Hello, fellows conlangers!

I'm going to post here the details of a project conlang I'm working on with some friends of mine. It has some random requirements that guide it's development, which I'll explain throughout the post.


Orthography and Sounds:

1.Consonants:

One of the requirements is that it can be spoken without raising the tongue, so consonants like [l] or [ʃ] cannot be a part of it. Also, it should sound 'foreign' to the average European-language speaker.



2. Vowels:

Also, it has to be shoutable, so in order to increase clarity it has few core vowels with an ample realization:



Right now I have trouble with [ɬ] and [ɮ], because I don't think that <x> and <l> are good ways to write these sounds.

If that's the case, then how can [s] and [z] be part of it, not to mention [ç] and [ʝ]? [ç] is palatal, [ʃ] is pre-palatal; the difference between these two sounds is so minor that that substitution of one for the other is not uncommon in languages of the world.

Noob Question: I have never heard /ɮ/ or /ɬ/ pronounced but I always thought they were, well at least /ɬ/ as sort of combination of /l/ and /ʃ/ or something similar. Am I wrong? Also how can you have /k/ and /g/ when the back tongue is raised to the hard palate?

Interesting idea though. I really like it, it sounds like it would sound foreign to most people.

It's sometimes impressionistically described that way, but really it's more like a fricative /l/ or lateral /s/.

So the tongue is raised though?

Of course. It's an alveolar consonant.

Hmm... I mean only the apical part of the tongue cannot leave the lower gun ridge. Let's put it this way, I think it'll explain: If you're holding a chewing gum under your tongue and you're handwalking, you should be able to speak it without letting the gum fall.

So, [s] or [ç] do not require me to raise the tip of my tongue in a way that "would let the gum fall", but [ʃ], [l] or [t̪] (the standard /t/ in B-Portuguese) would "let the gum fall".



You can hear their sound at [1] and [2]. To pronounce, you put your tongue in the position to perform [ʎ] but instead perform a fricative such as [s].



Thanks y'all for the reply!



[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_ ... _fricative
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_alv ... _fricative

By the way, "Zi Hoi Kal" means "The Beautiful Speech".

Sometimes, we import nouns from Dutch, applying the needed mutations, so /t/ becomes /k/. "Kal" comes from "taal".

So, we've got personal pronouns!




By the way, the following sounds are now written as thus:

[ɬ] <c> word-initially, <tl> elsewhere
[ɮ] <dl>
[ʁ] <ǵ> word-finally, <r> elsewhere
[ħ] <h>