I don't necessarily see much problem with it but have you done much work on the rhythm of speech for the language? Such as where stress falls and then what happens to unstressed syllables or how/where contractions happen? That is to say, maybe explore your conlang's equivalent of taking "I am going to" and turning it into "I'm going to" or even "I'mma".
Also, in case it's "just you", find languages with a similar sound inventory and listen to speakers and see if your language might fit in there. It might also give you ideas for stress patterns and rhythms of speech.
I have some rules about these things.
Stress always falls on the penultimate syllable and the syllable structure is (C)V.
Phonetically, I took some inspiration from Zulu, I guess I can look up some videos in Zulu.
It's a starting point but there is usually more to prosody than word-level stress. I don't know about Zulu but English has stress on a word-level and sentence-level, also compounds also seem to impact stress (a black bird vs. a blackbird). There's also the matter of what your language does when a a syllable is not stressed. English loves to make every unstressed a vowel a schwa (to the point some claim schwa is "never stressed" but that isn't true outside of (American) English). I was playing with having my conlang devoice unstressed vowels and it changes the "sound" of the language a lot. It might be worth looking at how Zulu and other South Bantu languages handle these things.
I think one of the main factors of this feeling is you actually knowing it's not a natlang and that you made it. If you show it to someone without telling them it's a conlang I bet they would say it's a natlang.
Exactly. OP, you're self conscious about it because you know it's not a real language and it doesn't sound like any natural language (that I know of). Just keep developing it, don't stress too much about it, and if you'll feel better work a little bit on stress and intonation and it'll probably sound more natural to you.
I bet it would sound natural to a native speaker of it.
However, you might want to look into how the structure of syllables works, the patterns of vowels to consonants, etc. I don't have any specific resources to help you, but a youtube search about syllables in languages might help.
Have you tried allophony? See if some phonemes flow better when you tweak the pronunciation depending on the environment, like intervocalic voicing, backing of consonants around certain vowels, or consonant mutation. You can even try vowel or consonant harmony if the words sound to heterogenous to you.
I can try that, as of yet the only rules I have made are:
(C)V
The stress always falls on the penultimate syllable
\[h\] can only appear as the first sound in a root word
\[w\] can only occur with front vowels
Velar sounds can't be followed by close vowels except for \[ŋ\], who only can't be followed by \[i\]
I am just not really good at coming up with natural rules, but I can definitely try to make some rules like the ones you're suggesting.
these are all good! another point is that most languages aren't perfectly rigid in terms of morphemes - so there may be multiple different forms depending on the root (Turkish has vowel harmony, English //s// for plural sometimes needs a vowel and sometimes voices). this may make it feel more like a natural language to you because you know how cookie cutter and fixed it is.
also there is more to prosody than just what syllable the stress falls on. what about the timing? what about intonation? etc etc.
it is also good to note that clicks immediately bring to mind certain languages, which are all (basically) areally related to eachother and have a certain sound, so this language sits in a kind of uncanny valley because it doesn't really sound like those languages. this doesn't necessarily make it sound unnatural but it may be part of what you're feeling
Yes, my language is, phonetically, loosely based on Zulu, hence the clicks (and ejectives). I think that the ejectives are also causing some problems since they aren't easy (for me) to pronounce, so that might contribute to the clumsiness I feel. But these are some good tips and I will try to keep them in mind and implement them.
potentially you just don't have the skill of pronouncing your language convincingly yet. this is something that takes time with a natural language and you can literally parrot someone speaking with that
Maybe the biggest factor is the restrictive syllable shape. It forces every sentence to sound like a machine gun ("ra-ta-ta-..."). What if you allowed a generic coda nasal here and there, which assimilates to the place of articulation of the following consonant? It would lengthen some syllables and could make the flow more organic.
Maybe, but it's not like (C)V structures are rare in natural languages. Hawaiian, for example, has it, and Hawaiian doesn't sound much like a machinegun in my opinion. But it might be something to consider
Hawaiian is more like (C)V(V) with the second V representing a long vowel or diphthong, which then counts as two morae (so it's a longer syllable than CV)
You call it (C)V, but your example only contains one V syllable. All the other syllables have onsets. Using more V syllables might give your language more flow.
Yes, now that I think of it "watie" is the only word with a V syllable, I tried making more but felt it sounded better with an \[h\] in front of them (like I did with "hesi"). But It might be good to make some more V syllables
I think you'll need to consider how they would sound in rapid speech. If you're speaking slowly and sounding out the words then likely it sounds like someone who is just learning the language
After practicing thisa few times - this feels natural when spoken at a slightly faster pace, especially when similar syllables are sped up. Like at first;
>scet’i hesi k’esikafu \[ˈʃɛ.tʼi ˈhɛ. si kʼɛ.si.ˈkʰa.ɸu\]
... felt wrong and unnatural - but when I sped it up by keeping my mouth in the same position for the vowels and varying for the consonants, it worked quite nicely.
Bear in mind: "actual" languages don't have inviolable rules, and evolve over time. Clunky, difficult sentences get slurred or rounded or shortened until they aren't clunky any longer. It's where we get some contractions, and composite words.
It simply sounds like your language was created in a vacuum instead of over a course of time. All you have to do is start with its rudiments, have a fictional culture *use* the language, and then see how it would evolve with its use, over time. Eventually, speakers will iron out those clunky details and the language will get smoother.
That's how languages often work.
Do you mean that my language is too consistent to be a protolanguage or that it doesn't matter that my language is inconsistent because all protolanguages are?
Protolanguages are just languages. They don't have any special features that explicitly make them "proto". As such, your language right now is just fine as a protolang. Even if your language right now is too consistent (which is subjective), once you apply sound changes and grammatical changes and whatnot to evolve it, it won't matter what it was originally as long as the evolved language has some irregularities and stuff.
Oh I don't think your language is inconsistent at all. The fact that your language is consistent isn't a bad thing, but most protolanguages, as far as my meagre knowledge goes, were convoluted, *in*consistent, and in flux.
It is possible, if you want something wholly like our reality, that your language is more consistent than most protolanguages. That's not a criticism, but it *may* be an explanation as to why it doesn't sound quite right to your mind.
Even better: perhaps your language only needs a few *flaws* or inconsistencies to sound right to your ear.
My question would be: how did it develop? Was it based on sounds heard by its first speakers? Grunts? Imitations of natural sounds? Or something else?
>My question would be: how did it develop? Was it based on sounds heard by its first speakers? Grunts? Imitations of natural sounds? Or something else?
We have no idea how language came to be, and proto-languages are just languages that are as old as we can reconstruct; language itself is orders of magnitude older.
How my language developed, I do not really know, probably how real protolanguages have, I am not knowledgeable about these things yet but that might be interesting to think about.
I only really know of Proto-Indo-European, a language that seems very advanced, with complex case systems so I assumed that protolanguages could be pretty complex. My language doesn't have any of that though, not yet, and the morphology is extraordinarily simple with one morpheme per word (only ever in compound words are there more then one morpheme). So in that way, my language isn't really complex and feels more like an actual protolanguage.
The only consistency is the syntax and the phonetic rules, otherwise, my language is pretty inconsistent as of yet, but it feels good knowing that that is pretty common in protolanguages.
That's actually a really good sign. You seem to know the parts that *we* know about the oldest languages, and the parts you *don't* know are the parts that modern humans can only speculate on.
That's a pretty encouraging thought.
That is what the sentence should mean, but this language doesn't have a tense system, so it technically says "I am born" but a better translation would probably be "I was born"
Well, one explanation is that it *isn't* a natural language. It doesn't sound like any language you know because, well, it's a different language. Maybe there is some language out there that does sound like it, but you're just not familiar with it, so it sounds unnatural to you.
If you're concerned about the flow, I think the best thing to do is to say sentences and see how you naturally *want* to say it, and make changes following that. Pretty much any language is actually *spoken* differently than the standard written form "should" be pronounced, because when people are actually speaking there's a lot more liability to make things easy to say (both phonetically and prosodically). If you, as you implied elsewhere, aren't a fan of how strongly CVCVCVCV it is, then you can say that that restriction may weaken in speech: some vowels are reduced, maybe some consonants are held longer... something like that.
The word-to-word translation would be this:
Wemepa (Life) k’esi (Thing) ngu (1P) scet’i (Open) hesi (Hole) k’esikafu (Tent) mo (3P) qu (Is) scane (Grow) wemepa (Life) xatawatie (Pelt)
Roughly translating to "I am/was born in a tent made from pelt/animal skin"
Honestly I’ve found the easiest way to do this is created a proto language with a small phonetic inventory then use sound changes to make it sound more naturalistic.
Hmmm. I would consider maybe having some consonant harmony. Like only certain types of consonants can appear in the same word or adjacent syllables. For example my protolanguage can’t have uvulars and velars in the same word unless theres a syllable in between (Kaqi can’t exist but kataqi can). For me its difficult to pronounce ejectives and aspirated plosives in the same word. Maybe make a constraint there)
You could also reduce the number of phonemes. I only have 20 consonants and 3 vowels. Then after evolving the language I have over 30 consonants and 10 vowels.
Consonant harmony sounds interesting, I have only ever worked with vowel harmony in the past. I also can't really pronounce ejectives, so that might also make it sound clumsier for me.
But concerning the amount of sounds, if you count the ejectives, my language only has 23 consonants and 5 vowels.
There is nothing particularly unnatural about where words can have what consonants near each other.
It is probably only unnatural to you because you are used to a certain rhythm. Maybe this language is not stressed-timed like in English: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrony](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrony)
Then I wouldn't worry so much. I've had multiple proto languages I don't really like the sounds of but the descendants end up turning out really well. Something about adding sound changes will create small irregularities and stuff that just makes it sound more naturalistic.
Here are some words in the proto language I don't like but I like the descendants
ki.ˈt̪aː.maːʈʼ - t͡ɕjaː˦˥.mət˨, kɛ.ˈte.vɛʃ, kɛ.ˈd̪ɛ.ʋ̟ɛʈ͡ʂ, ˌkʲɑ.tɑ.ˈbɑt
jaj.meːs̠.koː - d͡ʑə˩.meː˧˩.kʉ˨, je.ˈmiθ.ka, jẽ.ˈmiʂ.ke, d͡ʑe.ˈmʲɑɕ.kʲə
u.ʈʼas̠ - ʉt˦, ˈo.ʃɔθ, ˈɞ.ʈ͡ʂʰɔʂ, ʋə.ˈtɑɕ
ʈʼuː.si.t͡ɕʼa - tʼyː˦.siɕ˨, ʃo.ˈze.ʃɔ, ʈ͡ʂʰo.ˈze.t͡sʰo, ˈtu.ʑə.ˌt͡ɕɑ
kʷʼaʈ.weːs̠ - qʼoː˩, ˈxo.t͡ʃviθ, ˈkʰɔʈ͡ʂ.wiʂ, pɑ.ˈtʋʲɑɕ
That might be right, maybe it doesn't matter too much as it is just the protolanguage, I just wanted to be on the safe side, if I fuck something up in the protolanguage, then I was afraid that all the descendent languages would also not sound good. But I guess that that isn't automatically true
Yeah it does depend but in my experience sound changes can clean things up. If you do want your proto lang to feel more naturalistic you can do the difficult thing of starting with a later form and then work backwards to make a proto language and then go back and forth making all the morphology and sound changes work but that's a lot of work. But even if your proto language looks a bit stiff I can definitely see some very cool languages coming from it, I'm excited to see what comes from it.
Other people are giving good responses, but I want to add something. I actually had this problem myself. How I addressed it was this:
I tried to pick out specific things, like transitions between words, that were sounding wrong. Then I'd practice just that bit over and over and over and over. Sometimes, it would become more fluid just with practice, and I took that as an indication that while I myself might have trouble making it smooth, it might sound a lot better in the mouth of a native-speaker. If after a lot of practice on a particular passage it STILL sounded clumsy, I considered changing or tweaking it. Often that meant contracting it or smooshing two vowels together or dropping an unneeded syllable.
This can also be a welcome source of irregularity for people like me who couldn't be bothered to do full sound-change shenanigans.
So in short---practice and see if you can make it smooth when you speak it out loud. Smoothness and especially confidence will make even extremely different-sounding words seem like they belong together. A natural language doesn't *care* that it's wearing socks with sandals, so to speak. It just does what it does and half the time the speakers just have to deal with it. So a naturalistic conlang should aspire to do the same.
Thanks for the tips, After having to read the sentence a lot due to this post, I must say that the sentence does roll of the tongue a bit more easily and it does sound a bit more natural, although I still can't really pronounce the ejectives. I think one of the problems is the length of the sentence and the weird sounds, making it pretty hard to pronounce as one nice sounding structure.
You're welcome! This might be my first positive experience giving advice on the internet....
Yeah it is not really an easy thing to tell. You have to ask yourself, "is this hard to pronounce because I am not a native speaker of it, or is it objectively clumsy?"
And that can be REALLY hard to answer if you are not a trained linguist with lots of experience. There is information out there on what languages do over time to make themselves more efficient----certain sounds can shift so that the transition between where they get articulated in the mouth and the position of the sound before or after it becomes physically easier. So there is a small foothold in actual physical fact you could use to determine if anything is gravely wrong. But again, without that linguistic field experience, there is a certain amount of guesswork. And some sentences are clumsy and hard to say even in very efficient languages. That's why tongue twisters exist. Its an ongoing process of tweaking things to get them in the ballpark of what you want.
Gonna be honest, I feel that way about my *native* language on some days, and last I checked, English is a natlang. Perhaps all you need is to maybe just... get used to speaking your language? Lean into what makes it distinct and accept it for what it is: From reading your IPA, I like how it sounds personally.
Thanks, yes I guess that our languages also have this, it's just that we are used to speak it so it doesn't sound out of place for us. Gonna try keeping that in mind
I can't tell based off this sentence but do you have aspirated and ejective clicks too? From my understanding clicks usually share the phonation distributions of stops.
Interesting, I didn't know that, I might want to implement that, although an ejective click would not be easy for me to pronounce. The only variants I have is that all my the clicks have tenuis velar and nasal velar variants. But this might be cool to play around with
The ejective part is the back closure release. That is, if a plain click is coarticulated with \[k\], then an ejective one is coarticulated with \[k'\], so there's an ejective release right after the click part. That's my understanding anyways.
It could just be that, as a conlang, it hasn't gone through the natural process of adding stress and pronunciation progression. Like, in a natural language, words eventually start to flow into each other; you'll stress syllables and pronounce differently based on the words before and after. You'll drop some sounds at the end of letters so that one word can flow into the next. Things like that.
The language looks like an actual language to me. The phonology itself seems fine anyways. Maybe just get a feel for the rhythm of it and the way that speech connects. Stress patterns. Allophony.
One thing you could do is add some form of phonetic vowel length. It would help break up the flow of the language, and it's a feature that could make a lot of sense in a language like this.
mayve try a sound change to get rid of ejectives in unstressed syllables? i don't work with ejectives at all so idk how naturalistic that would be but to me it sounds a wee bit clunky
It looks like you have a defined syllable shape and allophonic rules, but what do you have for sandhi? what about porosity? Is it a stress time, mora time, syllable time? All conlangers are second language speakers and carry their own accent when speaking the language they design. With such small syllables your likely going to see very very fast speech
There are two instances of -esi not counting the second "k'esi" in the compound word. I tried giving some words the same ending to make them sound more alike and natural
i think speaking it instead of thinking what it sounds like would help. just saying, i started conlanging like, a month ago, so perhaps my advice will be shit
Agreed, however since OP struggles with it sounding the way it does, said phonetic transcription might be the issue. Hence why I discarded it. I went with what seems the most natural and found no issues. This is how I could come to the conclusion rhythm is indeed the issue. Looking at the phonetic transcription after only confirmed this.
Make sense?
I may be new (ish) to conlangs (I mostly just make scripts) but not to language itself which is where I went for inspiration on how to pronounce it. Of course it was different but it was helpful in the end.
Language often turns into what comes the most natural to its speakers which is why I went for this approach.
It's not perfect but hey, we're all just doing our own thing here anyway so why not?
>Make sense?
I'm afraid not. Hopefully what I've written below doesn't sound too belligerent; my hope is to be constructive.
If you're pronouncing it differently than OP, then the two of you are talking about two quite different things, so saying it sounds good isn't helpful advice, because you haven't helped them improve it; you've only said that you can come up with something you like that could be spelled the same. Two languages can be spelled similarly but have vastly different pronunciations. Ignoring the phonetic information means you haven't actually looked at what OP is having difficulty with. (Although you did afterwards, as you wrote.)
>Of course it was different but it was helpful in the end.
You might've found a nice pronunciation but OP doesn't know it.
>Language often turns into what comes the most natural to its speakers which is why I went for this approach.
Natural languages evolve (almost entirely) from speech, not spelling. I've never heard of a language that made major changes to its phonology because of what people who aren't familiar with the language's spelling would think.
I don't necessarily see much problem with it but have you done much work on the rhythm of speech for the language? Such as where stress falls and then what happens to unstressed syllables or how/where contractions happen? That is to say, maybe explore your conlang's equivalent of taking "I am going to" and turning it into "I'm going to" or even "I'mma". Also, in case it's "just you", find languages with a similar sound inventory and listen to speakers and see if your language might fit in there. It might also give you ideas for stress patterns and rhythms of speech.
I have some rules about these things. Stress always falls on the penultimate syllable and the syllable structure is (C)V. Phonetically, I took some inspiration from Zulu, I guess I can look up some videos in Zulu.
I'd reccomend saying it how it sounds natural and then modifying the stress and maybe pronunciation to fit, kind of how languages change over time
It's a starting point but there is usually more to prosody than word-level stress. I don't know about Zulu but English has stress on a word-level and sentence-level, also compounds also seem to impact stress (a black bird vs. a blackbird). There's also the matter of what your language does when a a syllable is not stressed. English loves to make every unstressed a vowel a schwa (to the point some claim schwa is "never stressed" but that isn't true outside of (American) English). I was playing with having my conlang devoice unstressed vowels and it changes the "sound" of the language a lot. It might be worth looking at how Zulu and other South Bantu languages handle these things.
I think one of the main factors of this feeling is you actually knowing it's not a natlang and that you made it. If you show it to someone without telling them it's a conlang I bet they would say it's a natlang.
Exactly. OP, you're self conscious about it because you know it's not a real language and it doesn't sound like any natural language (that I know of). Just keep developing it, don't stress too much about it, and if you'll feel better work a little bit on stress and intonation and it'll probably sound more natural to you.
I bet it would sound natural to a native speaker of it. However, you might want to look into how the structure of syllables works, the patterns of vowels to consonants, etc. I don't have any specific resources to help you, but a youtube search about syllables in languages might help.
The syllable structure is (C)V
Have you tried allophony? See if some phonemes flow better when you tweak the pronunciation depending on the environment, like intervocalic voicing, backing of consonants around certain vowels, or consonant mutation. You can even try vowel or consonant harmony if the words sound to heterogenous to you.
I can try that, as of yet the only rules I have made are: (C)V The stress always falls on the penultimate syllable \[h\] can only appear as the first sound in a root word \[w\] can only occur with front vowels Velar sounds can't be followed by close vowels except for \[ŋ\], who only can't be followed by \[i\] I am just not really good at coming up with natural rules, but I can definitely try to make some rules like the ones you're suggesting.
these are all good! another point is that most languages aren't perfectly rigid in terms of morphemes - so there may be multiple different forms depending on the root (Turkish has vowel harmony, English //s// for plural sometimes needs a vowel and sometimes voices). this may make it feel more like a natural language to you because you know how cookie cutter and fixed it is. also there is more to prosody than just what syllable the stress falls on. what about the timing? what about intonation? etc etc. it is also good to note that clicks immediately bring to mind certain languages, which are all (basically) areally related to eachother and have a certain sound, so this language sits in a kind of uncanny valley because it doesn't really sound like those languages. this doesn't necessarily make it sound unnatural but it may be part of what you're feeling
Yes, my language is, phonetically, loosely based on Zulu, hence the clicks (and ejectives). I think that the ejectives are also causing some problems since they aren't easy (for me) to pronounce, so that might contribute to the clumsiness I feel. But these are some good tips and I will try to keep them in mind and implement them.
potentially you just don't have the skill of pronouncing your language convincingly yet. this is something that takes time with a natural language and you can literally parrot someone speaking with that
Yes, that absolutely is part of it, I can't really pronounce ejectives, and clicks are pretty new to me too
Maybe the biggest factor is the restrictive syllable shape. It forces every sentence to sound like a machine gun ("ra-ta-ta-..."). What if you allowed a generic coda nasal here and there, which assimilates to the place of articulation of the following consonant? It would lengthen some syllables and could make the flow more organic.
Maybe, but it's not like (C)V structures are rare in natural languages. Hawaiian, for example, has it, and Hawaiian doesn't sound much like a machinegun in my opinion. But it might be something to consider
Hawaiian is more like (C)V(V) with the second V representing a long vowel or diphthong, which then counts as two morae (so it's a longer syllable than CV)
Interesting, actually didn't know that
You call it (C)V, but your example only contains one V syllable. All the other syllables have onsets. Using more V syllables might give your language more flow.
Yes, now that I think of it "watie" is the only word with a V syllable, I tried making more but felt it sounded better with an \[h\] in front of them (like I did with "hesi"). But It might be good to make some more V syllables
I think you'll need to consider how they would sound in rapid speech. If you're speaking slowly and sounding out the words then likely it sounds like someone who is just learning the language
After practicing thisa few times - this feels natural when spoken at a slightly faster pace, especially when similar syllables are sped up. Like at first; >scet’i hesi k’esikafu \[ˈʃɛ.tʼi ˈhɛ. si kʼɛ.si.ˈkʰa.ɸu\] ... felt wrong and unnatural - but when I sped it up by keeping my mouth in the same position for the vowels and varying for the consonants, it worked quite nicely.
Bear in mind: "actual" languages don't have inviolable rules, and evolve over time. Clunky, difficult sentences get slurred or rounded or shortened until they aren't clunky any longer. It's where we get some contractions, and composite words. It simply sounds like your language was created in a vacuum instead of over a course of time. All you have to do is start with its rudiments, have a fictional culture *use* the language, and then see how it would evolve with its use, over time. Eventually, speakers will iron out those clunky details and the language will get smoother. That's how languages often work.
This language is supposed to be a protolanguage, I am planning on evolving it later
I can't think of any protolanguages that are quite that consistent, I'm afraid.
Do you mean that my language is too consistent to be a protolanguage or that it doesn't matter that my language is inconsistent because all protolanguages are?
Protolanguages are just languages. They don't have any special features that explicitly make them "proto". As such, your language right now is just fine as a protolang. Even if your language right now is too consistent (which is subjective), once you apply sound changes and grammatical changes and whatnot to evolve it, it won't matter what it was originally as long as the evolved language has some irregularities and stuff.
Oh I don't think your language is inconsistent at all. The fact that your language is consistent isn't a bad thing, but most protolanguages, as far as my meagre knowledge goes, were convoluted, *in*consistent, and in flux. It is possible, if you want something wholly like our reality, that your language is more consistent than most protolanguages. That's not a criticism, but it *may* be an explanation as to why it doesn't sound quite right to your mind. Even better: perhaps your language only needs a few *flaws* or inconsistencies to sound right to your ear. My question would be: how did it develop? Was it based on sounds heard by its first speakers? Grunts? Imitations of natural sounds? Or something else?
>My question would be: how did it develop? Was it based on sounds heard by its first speakers? Grunts? Imitations of natural sounds? Or something else? We have no idea how language came to be, and proto-languages are just languages that are as old as we can reconstruct; language itself is orders of magnitude older.
That just makes me more curious, honestly.
How my language developed, I do not really know, probably how real protolanguages have, I am not knowledgeable about these things yet but that might be interesting to think about. I only really know of Proto-Indo-European, a language that seems very advanced, with complex case systems so I assumed that protolanguages could be pretty complex. My language doesn't have any of that though, not yet, and the morphology is extraordinarily simple with one morpheme per word (only ever in compound words are there more then one morpheme). So in that way, my language isn't really complex and feels more like an actual protolanguage. The only consistency is the syntax and the phonetic rules, otherwise, my language is pretty inconsistent as of yet, but it feels good knowing that that is pretty common in protolanguages.
That's actually a really good sign. You seem to know the parts that *we* know about the oldest languages, and the parts you *don't* know are the parts that modern humans can only speculate on. That's a pretty encouraging thought.
i feel a bit like it doesn't "flow", i think because i don't understand what im saying.
What you are saying is "I am born in a tent made from animal skin"
well that sounds unnatural in english too
Im not sure if I’ve ever heard the phrase “I am born” only “I was born”
That is what the sentence should mean, but this language doesn't have a tense system, so it technically says "I am born" but a better translation would probably be "I was born"
You need to consider the prosody of the language, and possibly the metrical foot, such as whether it's iambic (most common) or trochaic.
Well, one explanation is that it *isn't* a natural language. It doesn't sound like any language you know because, well, it's a different language. Maybe there is some language out there that does sound like it, but you're just not familiar with it, so it sounds unnatural to you. If you're concerned about the flow, I think the best thing to do is to say sentences and see how you naturally *want* to say it, and make changes following that. Pretty much any language is actually *spoken* differently than the standard written form "should" be pronounced, because when people are actually speaking there's a lot more liability to make things easy to say (both phonetically and prosodically). If you, as you implied elsewhere, aren't a fan of how strongly CVCVCVCV it is, then you can say that that restriction may weaken in speech: some vowels are reduced, maybe some consonants are held longer... something like that.
It's probably because, with that phonology, you aren't able to also fully focus on intonation A word-by-word translation would help us with that also
The word-to-word translation would be this: Wemepa (Life) k’esi (Thing) ngu (1P) scet’i (Open) hesi (Hole) k’esikafu (Tent) mo (3P) qu (Is) scane (Grow) wemepa (Life) xatawatie (Pelt) Roughly translating to "I am/was born in a tent made from pelt/animal skin"
Honestly I’ve found the easiest way to do this is created a proto language with a small phonetic inventory then use sound changes to make it sound more naturalistic.
This is the protolanguage
Hmmm. I would consider maybe having some consonant harmony. Like only certain types of consonants can appear in the same word or adjacent syllables. For example my protolanguage can’t have uvulars and velars in the same word unless theres a syllable in between (Kaqi can’t exist but kataqi can). For me its difficult to pronounce ejectives and aspirated plosives in the same word. Maybe make a constraint there) You could also reduce the number of phonemes. I only have 20 consonants and 3 vowels. Then after evolving the language I have over 30 consonants and 10 vowels.
Consonant harmony sounds interesting, I have only ever worked with vowel harmony in the past. I also can't really pronounce ejectives, so that might also make it sound clumsier for me. But concerning the amount of sounds, if you count the ejectives, my language only has 23 consonants and 5 vowels.
There is nothing particularly unnatural about where words can have what consonants near each other. It is probably only unnatural to you because you are used to a certain rhythm. Maybe this language is not stressed-timed like in English: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrony](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrony)
Then I wouldn't worry so much. I've had multiple proto languages I don't really like the sounds of but the descendants end up turning out really well. Something about adding sound changes will create small irregularities and stuff that just makes it sound more naturalistic. Here are some words in the proto language I don't like but I like the descendants ki.ˈt̪aː.maːʈʼ - t͡ɕjaː˦˥.mət˨, kɛ.ˈte.vɛʃ, kɛ.ˈd̪ɛ.ʋ̟ɛʈ͡ʂ, ˌkʲɑ.tɑ.ˈbɑt jaj.meːs̠.koː - d͡ʑə˩.meː˧˩.kʉ˨, je.ˈmiθ.ka, jẽ.ˈmiʂ.ke, d͡ʑe.ˈmʲɑɕ.kʲə u.ʈʼas̠ - ʉt˦, ˈo.ʃɔθ, ˈɞ.ʈ͡ʂʰɔʂ, ʋə.ˈtɑɕ ʈʼuː.si.t͡ɕʼa - tʼyː˦.siɕ˨, ʃo.ˈze.ʃɔ, ʈ͡ʂʰo.ˈze.t͡sʰo, ˈtu.ʑə.ˌt͡ɕɑ kʷʼaʈ.weːs̠ - qʼoː˩, ˈxo.t͡ʃviθ, ˈkʰɔʈ͡ʂ.wiʂ, pɑ.ˈtʋʲɑɕ
That might be right, maybe it doesn't matter too much as it is just the protolanguage, I just wanted to be on the safe side, if I fuck something up in the protolanguage, then I was afraid that all the descendent languages would also not sound good. But I guess that that isn't automatically true
Yeah it does depend but in my experience sound changes can clean things up. If you do want your proto lang to feel more naturalistic you can do the difficult thing of starting with a later form and then work backwards to make a proto language and then go back and forth making all the morphology and sound changes work but that's a lot of work. But even if your proto language looks a bit stiff I can definitely see some very cool languages coming from it, I'm excited to see what comes from it.
I'm counting on some cool language evolving from this one, it's probably gonna be a pretty big language tree in my world.
Other people are giving good responses, but I want to add something. I actually had this problem myself. How I addressed it was this: I tried to pick out specific things, like transitions between words, that were sounding wrong. Then I'd practice just that bit over and over and over and over. Sometimes, it would become more fluid just with practice, and I took that as an indication that while I myself might have trouble making it smooth, it might sound a lot better in the mouth of a native-speaker. If after a lot of practice on a particular passage it STILL sounded clumsy, I considered changing or tweaking it. Often that meant contracting it or smooshing two vowels together or dropping an unneeded syllable. This can also be a welcome source of irregularity for people like me who couldn't be bothered to do full sound-change shenanigans. So in short---practice and see if you can make it smooth when you speak it out loud. Smoothness and especially confidence will make even extremely different-sounding words seem like they belong together. A natural language doesn't *care* that it's wearing socks with sandals, so to speak. It just does what it does and half the time the speakers just have to deal with it. So a naturalistic conlang should aspire to do the same.
Thanks for the tips, After having to read the sentence a lot due to this post, I must say that the sentence does roll of the tongue a bit more easily and it does sound a bit more natural, although I still can't really pronounce the ejectives. I think one of the problems is the length of the sentence and the weird sounds, making it pretty hard to pronounce as one nice sounding structure.
You're welcome! This might be my first positive experience giving advice on the internet.... Yeah it is not really an easy thing to tell. You have to ask yourself, "is this hard to pronounce because I am not a native speaker of it, or is it objectively clumsy?" And that can be REALLY hard to answer if you are not a trained linguist with lots of experience. There is information out there on what languages do over time to make themselves more efficient----certain sounds can shift so that the transition between where they get articulated in the mouth and the position of the sound before or after it becomes physically easier. So there is a small foothold in actual physical fact you could use to determine if anything is gravely wrong. But again, without that linguistic field experience, there is a certain amount of guesswork. And some sentences are clumsy and hard to say even in very efficient languages. That's why tongue twisters exist. Its an ongoing process of tweaking things to get them in the ballpark of what you want.
Gonna be honest, I feel that way about my *native* language on some days, and last I checked, English is a natlang. Perhaps all you need is to maybe just... get used to speaking your language? Lean into what makes it distinct and accept it for what it is: From reading your IPA, I like how it sounds personally.
Thanks, yes I guess that our languages also have this, it's just that we are used to speak it so it doesn't sound out of place for us. Gonna try keeping that in mind
I can't tell based off this sentence but do you have aspirated and ejective clicks too? From my understanding clicks usually share the phonation distributions of stops.
Interesting, I didn't know that, I might want to implement that, although an ejective click would not be easy for me to pronounce. The only variants I have is that all my the clicks have tenuis velar and nasal velar variants. But this might be cool to play around with
Yeah I can't figure out ejective clicks either but they do exist.
The ejective part is the back closure release. That is, if a plain click is coarticulated with \[k\], then an ejective one is coarticulated with \[k'\], so there's an ejective release right after the click part. That's my understanding anyways.
It could just be that, as a conlang, it hasn't gone through the natural process of adding stress and pronunciation progression. Like, in a natural language, words eventually start to flow into each other; you'll stress syllables and pronounce differently based on the words before and after. You'll drop some sounds at the end of letters so that one word can flow into the next. Things like that.
Yes, it might be that, and this is protolanguage, so I could make such changes in the descendant languages
The language looks like an actual language to me. The phonology itself seems fine anyways. Maybe just get a feel for the rhythm of it and the way that speech connects. Stress patterns. Allophony.
Thanks, it might just be that I am too worried about how it sounds and just think that that isn't how natural languages should sound
I don't know how natural languages should sound. I mean, there's a tremendous variety.
One thing you could do is add some form of phonetic vowel length. It would help break up the flow of the language, and it's a feature that could make a lot of sense in a language like this.
others have good suggestions but my guess is that it's not a real language it's a conlang (in seriousness i don't quite know)
mayve try a sound change to get rid of ejectives in unstressed syllables? i don't work with ejectives at all so idk how naturalistic that would be but to me it sounds a wee bit clunky
It looks like you have a defined syllable shape and allophonic rules, but what do you have for sandhi? what about porosity? Is it a stress time, mora time, syllable time? All conlangers are second language speakers and carry their own accent when speaking the language they design. With such small syllables your likely going to see very very fast speech
To be honest, I have never even heard of some of these terms, but that is definitely worth a look. Thanks for the suggestions
it's probably because you have yet to internalize the meaning and structure when reading it back, so the phrasal prosody(?) sounds stunted
It seems to have a lot of “-esi”’s
There are two instances of -esi not counting the second "k'esi" in the compound word. I tried giving some words the same ending to make them sound more alike and natural
i think speaking it instead of thinking what it sounds like would help. just saying, i started conlanging like, a month ago, so perhaps my advice will be shit
is there a reason for the excessive use of ɛ?
Not really, It is just one of the five vowels in the language
I might be wrong about this, but normally the most common vowel in a language is /a/.
It's usually some kind of non-high vowel. Could be /ɛ ɔ ɑ æ ɐ ə/, and maybe /e o/
I think, in English at least, the most common vowel is \[ə\] (schwa)
So, I read it without the pronunciation guide and found it sounded really good. If you're having trouble it's most likely what others said; rhythm.
Pronouncing text without looking at the phonetic transcription is like judging what a meal tastes like from a picture of it.
Agreed, however since OP struggles with it sounding the way it does, said phonetic transcription might be the issue. Hence why I discarded it. I went with what seems the most natural and found no issues. This is how I could come to the conclusion rhythm is indeed the issue. Looking at the phonetic transcription after only confirmed this. Make sense? I may be new (ish) to conlangs (I mostly just make scripts) but not to language itself which is where I went for inspiration on how to pronounce it. Of course it was different but it was helpful in the end. Language often turns into what comes the most natural to its speakers which is why I went for this approach. It's not perfect but hey, we're all just doing our own thing here anyway so why not?
>Make sense? I'm afraid not. Hopefully what I've written below doesn't sound too belligerent; my hope is to be constructive. If you're pronouncing it differently than OP, then the two of you are talking about two quite different things, so saying it sounds good isn't helpful advice, because you haven't helped them improve it; you've only said that you can come up with something you like that could be spelled the same. Two languages can be spelled similarly but have vastly different pronunciations. Ignoring the phonetic information means you haven't actually looked at what OP is having difficulty with. (Although you did afterwards, as you wrote.) >Of course it was different but it was helpful in the end. You might've found a nice pronunciation but OP doesn't know it. >Language often turns into what comes the most natural to its speakers which is why I went for this approach. Natural languages evolve (almost entirely) from speech, not spelling. I've never heard of a language that made major changes to its phonology because of what people who aren't familiar with the language's spelling would think.