Welcome to Gaia! ::

^^;;;

This conlang will be impossible to speak with you people on the job. rolleyes

Something like /a e E i o O u y/ and their long and/or nasalized versions.

1-Easy? Are we a bunch of middle-schoolers? We want a bit of a challenge. Otherwise, what kind of conlangers are we?

2-It's just a suggestion, I wasn't forcing anything upon anyone. Isn't that what we're supposed to do when collaborating? Make suggestions?

3-And if all of us stuck to the same ideal, every time, all the time, conlangs would begin to get monotonous and repetitive after a while. Phonetics are no exception.

I kind of like the no-syllable-stress and funky diphthong suggestions, but I don't think we should have SO MANY VOWELS. gonk

The usual minimal 5 Spanish vowels thing seems too few of course, but it looks like you guys are making vowel-dominant conlang here. Like Sano Parmandil said, there are a lot of people here who aren't that well educated in conlangs (or rather, few with so much knowledge, to not mince words).

If you're REALLY making this conlang to be a guild-wide USABLE conlang, I'd really suggest making it something as easy as possible without taking away the uniqueness of the language. That way, even new members who may not know anything at all about conlanging and linguistics can catch on quickly.



I suggest a simple vowel system with simple predefined diphthongs. Maybe 6 to 10 basic vowel sounds, and then from those vowels there could be maybe 10 or so diphthongs, such as "eu" sounds like "oy" as in German (that's not too hard to remember, right?). Maybe there could be situations where a vowel changes its sound when the spelling is done a certain way, to spice it up.

I would also strongly advise against using any umlauted, accented, graved, acuted or other marked vowels (and consonants for that matter) because a lot of people won't know how to make them, and in general they are a pain to type on a standard keyboard. If you have to, you could do it kinda like Esperanto and older German text, where a vowel with an umlaut can be written "vowel + e" or something.

Sorry if any of this sounds aggressive, commanding or condescending. I'm not in the best of moods at the moment. surprised

EDIT: Yes, I know there are vowel and diphthong threads. I figured this was a general enough post to not be restricted to either thread.

Can we get some sort of phonetically spelled examples for clarification? I currently have no clue what any of that means or how they should sound. eek

EDIT: I looked up the Finnish vowels, and I like how they do it.

"ah" "eh" "ih" "oh" "oo" "oouh" "ae" and "eoh" is how I see them.... Does Finnish not have an "ee" sound?

Also, vowel harmony sounds like a good idea. I think it will help the language keep a more consistent look, spelling, and sound.

So... Once we have all the sounds have been figured out and such, we'll have one big thread with everything summarized and organized, right?

Good~

This is all a whole veritable lot of confusing muck right now, and it's only Vowels, Diphthongs, and Consonants. o_o

Also, I'll volunteer now to do some sample/example audio recordings once we're far enough along. XD