So I was playing around with the language family when I realized that I really liked the sound of Language 1b partway through its evolution. If you allow the language to develop back harmony and vowel coalescence, but stop it before it develops rounding harmony, the result has a fun and distinctive phonaesthetic. I picture this ancestor language being kept around primarily as a liturgical language, while the later language 1b is used in day-to-day speech. I’ll call the ancestor language Ancient 1b, and its descendant Common 1b. (Better names coming soon.) That by itself would not be a full blog post. However, there are a few changes that I want to make to alter (and hopefully improve) the phonaesthetic.
The primary change I made was putting velar-uvular harmony in this language too. I like the uvulars for this language, especially combined with /ɯ/. It gives it a very Turkic sound that reminds me especially of languages of the Kipchak family, such as Kazakh and Kyrgyz. We can say that the uvularization of emphatic velars was an allophonic feature in protolanguage 1 before language 1a and 1b diverged. The uvulars will still be ditched by Common 1b – I don’t like them as much there aesthetically, and it provides another point of divergence between 1a and 1b.
I also changed around the ordering of sound changes. I wanted this language to keep the voiced stops, so I moved voiced stop changes to happen after rounding harmony, which I hadn’t initially planned for. This means that the voiced uvular stop, /ɢ/, will be present in this language. I’ve already talked about /ɢ/ and its rarity compared to other uvulars. However, I like it for this stage of the language – it gives a very distinctive sound, and separates it from the Turkic languages. This gives us this final list of sound changes:
Protolanguage 1 to Ancient 1b
kˤ, xˤ, gˤ, ɣˤ → q, χ, ɢ, ʁ
short i, u → j, w / V _
short i, u → j, w / _ V
a → ∅ / _ V(+long)
uj, aj → yː, ɜː
a → ɜ
iˤ, ɜˤ, yˤ → ɯ, ɜ, u
iw, ɯw, ɜw, ɑw → yː, uː, ɞː, ɒː
Emphasis distinction lost
Ancient 1b to Common 1b
q, χ, ɢ, ʁ → k, g, x, ɣ
Rounding harmony: i, ɯ, ɜ, ɑ → y, u, ɞ, ɒ
C(+voiced)(+obstruent) → C(-voiced) / _ C(-voiced), C(-voiced) _, _ #
b, d, dʑ, g → β, ð, ʑ, ɣ
tɕ, ɕ, ʑ → tʃ, ʃ, ʒ
Here is the phonology and romanization for Ancient 1b:
| Ancient 1b Consonants | Bilabial | Alveolar | Avleolopalatal | Velar | Uvular | |
| Stop/Affricate | Voiceless | p ⟨p⟩ | t ⟨t⟩ | tɕ ⟨ch⟩ | k ⟨k⟩ | q ⟨q⟩ |
| Voiced | b ⟨b⟩ | d ⟨d⟩ | dʑ ⟨dzhj⟩ | g ⟨g⟩ | ɢ ⟨gq⟩ | |
| Fricative | Voiceless | f ⟨f⟩ | s ⟨s⟩ | ɕ ⟨sh⟩ | x ⟨kh⟩ |
χ ⟨qh⟩ |
| Voiced | v ⟨v⟩ | z ⟨z⟩ | ʑ ⟨zh⟩ | ɣ ⟨gh⟩ | ʁ ⟨rh⟩ | |
| Liquids | – | ɾ l ⟨r l⟩ | j ⟨i⟩ | w ⟨u⟩ | – | |
| Nasals | m ⟨m⟩ | n ⟨n⟩ | – | – | – | |
| Ancient 1b Vowels |
Front |
Back | ||
|
Unrounded |
Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded | |
| Close | i iː ⟨i ii⟩ |
yː ⟨y⟩ |
ɯ ɯː ⟨ı ıı⟩ |
u uː ⟨u uu⟩ |
| Open | ɜ ɜː ⟨e ê⟩ | ɞː ⟨eu⟩ | ɑ ɑː ⟨a aa⟩ | ɒː ⟨au⟩ |
Some things to note:
- For this language, I opted for vowel doubling to indicate length. I used a circumflex instead on ⟨ê⟩, because ⟨ee⟩ looks like /i/ to English speakers. Besides, I like the circumflex.
- As vowel hiatus isn’t a thing, I can use vowel letters for glides.
- I opted for historical spellings for ⟨eu⟩ and ⟨au⟩. They look cool and aren’t that uncommon for open front and back rounded vowels respectively.
That’s pretty much all the phonological information for Ancient 1b! Next time, I stop going on tangents and return to making morphology, setting templates for some morphological innovations in language 1a.