I already touched on phonaesthetics in Language 1a before, when I was talking about vowel hiatus. If you aren’t familiar, a phonaesthetic is a specific type of overall feeling to the sound of a language. I’ve already noted my borrowing from Latin and Old English for some diphthongs to give it a more archaic feeling. The use of uvulars in this language was also initially inspired by Classical Arabic. This is about as far as I’m willing to go with using real-world languages as phonaesthetic inspiration – much more would feel to me like laziness and stereotyping. The rest of the phonaesthetic of this language is much harder to describe. I think the easiest way is discussing the sounds I like and dislike for it.
I like the voiceless stops in this language, especially (q) and (k), but I also like the voiced fricatives, especially word-initially and word-finally. However, I really don’t like the voiced stops. My initial plan was to have the protolanguage have no voiced stops, but I realized that if I have them in the protolanguage, they can be lenited in some positions, which yields more voiced fricatives.
b, d, dʑ, g, ɢ → β, ð, ʑ, ɣ, ʁ / V _ V, _ C, _ #
b, d, dʑ, g, ɢ → p, t, tɕ, k, q
β, ð → v, z
An upside of this alteration is that affixes that can be both prefixed and suffixed may take different forms in different positions. For example, an affix that could take the proto-forms d- and -d would have the modern forms t- and -z. This adds a bit of variety to the sounds of commonly used affixes, as well as some interesting unclarity in related forms.
Apart from that, there are a few minor changes to make the language fit the phonaesthetic I’m going for:
tɕ → ts
ɕ, ʑ → ç, ʝ
And with that, we’re done with sound changes for language 1a! Our final table looks like this:
|
Consonants |
Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | |
|
Stop/Affricate |
p |
t ts |
k | q | ||
| Fricative |
Voiceless |
f |
s |
ç |
x | χ |
| Voiced | v | z | ʝ | ɣ | ʁ | |
| Liquids |
– |
ɾ l |
– | – | – | |
|
Nasals |
m |
n |
||||
|
Vowels |
Front |
Back |
| Close |
i iː |
u uː |
| Mid | e eː | o oː |
|
Open |
ʌ | ɑ ɑː |