (typed as 'c' like in Esperanto) and I'm study Japanese. And I know that Poles sadly say tsunami like in English :(
They don't know that This is like 'cunami'.
2022 UPDATE: I'm now a fluent Esperanto speaker but I give up learning Japanese. Maybe I try again later.
Amadeusz Terczewski
Cool! I’m learning Japanese too! Of course, I practically have to, considering my aunt and cousins only speak Japanese and refuse to learn English.
Yay, in Russian it's "цунами" which corresponds to what-would-be-Polish "cunami" btw
@@user-tk2jy8xr8b Oh, sorry that I answer like 6 month later, dude... I mean Denis-san (Dienis or Denis?)
Yeah, Polish language should have it's own transtription of Japanese just like Russian has! They say: "Polish using latin alphopet so it MUST use Hepburn's system!
But I know languege wich also uses litin and has it's own transcription for Japanese. I'm writing about the Eperanto! (*Anthem starts playing:* "En la mondon venis nova sento,
tra la mondo iras forta voko...")
It's like:
ch -> ĉ
j -> ĝ or ĵ
sh -> ŝ
ts -> c
w -> ŭ
y - j
And in Polish we distinguish sounds:
[ʃ] "sz" (sh/ш) and [ɕ] "ś" or "si" or just "s" in "si" (Japanese "sh')
[ʧ] "cz" (ch/ч) and [t͡ɕ] "ć" or "ci" or just "c" in "ci" (ћ/Japanese "ch")
[ʤ] "dź" (j/џ) and [ʥ] "dź" or "dzi" or just "dz" in "dzi" (ђ/ Japanese "j")
[z̪] "z" (z/з) and [ʣ] "dz" (ѕ or Japanese "z")
So hepburn to Polish ortography (with "śi" instead of "si" etc.):
ch -> ć
j -> dź
sh -> ś
ts -> c
v -> w
w -> ł
y -> j
z -> dz
So eg.:「ごちそうさまでした」"Gochisōsamadeshita"
"гоцисōсамадесіта", "goĉisōsamaseŝita" would be:
"Goćisōsamadeśita"
But when write in Polish I do something another:
「ごちそうさまでした」gochisōsamadeshita (czytaj: goćisoosamadeśta)
"Czytaj" means "read [as]"
Theres suble o instead of ō and shita is śta :)
@@amadeosendiulo2137
Right, czytaj is читай, isn't that cool how Slavic langs are mutually (at least to some degree) intelligible?
Too bad we have no letters for [ʑ], [t͡ʂ], [d͡ʐ], [d͡ʑ], [d͡z], [d͡zʲ] and [t͡sʲ], which makes lang asymmetric.
I would transcribe your example ごちそうさまでした (\ɡo.tɕi.soː.sa.ma.de.ɕi.ta\) as гочсо-осамадэщта, but система Поливанова (Polivanov system), used in Russian, would give готисоусамадэсита (/ɡo.tʲi.sou.sa.ma.de.cʲi.ta/) which doesn't look adequate to me
i am polish too niech żyją polacy ale nasz rząd jest do d***
This is it. I've found my people: linguistic nerds!
+sammy3212321 Welcome to the circle! Those who seek shall find.
Yessssss same
i'm a half-linguistic nerd
Me too :D
Me too!
So Xidnaf can pronounce that weird uvular trill but thinks "pf" is hard?
pfff
+Fummy it is all relative, my French experience makes uvular trill easy.
+Fummy haha puns
In Austria (and Bavaria) we know this r-trill (from italy) and /pf/ (from german)
Bavarian word for priest:
Pfoara
+Daniel Nýdrle uvular trills are actually relatively rare and many consider it a difficult sound to produce. it is more commonly realized as a fricative/approximate. alveolar trills are far more common/universal.
***** The english "r" is actually very uncommon. I don't know any other language containing this sound. I prefer sticking to my rrrrrrrrrrrras! (Which is coincidentally the bavarian word for "intense")
Come on Xidnaf, stop your whinging we all know you were having a ball
Truthfully, we all know that you loved it, Xidnaf.
Don't stop him now
He's having a ball
@@kieronbrown73 ah the good old queen song
Some tips for your phoneme inventory:
3:02 Adding diphthongs with the shwa might also make it sound interesting.
3:13 Having all voiced plosive is very rare, but having all voiceless plosives is not that uncommon, just take a look at the Polynesian languages. (Na'vi's inventory was also mildly inspired by Polynesian languages).
However, having a voicing distinction in fricatives, but not plosives, is extremely unlikely without having voiced plosives as some sort of allophones.
4:00 Not having the glottal stop is also completely fine.
4:52 /ʍ/ is actually a fricative. It is also labio-velar, meaning you can place it in the labial or velar column (or both) instead of placing it outside of the chart.
5:52 You don't need to add the velar fricative: consonant symmetry is a tendency, not a rule. Some phonemes like plosives tend to follow it more than, say, fricatives and especially approximants. And having some asymmetry can definitely make things interesting.
Tips for organizations:
You can condense your phoneme inventory to just 4 places of articulation: labial, coronal, dorsal, and glottal. This is become some places of articulation like bilabial and labio-dental, or palatal, velar, and uvular never overlap.
Also: you might wanna specify that /ɹ/ is an English /ɹ/. Since the way /ɹ/ is pronounced in English is actually sth like a postalveolar approximant, rather than alveolar.
Thanks!
0:32 Actually, I'm already working on a conlang made of sounds just what the human mouth can produce as a joke.
Okay, as a writer, I can say that this is literally one of the most helpful channels I've ever come across. Thank you so much
Even if a known language doesn't do it, you can still do it in a conlang :P
Ben DuMonde /r̼/ anyone?
Oh
/ouhnhh/
My lenguace...
PLEASE stop
/r̃/
Yes, though do consider how you might go about teaching people how to say such sounds.
Collton Righem no i like the (/ɹf/)
My mother tongue has a rolling r and I can't pronounce it. It's called a 'speech defect' but I could speak languages that don't have it just fine, so it's more like a language defect.
James Lolan Finnish
i Speak Cave man. Ku ka tak! Dos fui.(Oh My God The fuck) thats what it said.
I pity you. "Perkele" has lots of more power with a rolling r.
+James Lolan I'm an English speaker who speaks in RP and can't roll my Rs... so I suppose I'm speaking a new language now!!
Cyberspine i can trill my r's and make an epiglottal
Me: "Alveolar trill is nice. I could do that." Artifexian: "I can't pronounce alveolar trills. Let's do bilabial trills instead, it's really easy to pronounce." Me: "Bfff... bvvvv... bwwwww... crap..."
Me too
but of course i can pronounce the ALVEOAR TRILL. Now it is not fair to make a language that includes a sound that i CANNOT pronounce and EXCLUDE a sound that i CAN pronounce.
For biabal trills try to imate a engine
Just don't use the muscles on your lips and blow air.
Oh my god how is that even possible to mess up
"Dental fricatives (a feature found in a single digit percent of all languages) are out."
"Wait why?"
Smh xidnaf
Kayleigh Lehrman yeah like he’s all scared of normal things like only 3 plosives
They are ubiquitous in all slavic, neopatin and germanic languages, they are in Altayic, Finno Ugroc, Chinese and Japanese, what do you mean found in a single percentage? Maybe you missed a not.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 What are you talking about? Only like 4 germanic languages have dental fricatives, and I don't think any of the other languages you mentioned have them.
If they do, I doubt they have them as _phonemes_
Edit: I just quickly checked through at least 40% the Wikipedia pages for the languages in the language families you listed. Literally none of them have dental fricatives mentioned even as allophones.
I've never even heard of those language families having dental fricatives (except for germanic languages)
The only languages on the list I know have dental fricatives are Icelandic, Faroese, Elfdalian, and English, most of which are closely related. Also the Germanic languages in general are highly unique when it comes to phonetics
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 What are you talking about? Only like 4 germanic languages have dental fricatives, and I don't think any of the other languages you mentioned have them.
If they do, I doubt they have them as _phonemes_
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 Wtf did you mean when you say Japanese and chinese has dental fricatives, they clearly don't have them
ts... It's like so unbelivably easy...
Granted I am a chinese native speaker but...
If someone can't make that sound, I would doubt if the person who taught them english was could actually speak it
+tuxcup I am a native english speaker, and I don't have any trouble with it either. I don't have any problems with "pf" in "pferd" either.
+Daniel Nýdrle here in Colombia we say s, c and z the same
If you really don't know how to pronounce /ts/ just say "pizza" ^^
*****
But with the affricative /ts/ or separate /t/ and /s/? Dunno, I always pronounce it with the affricate, but I'm not a native English speaker.
You should make up a writing system too.
+Joseph Duffy All in good time. Next step will be grammar.
+Artifexian what is your opinions on french/german/english grammar ? which would you judge to be harder ? and for what reason ?
I'm a native french speaker, and I have the most issues with french grammar, German to me is easy enough but the length of words and the case ending stuff is a bit annoying.
To me, the easiest language is English, as everything is really intuitive, no need to learn grammar really, just write what sounds best and it's usually right (unless your pronunciation isn't on point, so having an accent ruins the fun here)
Great videos, keep doing awesome work, it's really fun to watch :)
+Mickaël Morgen I can't speak french so I won't comment on it's grammar but I find German very difficult. Not so much the compound words but more the gender stuff! Der, die das...drives me mad. English, in this regard, is by far and away the easiest of the bunch.
Artifexian for the gender stuff in german I just choose what sounds best, mostly right, the more annoying thing is when writing in English for example but you have your brain switched on German ... and you start writing stuff like Englisch ... sch sch sch SCH EVERYWHERE >:c
+Mickaël Morgen Haha...can't say I've ever had this problem :) Because I've lost most of my German, I can't rely on 'it feels right' my brain has forgotten that feeling. Endlessly frustrating.
7:18 you could say it's......trrrrrrrragic ok i'm going bye
No don't go puns are very precious and needed
bragic, since Oa has a bilabial trill :p
es bueno
Dont go
im pretty sure the r in tragic isn't an alveolar approsimant but the tr is a voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant affricate
This is one of the coolest vids I've watched in a while. Learned way too much.
2:58 That's Cranky from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic!
I actually found these videos while looking for inspiration for an FIM fanfic... I have four distinct cultures I'm working with:
PONIES - a fractious and wide-spread race. Ancient languages are based off of Norse (Earth Ponies), Gaelic (Pegasi), and Old French (Unicorns), but "Standard" is a heavily tinkered with English with a lot of loan words. (humans were involved. Nuff said.)
GRYPHONS - hearty mountain folk that are very much based on the kingdoms of Germany. Very High-Fantasy-Gothic.
CHANGELINGS - heavily inspired by ancient India. Changelings are shapeshifters, so their voiceboxes can make a HUGE variety of sounds. Though they intentionally try to keep their language as simple as possible, for trade if nothing else. (a bit like the video!)
THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE - A Pony kingdom stuck in a time loop for 1000 years. Their language is more... horsey. Chuffs, neighs, etc., are used as context clues, vocal punctuation, and verbal shorthand. They never encountered the humans that helped create Standard.
-
I'm not very far along, but I love the channel so far!
Fanfic conlangers unite 🤝
xidnaf please make a video on the phonetic inventory, i mean about what the categories mean, how all the letters are pronounced and why sometimes there is no letter for a combination
+Oliver Sasur You should check out the other linguistics videos, they might help you out somewhat.
goo.gl/KUng4y
VELAR TRILL IS POSSIBLE OLL UPLOAD A VIDEO OF ME DOING IT
@@parthiancapitalist2733 you're probs doing a uvular trill
Hold That L For Luigi I feel it where I make k sounds
Do you know how to say any uvular consonants? If not, it may end up feeling velar despite not being so.
I made up a own language called "Silgne" based on English, which is totally easy, because it's 100% phonetic and has the easy grammar rules of English... I spent over 2 years working on it, and finally it's kinda done :D
I would already, if I knew, if anyone would like to learn it xD
xD But where?
On UA-cam dummy xD
+atzurblau How is "Silgne" pronounced? /silgne/? also: [sil gne] or [silg ne]?
ist [ˈsɪlg nə]
English speakers don't pronounce "ts" ????????????
- leT'S go
- the tesTS are hard
- it geTS cold
- place your beTS
- saturated faTS
- I love caTS
- iT'S weird
- thaT'S not cool
- I read KaTE'S blog
- human righTS
- lighTS off
- loTS of videos
- she texTS him everyday
- United StaTES of America
- he beaTS his opponenTS
- the greatest hiTS of the 80's
...
They do, just generally not at the beginning of words.
Mr. Parabola Tsar
English speakers usually pronounce that ts as a z... same as Czar.
Most of those examples are consonants clusters not affricates. A good example of the ts affricate is in pizza. My dialects and the General Avery American dialect pronounce the first syllables ending in the ts affricate.
What about “Za” as in ua-cam.com/video/qkP2F7kWn7A/v-deo.html ?
Ah; having watched this playlist for the fifth time (and this video in particular) I finally have the phonetic inventory for my own language... Just commenting to say thanks for making this subject accessible : ) .
7:45 the uvular trill also is commonly realized as a fricative, and [x] is commonly uvular, so they work together for sound symmetry, being analyzed as [x] and [ɣ] or [χ] and [ʁ] or even [ʀ̥] and [ʀ], which I think is really neat
first!
YOU'RE ALIVE
+Xidnaf I tried to get a first on your video but failed miserably! :P
+Xidnaf Why are you so fat in this video?
+Lavandia Haha...ye but I love the "first" culture. Its a cool quirk unique to youtube. Plus, one must never block a Xidnaf in the wild.
+27danjel Hey. Don't be rude.
Dude, come on. All of those affricates are super easy. Way easier than a bilabial trill.
I can't pronounce /B/.
*MY LIPS ARE TOO DRY*
Way easier than most fricatives too
Bilabial trill is basically a b plus a rolled r?
@M Green That would be trilled P not B.
@@gunarsmiezis9321 P is an unvoiced B
Wow i'm so disappointed that so many people pronounce "Sunami" instead of "Tsunami"
Ronen Shachar
I 100% agree 👌
Lol in my country If you write the word "Tsunami"
People will pronounce it as "Chunami"
I'm on the other side of the Pacific from Japan. (ie: Canada.)
Tsunami is "Sunami," but my hometown Tsawwassen is "Tawwassen".
We're not even consistent with our inaccuracies.
Ronen Shachar
Thank You! people just keep making fun of me when i ask them to pronounce it differently.
They should appropriate the つ sound as "tu", because "su" is written す.
6:55 that comparison Xidnaf made is in my eyes rather immature, being that the Icelandic word for butt is "Rass"
xD
in arabic its head
@@unneccry2222 what ? I'm Arabic and that's not true ...
@@dollykumo2959 That could be something dialectal.
In Romanian "ras" means "shaven", or "shaving" as a noun (so shaving cream would be "gel de ras")
As a spanish speaker ... just damn keep pronunciation consistent and pronounce it as its written! it makes things a lot easier
In my high school Spanish class, they didn't tell us about all the allophones, lack of aspirated consonants etc. I was always complimented on my pronunciation. Then I tried talking to an actual Spanish speaker and they informed me how bad my accent was.
@@wintergray1221 I imagine. Spanish is very easy to pronounce because of that, probably the easiest romance language in that regard, but grammar...that's a whole different story because it's incredibly precise in conyugations.
@@balamstudiosWhy did you mention grammar, if they were talking about their problems with the pronunciation?
Also, Spanish is definitely not the easiest Romance language to pronounce, it's probably not even the easiest Ibero-Romance language.
Who the hell can pronounce the bilabial trill??? Even the uvular trill is easier than the bilabial... okay maybe I'm a little biased bc I'm from Germany
And why is [pf] so hard? It's just [p] and [f]. Okay us northern Germans don't pronounce /pf/ the way it should be pronounced but we can do it too! And last but not least: trills are awesome (except the bilabial one)!
Edit: well, that aged like milk... Why did I ever hate on [ʙ]? I love it and it's seriously easy to produce...
+Hammahamann Move your tongue like you are making a motorboat sound and then move your lips like you are pronouncing "Ba"
Niku pfff
Yay! I can’t pronounce/B/ very easily and i really like /pf/ :3
Ye, I'm not German and haven't ever learnt it, the 'pf' is not very hard, same with the 'ts'
Niku
Hallo
I loved this video! I lost it at "teet" instead of "teeth"! Probably because my family's form Dublin, but we're Southside, and not using th is more North? But my uncle's do... I don't know, but I really really enjoyed this video, love you and Xidnaf!
You brought up the point about you not being able to roll you "r"s and I have an idea.
There is a myth that Castillian Spanish has a "lisp", because one of the Spanish kings had one, and the nobles joined in, thus making a "lisp" seem aristocratic. Granted, this myth is debunked by a quick google search, but I think that it could be applied to your language, maybe...
King Edgar the Magnificent could not roll his "r"s, so the nobles and aristocrats joined in. This is why the posh people of Artifexia do not roll their "r"s, but the peasantry and the people in the far-off land of Xidnafia, generally do.
Either that or keep things the way they are, but I thought that may be a case if you were to talk about sound shifts, though that would only need to be brought up of you were to go as far as to talk about making a whole language family, and I undrestand that that is a VERY long way down the road.
/Rao/!
+Tsharli Foster (AdrenalineVan) I'm Spaniard and I don't know anything about a king having a lisp. If americans think we have a lisp, I think that's probably because in standart Spanish (the one they speak at the news) the "z" and "c" are indeed pronounced like the "th" in "thank you".
Homeworld-Gamers That's what I meant. It's not actually a lisp, but when a "th" sound is made and spelled like a "c" it may sound like one to foreigners, leaving room for jokes. Also, you probably haven't heard of the king because it is a myth.
@@SpadesNoir the fuck
@@adrenalinevan It's funny to me. It sounds like a lisp, but I've also heard Spaniards not have it either. I liken it to the Canadian "eh," where they may not register it but is obvious to an American.
@@AkaiAzul it's not universal throughout Spain and its also probably just a myth
I've literally learned more about language/lingual sound structure in this 10 minute video than I have than in five years of studying English at school.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. None the less, stupendous video!
@@gregoryford2532 Because in the UK, the study of the English Language is called English
Everyone remember:
Do whatever you want, there is an island tribe that only uses whistles for sounds. go crazy!
its just spanish
But whistles
apparently Xidnaf has never heard of pizza...
+Visemano I think we both just wanted to get rid of affricates at any cost.
Definitely the nerdiest thing I've seen in a while
+Felicia Follum Can't argue with that it's nerd^100 up here.
+Artifexian a googol nerd!
:)
+Felicia Follum
Two of my favorite channels doing a collab? Sign me up!
Honestly, as an English speaker, I was able to pronounce "ts" and "pf" when I first saw them, and it took me a while to realize things like "ch" or "j" were even affricates. I almost get not being able to roll your r's, but "pf" is like the easiest thing in the world.
Also, I think I do a glottal stop not only between vowels but also at the start of words that ought to begin with vowels, to the extent that I have to add a faint "h" to *not* have a glottal stop. Is that weird?
Why am I watching language videos ??? I don't understand anything what they're talking about, but i can't stop watching them!!
neighbors: sleeping
me at 3 am: hmm these sounds are neat let me pronounce them like 50 times
Aaaaaah a artiflexian-xidnaf collan!
*an
+Noam Tashma The best of conlangs!
+Artifexian I certainly enjoyed this - great collab! Personally, I'm partial to palatals; I imagine a lot of language nerds have some specific articulation they like to nerd out over ^^;;
Noam Tashma well apron was pronounced napron, but when people said a napron, they thought they were saying an apron. So a nartifexian maybe.
collab*
This is one of my favorite things ever!
Also, if you want to include just one more sound, the welsh "ll" sound is lovely.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_and_alveolar_lateral_fricatives
+Leslie Colton I like that sound...but it just doesn't fit with my idea of what this language will be. Perhaps my next language could be a lateral heavy language.
It only make sense to include schwa if the language is stress timed, mind. A syllable timed language will tend to lack lack a schwa in its vowel inventory.
Just wanted to say thank you for the videos. I've been on a binge of them lately and it's inspired me to start work on my own (I do have fantasy races but no languages to go with them :p).
Wow I speak German and exactly the moment the other guy asked „Does any language even have pf“ I thought of the German word Pferd even before you mentioned it! This was really weird. Also here other examples Pflaume(plum), Pflanze(plant), Pfiff(whistle), Pfeife(pipe) and Pfand(deposit)
I was thinking of pflanze
Sounds fascinating. Although I've never created a language in this way so I'll certainly have to watch this space.
>"I'm thinking some of these plosives need to go."
> only /p/ /b/ /t/ /d/ /k/ /g/ are on the chart
Ohhh no not like this
One of my conlangs, Arthean, has only 2 plosives; /b/ and /d/. I have reasons for this. /t/ and /p/ lenited into /θ/ and /f/ respectively, while /k/ and /g/ both turned into /h/ (alongside /x/ and /q/).
The conlang is ohian
@@sapphoenixthefirebird5063 /q/ is a plosive
My two favourite language nerds in one video! Nothing could be better at this point
+Nikolaj Lepka Glad you enjoyed, good sir.
Artifexian
I always do, kind sir
Like tell me about it
Wonderful video. Im making my first conlang with little to no prior experience in linguistics. I’ve been learning as much as I can as I’ve went along but it still tends to be hard, and i can say that your video, while still being technical and educational, was wayyyy more understandable and helped A TON. Even though i was using a different base language than you (Icelandic), what you instructed wasn't exclusive to English. Subbed =).
P.s. the uvular trill is my mortal enemy. I sound sickly.
Today I learned that I may be a very rary case who can pronounce all of these sounds with ease, that just an extra bonus for the language learners??
and today I realised that this can also be seen as a "wierd flex but ok..."
This is what I came up with for my language.
Vowels: a, i, u, o
Diphthongs: ai, au, ao, ia, iu, io, ua, ui, uo, oa, oi, ou
Consonants: m, n, ŋ, p, t, k, ʔ, f, v, θ, ð, s, z, ʒ, x, ɹ, j, ʙ, r, ʀ, l
Non-Pulmonic: ʘ, ǂ, ǁ
Affricates: t͜s, p͡s, k͜θ
I'm afraid I did to much adding and not enough subtracting, but maybe it's just a really primitive language.
+Zaylon Ballard Nice clicks
+DarkNES Yeah. I wanted it to sound exotic. Also, I tried to make them match with the consonants.
Vowels -
Monophthongs: e o a ɒ ə ɜ ɪ i ʊ u
Diphthongs: ɪə ʊə eɪ ɒɪ oʊ aʊ
Consonants -
Plosives: pʰ p tʰ t ʈʰ ʈ cʰ c kʰ k ʔ
Fricatives: ɸ β s z ʂ ʐ ç ʝ x ɣ
Nasals: m n ɳ ɲ ŋ
Approximants: β̞ ɹ ɻ j ɰ
Phonotactics -
1. (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)
2. Onset and Coda - All consonants
3. Nucleus - All vowels
4. Onset - Fricative + Plosive/Nasal + Approximant
5. Coda - (Obstruent + Sonorant) or (Fricative + Plosive)
There, it's a bit formulaic and English-friendly but I'm happy with it.
Zaylon Ballard, idk why r and R would coexist
Plosives: /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/
Fricatives: /f/, /s/, /ʃ/, /x/, /h/
Nasals: /m/, /n/
Approximants: /w/, /r/, /l/, /j/
Vowels: /i/, /y/, /e/, /ø/, /a/, /o/, /u/ (not counting long vowel versions)
This was rad. Are we going to continue working on this language? For example, creating a writing system or words and grammar?
+SeaBiscuit Yes, I will continue to grow this language through these video and in doing so show people how to conlang.
+Artifexian WOOOOOH!
Cool. I'm super pumped.
+Artifexian Just subscribed so I can see where this will go in future updates! I've been trying my hand at making conlangs for a few years now but haven't been able to get beyond the phonology stage (plus a rough outline of grammar without actually "plugging it in" so to speak). Hopefully this channel will help give me some guidance. Funny thing, one of my languages has the same vowel system that your's has right now! I'm always nervous when someone gets the same ideas as me because I don't want to seem like I'm stealing anything lol
Apparently, affricates are insanely easy for me to pronounce. Maybe it's because I've spent a LONG time practicing the "tl" from Aztec. I also LOVE the "ts" from German, it's one of my favorite sounds!
I can't roll my "R's" though, which really annoys me. I can flip them like no other. I LOVE learning how to pronounce other languages. I did it in chior growing up all the time.
Then take a look on some Slavic langauges, [ts] is so important we decided that 'c' will not stand for [k] or [s] but for [ts], but tough luck if you can't roll your r's, there isn't a Slavic langauge that doesn't have rolled r
I want to learn how to roll my "r's" so badly. Ever since seeing "That 70's Show" episode, I've always wanted to have someone roll their r's in my mouth while kissing my to see if it would help me learn how to do it...
This is the most stupid idea ever yet there's so much thought in it how did you manage to do that 😂😂😂😂
I'm referring to the "That's 70's Show" episode. That's the recurring joke of the episode, I just forget which one. So it wasn't my idea.
I didn't say it's your idea, what were the people who write that show even thinking
this is so cool!!!! I'm so glad these videos exist- I hope my worldbuilding gets better from now on xD
I’m an opera singer and voice teacher, and I miiiiiight be writing an article and lecture-recital about ‘u’.
I'm new to conlanging, but it seems interesting and I want to give it a try! Here's the phonetic inventory I came up with for my unnamed conlang. If someone would review it, that would be amazing!
Vowels: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /y/
Diphthongs: /ai/, /aʊ/, /ia/, /ie/, /io/, /iy/, /oi/
Consonants:
Nasals: /m/, /n/
Plosives: /p/, /b/, /t, /d/, /k/, /g/, /ʔ/
Fricatives: /f/, /v/, (I might switch those with /ɸ/ and /β/), /θ/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /ʁ/, /h/
Approximants: /j/, /w/
Flaps: /ɾ/ (I love this sound)
Trills: None, but watching this makes me want to add /B/ and maybe /r/. Thoughts?
Laterals: /l/ (Is this too similar to /ɾ/?)
Affricates: /tʃ/
Thanks for reading my comment! ^_^
+Matthew Late
Your conlang idea's phonology seems interesting. May I suggest using a retroflex or alveolar approximant instead over the alveolar flap? It keeps it a bit different from the lateral if you're worried about it sounding too similar. But other than that, everything seems pretty much in order! Good luck with the conlang! :)
+Brett Pittman I like the idea of the approximant, but I just love that flap! If anything I'll probably drop the lateral. Any thoughts on the bilabial fricatives?
+Matthew Late Quite an interesting phonology. If you want to add a trill, may I suggest the bilabial trill or retroflex trill? They give your language a unique sound. Also, would it be okay if you take a look at my constructed language? It is not a solid phonology, and is subject to change.
Vowels: /a/, /e/, /ɪ/, /o/, /u/, /a:/, /e:/, /ɪ:/, /o:/, /u:/, /a::/, /e::/, /ɪ::/, /o::/, /u::/ (written as a, e, i, o, u, y, á, é, í, ó, ú, â, ê, î, ô, û (/e:/ is also written as )
Diphthongs: /aɪ̯/, /e͡ɪ/, /u͡ɪ/, /a͡ʊ/, /o͡e/
Consonants:
Nasals: /m/, /n̪ˠ/ (hard), /nʲ/ (soft), /n/, /ŋ/
Plosives: /p/, /b/, /t̪ˠ/ (hard), /d̪ˠ/ (hard), /tʲ/ (soft), /dʲ/ (soft), /t/, /d/, /k/
Fricatives: /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /s/, /ʃ/, /x/, /h/
Taps: /ɾˠ/ (hard), /ɾʲ/ (soft), /ɾ/
Approximants: /l/, /j/, /w/
Notes: and have merged into /ɪ/, where y used to be /y/. is always unmarked. The laterals /l̪ˠ/ and /lʲ/ have been lost (though I am considering bringing them back).
If you could review it, that would be great!
+Aar Pug Well, I'm certainly not the best person to ask, because I have absolutely no experience in linguistics, but I'll do my best!
What's the difference between /t̪ˠ/, /tʲ/, and /t/? I know that the bracket thing makes it dental, but what do the little /j/ and /ɣ/ do?
I'm assuming the colons indicate vowel length. That's a cool idea.
It seems strange to me that you have/k/ but not /g/. That said, my conlang has /θ/ and not /ð/, so it'll probably work.
I like that flap! Once again, not sure about the diacritics, but any conlang with /ɾ/ is an instawin in my book!
Sorry I can't do a better job, but maybe someone with more experience will come along and look at this too. :)
+Matthew Late +Matthew Late +Matthew Late +Matthew Late Thanks for the review! The hard consonants indicate velarization, the soft ones indicate labialization, and the plain ones are standard IPA. Also, there is a /g/, I forgot to write it though :(. Also, a small sample, the numerals from one to twelve:
man
tûn
nîn
canar
lepan
enués
otep
toloc
netev
ceic
ceicman
ceictûn
If you want to talk more, tell me :)
Huh... makes me want to go back and make a conlang for a story I'm writing, instead of just pointing out "they're using a different language". Might make naming things more consistent.
+109Rage I fully endorse this plan! You don't even need to build a full on language just a naming language.
Artifexian What would that entail? Deciding on sounds, and I'm guessing words, but not really sure beyond that. I imagine I wouldn't need too much of a grammar or anything.
+109Rage Ye, so a naming language would require a phonology and (some) words but little to no grammar. Basically, you'd develop the language to the point where you can name things on a world map but not beyond that.
Artifexian Interesting. Guess I'll look at things I've already named in my world, maybe try to build the phonology from that (and/or retcon some of the names) and go from there.
For the made-up language that I'm trying to design, for a people that managed to "thrive" amidst a war-torn environment where time and clear communication were of the essence, I've set a few goals:
- The words would need to be pronounceable with as few syllables as possible, so that sentences could be spoken within as little time as possible. Ideally, most words could be pronounced with but a single syllable. Thus, I'm willing to enlarge the language's alphabet in order to accommodate a wider variety of vowels and consonants, as well as the addition of more exotic things, like trills (lots of them!), glottal stops, vowel tones (like what Mandarin Chinese uses), and even click consonants.
- The words would need to be easily audible, even in a noisy environment, and/or among the hard-of-hearing. Thus, there'd be no distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants like "d" and "t", "g" and "k", "ch" and "j", "f" and "v", and "s" and "z" to name a few. There may also be no distinction between nasal sounds like "m" and "n" even! Also, the amount of vowels, consonants, and tones would need to be kept very distinct, so caught-cot dilemmas would need to be avoided.
- The spelling of words would need to be strictly accurate in terms of pronunciation, so as to be easy to learn. So, a phonetic writing system could suffice, which could be either an alphabet or an abugida (although given the importance of tone, and how commonly syllables within a word would be structured, I'm leaning more towards an abugida).
- An alternate logographic writing system could be developed to provide a common basis of cross-linguistic understanding, even if they have different words for the same thing, such as "trash" and "garbage". (See Blissymbols as an example of this.)
Here's what I'd like to use in my own made-up language:
- 10 vowels with their own letters, specifically "a" as in "flan", "ah" as in "flat", "au" as in "frond" (try saying it in a deeper French accent to avoid the caught-cot dilemma), "eh" as in "fed", "ee" as in "feet", "ih" as in "fit", "uh" as in "fun", "o" as in "phone", "oo" as in "foot", and "u" as in "flu".
- Diphthongs and triphthongs galore! Of course, none of them would be written with their own letters, but would be made from a permutation of the 10 vowels, resulting in such diphthongs as "ae" as in "blade", "eeah" as in "fiat", and "eeau" as in "yaw", as well as such triphthongs as "eeaho" as in "meow", or "oae" as in "sway".
- 5 tones for the vowels: a flat tone, a rising tone, a falling tone, a rising then falling tone, and a falling then rising tone.
- As for the consonants, as I mentioned before, I'd like for the language to make no distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants, so "p" and "b" would be used interchangeably, and would use the same letter. The same would go with "d" and "t", both versions of "th" (as in "thin" and "this"), "g" and "k", "s" and "z", "sh" and "zh", "ch" and "j", and "f" and "v". There would also be no distinction between "m" and "n", or "q" and "k", and consonants such as "w" as in "won", or "y" as in "yes" can be done away with since they sound so similar to "o" as in "phone", and "ee" as in "feet" respectively. The "l" and "r" sounds would remain unchanged.
- With regards to the addition of more exotic consonants, the "kh" sound, as in "loch", is a given, as would be the addition of a plosive glottal to separate vowel sounds, though it could be used interchangeably with a "h" sound. There would also be an alveolar lateral fricative "sth" sound added in, which would sound like a combination of the "sh" and "th" sounds. Perhaps most unusual would be the addition of about 8 non-pulmonic consonants, specifically a kissing sound, a lip-smacking sound (as in expressing an eagerness to eat), a popping sound, a raspberry sound, and 4 different clicking sounds (ranging from the "tsk tsk" sound to the "clop clop" sound).
- Trills galore! In addition to the "bb" and "rr" trills, there could be "tt", "thth", "kk", "ss", "shsh", "chch", "ff", "khkh", "sthsth", "hh", and "ll" sounds. Like with the diphthongs and triphthongs, they wouldn't have their own letters, but would instead be expressed in writing by having two of the same untrilled letter together. Sadly, I didn't think that you could possibly trill with nasal stops like "m" or "n", so they were omitted as well.
The resulting phonetic alphabet would not be an alphabet at all, but rather, would be an abugida, that would have 10 vowels with 5 tones; 14 pulmonic consonants, each with a trilling variant (except for the "m"/"n" sound); and 8 non-pulmonic consonants, for a total of just 32 letters in the alphabet. However, from those 10 vowels could come up to 90 diphthongs, and up to 810 triphthongs! Multiply all of the monophthongs, diphthongs, and triphthongs by the 5 tones, and you get 4550!
In this particular abugida, each syllable would begin with a consonant (either a non-pulmonic consonant, non-trilled pulmonic consonant, or trilled pulmonic consonant), have up to 3 vowels chained after that syllable, and end with another consonant, with a line or wave crossing over the syllable in order to determine that syllable's tone. When combined with any of the 35 possible consonants (the aforementioned 14 pulmonic consonants, 13 of which may or may not be trilled, plus the 8 non-pulmonic consonants) that would appear before and after the vowels, and you could get up to 5,573,750 possible single-syllable words! And I didn't even need to distinguish between voiced and unvoiced consonants!
I doubt that any modern-day language would even need that many different words in their vocabulary, but perhaps, like with Spanish, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs could be altered in some fashion? I might also be able to do away with the tones, to get a language that can be better spoken in whispers, while still possibly having a single-syllable word for just about anything conceivable.
Congratulations. You have just created Hungarian.
can you please provide IPA for the sounds?
for some reason I cracked up bad after the uvular trill hahahahh thank you so much
Although ive found that when you only say a vowel, you say 'u', because when a word starts with a vowel it uses the glottal stop before and vice versa
Sillyto delete the affricate series because /pf/ is so “difficult”, but the argument is particularly ridiculous for /ts/. [ts] is way more common than people consider, just check the frequency in English of the word pizza in food related contexts for people age < 40 or, well, anything in -t in the plural. If anything, only a mild adjustment and practice session would be required to get someone to pronounce it easily in onsets as they're already produced V_#, and V_V.
in the case of V_V they are in different syllables /mit.su.bi.ʃi/
@3:36 [ˈpi.tsɐ] or [ˈpit.sɐ]
Ah, the uvular trill...
I never liked that sound, even though it's featured in my mother tongue. Weird, eh?
That was a very useful video; "how to choose sounds for a conlang?" is a question that's always bothered me, and probably other conlanger-wannabes as well.
+Ysgramornorris I have to ask what your mother tongue is?
ArchaïqueDoes Mapping
French, parisian dialect.
+Ysgramornorris From what I've seen, generally you don't want to spend too much time on it, the time spent during this video is probably all you want to spend unless you want to create a phonological history.
+Trevyn Case
It's not really a matter of time. I often find myself unable to decide what sounds I want, and how I "should" go about choosing sounds. How do you go from "I want my language to sound roughly like this" to "I'll plug this and that phoneme in" is the real problem.
+Ysgramornorris Personnellement, je le prononce plus comme une fricative, et non comme une roulée. (Autrement dit, je prononce mes r [ʁ] et non [ʀ])
1:21 Actually, Arabic has 4 vowels, a, i, u, and α, but α is nothing but a form of a that comes after certain letters.
Fun video! When I was a teenager my little sister taught me how to roll my Rs. She had me walk around all day saying "ada" (sounded like "uh-DUH") over and over. Started on a Friday and by Sunday afternoon, the D in the middle there started motorboating into "uh-DRRRRRRAH" and suddenly I was trilling my Rs. I have recommended it to anyone I meet who can't trill their Rs ever since.
so, I started a conlang and decided to just use 97% of the English Phonetic Alphabet because I thought it would be easier for me. I also didn't know how the IPA worked so that didn't help. And I designed 90% the writing system for it already and I'm thinking I should do a mass rework. I think I'll keep the non-alphabetical symbols like the possessive symbol and the questioning symbol which are both said as actual (monosyllabic) words. I'm glad I found your channel Artifexian.
So, I’m an absolute beginner at conlangs (and also very dyslexic). And I now absolutely bugger all about language.
I would really like to get into it and develop my own, but while these videos are absolutely excellent, I’m really struggling with keeping up with all of these terms and symbols for sounds and stuff, and i just feel like… everyone already knows what it all means/refers to and I don’t 🙃
I sorta feels like when, you’re trying to teach your grandma how do click on something on a computer, but she doesn’t even know what the mouse is? Only it’s me. I’m grandma.
Do you have any videos or recommended resources that go over the absolute basics of wth everything is, like terms etc?
😅
Artifexian has a conlang playlist that goes over all the terminology and stuff before getting to this point. U should check it out :p
Same. Ik starting with choosing your language's sounds is the way to go, but the terms are honestly just,, a struggle. (you worded it really well already, so i just copied your phrasing, lol). Tho i'll take a look at the playlist @boredishfish2717 reccomended.
of course it's /tsunami/! how else would you say it?
Sunami
shoe-nami
LvLupXD Okay.
I think that my speaking Hebrew (which has a _ts_ africate, צ,) makes it easier for me to say \ts\.
Chunami
[t͡su.na.mi] maybe?
Alveolar approximants are very interesting!
Also, is the bilabial trill really that easy? I find that I have to kinda "co-articulate" it with my tongue between my teeth, which I don't think is correct.
+rzeka I think so. It's that brrrr sound babies make when they flap their lips together. Or the sound we make to imitate tractor engines. Or (kinda) the way we flap our lips together when we are exhausted - you know for you deeply inhaled.
When producing the bilabial trill the tongue should not be in between the teeth. It should be lying in a relaxed neutral position in the mouth.
Artifexian I thought so. I can make the sound in isolation, but in the middle of a word it just comes out as a bilabial fricative, unless I stick my tongue between my teeth. I guess I'll just practice more.
Pinkie should be facing Edgar rather than Xidnaf, given that it was him that called her a horse.
I recently got back into trying to make a conlang, and by complete coincidence picked out almost the exact same vowel inventory as this, but with *u* rather than *o*
it's so refreshing to hear a non-imperative "if you think i earned it, hit the subscribe button"
8:26 I am a General American speaker, but I can pronounce /bva/, /pfa/, /tsa/, and most affricates that use English sounds.
Oh yeah, I can do those too, pretty easily. It's actually funny that I see your reply now, because I just learnt how to make the /x/ and /γ/ sounds properly.
Ts is impossible to pronounce. It just auto.ativally turns into whatever sound z in Italian stands for if spoken quickly.
@@keegster7167 Any tips on the /γ/? I have tried and can only produce a sound like I'm being strangled. 🙁
Can somebody explain to me why the IPA thinks the velar trill is impossible?
Because in this place of articulation nothing can vibrate.
I'm extremely minimal and just made my language a set of ways you are to arrange words. Now that I think about it it's more of a code
Dude u earned a subscriber!
Don't you worry - I'm a native speaker of Polish but I'm unable to pronounce the alveolar-trilly 'R' as well ;___;
I loove this video!
+Maru Mar Super! Glad you enjoyed. :)
Plenty of us can't say R, huh
are you able to pronuonce the wierd B?
how would you write the glottal stop "ʔ" ?as it's only between vowels, should you write it as a letter, or as a diacritic around the second vowel? would /ao/ be written "aʔo" (or aho" or "aö" (or any other way)?
Also, how shoud you pronounce "aoi"? as /aʔoʔi/ , /aʔoi/, /aoʔi/ or even a strange /ai/ diphthong , with a glide that passes by the sound /o/ (is that even possible Oo)
+Baconaro
It could be written any number of ways, from an Apostrophe " ' ", an ‘okina " ‘ ", to a Hyphen "-", to the actual Glottal Stop letter "Ɂ ɂ", to even weirder options, like "7", à la Squamish, or "q", à la Maltese. If it's a diacritic, a circumflex could be used over the second letter. Give it a bit of a Filipino orthographic flavor. My personal favorite is the ‘okina, but that's just me.
I suspect there would be stress over either the "_o_" or the "_i_" to indicate whether or not it's /aoʔi/ or /aʔoi/. If I were writing this, I'd have it be something like a rounded version of "_ai_", perhaps as /ɶy/ or something, or a more-closed version of "_ao_", like "_æʊ". Additionally, the final "_i_" could become a "_j_" in scenarios like this, making it /aoj/ or something, or perhaps the "_o_" could become like a "_w_", and make it /awi/.
+Baconaro I like what Na'vi does: the apostrophe represents the glottal stop. So, "ta", "ta'a", "ta'a'a" etc. Don't know if I'll allow triphthongs but if I do "aoi" would simply be /aoi/.
2 months later: When will we get the next video?
in 2 years i guess?
SO, as someone who lives in a very multi-lingual country, I can pronounce all of the letters on this list after just one or two tries. Rolling my Rs, that voiceless vealer fricative sound symbolised as x, the ts sound, the pf sound. Actually, the only language sounds I CAN'T replicate easily, aren't on this particular type of list! I guess I kind of assumed everyone could pronounce these, but now that I know I'm special, I am most chuffed.
alongside piraha, nuxalk from british columbia also has a three vowel system with /o/, which descends from proto-salishans four vowel system with /a/, /i/, /u/, and /ə/, of which both are remarkably similar to this.
am i the only one that wants to hear their language spoken just to see what they actually did?
2:25 says /əʊ/, writes ”oʊ”
Xidnaf based central diphthong
5:50
English already has an unvoiced w: "wh" as in whale = \hwāl\, when = \hwen\, what = \hwət\, etc.
+Levi “When will we want wantons” Quickburger5000 I think thats dialect dependant.
Artifexian True. I didn't start doing it until a few months ago when (\hwen\) I saw it in the dictionary's pronunciation key.
I'm goin' thru de playlists an' I coul'n't stop laughin' here. Aye'd love it if yoo two did more collabs tugeva. Heck, dey don' ev'n need t' be on-a serious topic!
YEA! I absolutely love that the ship had the number 1729. It is a personal favorite of mine.
I think 420 might be my favorite integer, but not for any if the drug or birthday reasons. 420 is the smallest number divisible by all the natural numbers:. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7.
Remove divisibility by 7 and we drop to 60. We got divisibility by 6 for free from 2 and 3. So the next such distinct number down, the smallest natural number divisible by 1, 2, 3, & 4 is 12.
I love that easy divisibility is built into our system for denoting time.
Doesn’t English have the /t͡s/ sound in the word “rats”?
Technically a consonant cluster but yeah pretty much.
different as you have a vowel before the t making it easier to say
Sort of, but only at the end of syllables. Putting it at the beginning is weird for English speakers. Same issue for "ng". We use other language sounds, just not as part of language. Japanese "f" is the sound we make when blowing out a match. The first consonant of "Xhosa" is the sound we use to tell a horse to go. And so on.
It’s on of those weird things where we only have it as a coda sound. Sorta like “ng”
When you are a male german conlanger:
*CONLANGERMAN*
Bruh
I was going to say that alveolar trills are overrated and that uvular trills are where its at! Thank god that's where we ended up in the video
By the way, English native speakers, is saying /ts/ really that difficult?
+Maxben L All depends on dialect really.
Isn't ts found In a whole lot of words? Like cats, bats, Mitsubishi, and outside?
And pizza and Nazi also are examples, also any plural of a word ending in -ist
I think the problem is initial TS for most people who struggle with it, as it occurs in the middle and end of thousands of native English words
It is completely personal. I can say t͡s and ʙ and x but nobody else in my family can.
اهم شىئ فى اللغة مطابقة الكتابة بالنطق بمعنى اللى ننطقه هو بس اللى نكتبه ولا ننطق شئ لا يكتب
6:46 we need this on a shirt
Our language uses 11 vowels
I like all the ponies you sneak in there.
pferd
@Tommy Hopps ? What do you mean? I wrote it like that. Pls dont tell me its a capital letter thing.
There was just one at pferd
P, T, K, are the coolest sounds. UNVOICED PLOSIVES FOR THE WIN
+CerealKillerOats Seconded!
Artifexian haha hey thanks for replying! I love your videos!
I'm somewhat of a pharngeal plosive guy myself
I’m pretty sure most English speakers already know how to pronounce “ts.” It’s literally everywhere. There were two in those 2 previous sentences, the c in pronounce and the ts in it’s
Clusters ≠ affricates
Everyone: Fuck the bilabial trill, none of my homies can pronounce the bilabial trill
Me, imitating a motor vehicle: 🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️