#ok quick disclaimer i dont like calling languages “soft” or “harsh” but like... yall know what i mean right | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

velaraffricate · 8 months

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This is my first post about my second rework of my conlang ke'eloom! This was the first conlang I made when I was just getting started in learning about linguistics, which explains some of its quirks that I probably wouldn't implement in a language nowadays. Version 1 was created in September 2021, version 2 in January 2022, and I'm currently working on version 3. In this post I want to show the changes its phonology has undergone over the years.

It started off with this:

Pretty simple stuff. Not sure why I omitted /p/, I think I just didn't like the vibe of it at the time, I wanted the language to sound "soft". It had a typical five vowel system, /a e i o u/, and each vowel could be long as well. The glottal stop only occurs in "glottalized" vowels /aʔa eʔe iʔi oʔo uʔu/ which are treated as one syllable in ke'eloom. Again, no idea why I did this, but it's a pretty unique feature I've kept to this day. /j/ only appeared in the sequence /je/, which was treated as one vowel.

I didn't write anything down regarding phonotactics - I most definitely didn't even know what that was at the time. So no notes regarding syllable structure, diphthongs, or clusters, I just did what i felt like at the moment. So I ended up with some pretty weird onset clusters like /bs ml ms mb nd ng/ which would later actually come to influence the language in ways I wouldn't have expected.

Because those last three clusters are basically just prenasalized plosives - something I only properly learned about when I came across Arrernte's phonology, which greatly influenced ke'eloom's second version:

Most consonants can now be labialized and there's also a series of nasalized plosives. I just quickly implemented this shiny new thing I thought was cool, and in hindsight i don't think adding labialization was the right choice for this language. It's a cool phonology in and of itself, but for ke'eloom it feels a bit bloated. It went from having sixteen consonants to forty (not counting the glottal stop) - that's way too many!

Adding the palatal nasal was a good choice though. I'd come to regret not including it in the original version, but felt that at that point it was too late to add it. I also added /h/ and /kx/, no particular reason for those, and including /ŋ/ just made sense.

When it came to the vowels, I introduced /ɛ/ and /ə/, although I grew to dislike that it contrasted /e/ and /ɛ/, so this too changed in the next (and hopefully final) version:

This is where it stand today. I got rid of all the labial consonants, but kept the prenasalized plosives. I got rid of /p/, just like in the original version, then added more voiced fricatives and removed /kx/ all in service of making it sound more soft, like my initial plan was. And we're back to a five vowel system plus schwa. The semivowels /w j/ only occur in diphthongs in syllables with zero onset. I have other proper phonotactic stuff written down now too, but that's not too relevant for this post.

Hope you enjoyed going on this little journey with me! I'll be showing off more of ke'eloom soon.

#ok quick disclaimer i dont like calling languages “soft” or “harsh” but like... yall know what i mean right #i think its fair to call voiced consonants softer than unvoiced ones #but the character of a language is defined more by the phonotactics than the actual phonemes. anyways #this is completely self-indulgent but well everything on this blog is #hopefully somebody still enjoyed reading this! i love talking about phonology #easily one of my fave parts about conlanging #and i like... literally never use voiced fricatives so thisll be fun #conlang #ke'eloom #phonology #my conlangs #showcase

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