4 ms·

One big problem I see with many of these artificial languages is that they do not put the ease of pronunciation at the topmost priority. I think it would be int

by yoz-y 10y ago

One big problem I see with many of these artificial languages is that they do not put the ease of pronunciation at the topmost priority. I think it would be interesting to make a study on what sounds can anybody produce. It is also important to study the different subtleties that people perceive as different sounds. For example in my experience the Chinese have a hard time understanding you if you mangle the different tones they use for vowels, however they completely ignore the 'length' of a tone which is very often used to distinguish words in the slavic languages.

yoplait_ 10y ago
Esperanto is very easy to pronounce even for Chinese
- yoz-y 10y ago
  But is it for Japanese? In general I think that an artificial language should never put two consonants together.
  - yoplait_ 10y ago
    I only have second-hand accounts from proselytes, and they say esperanto is nowhere as bad as English for Chinese, Japanese and Koreans. Just google around if you want to read from them. English is so difficult to pronounce correctly than my prior is to believe them.
    - talideon 10y ago
      One infamous example being the consonant car crash that is 'strengths'.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- tokenadult 10y ago
  廢話。How many native speakers of various Chinese languages do you know how converse with you regularly in Esperanto? The phonological system of Esperanto is noticeably worse than that of English for native speakers of Chinese to acquire.
  - yoplait_ 10y ago
    that's just false. English is the worst language ever from the point of view of phonetics
    - Jtsummers 10y ago
      Question: Are you referring to the spelling<->phonetic consistency of the language or to the sounds the language use? I think you and tokenadult may be speaking about different things here.
      - yoplait_ 10y ago
        I was referring to the latter, though the former is bad as well :)
    - DonaldFisk 10y ago
      What does that even mean? Have you tried pronouncing any Khoisan languages (or other languages with clicks) for example? If your native language is English, you'll have a much harder time than a native Zulu speaker would have. Whether a target language is easy to pronounce depends on your native language (and other languages you can pronounce accurately). If you're a native Chinese speaker (whichever variety, but particularly Mandarin), English isn't anything like as difficult as French to pronounce.
      - yoplait_ 10y ago
        that was a figure of speech dude. If we're talking about languages you ought to spot these
arundelo 10y ago
If you're not already familiar with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona , check it out. "Both its sound inventory and phonotactics (patterns of possible sound combinations) are found in the majority of human languages and are therefore readily accessible."
talideon 10y ago
It very much depends on the auxlang. Most of them do try to make things easy, but auxlang creators tend to be a little more linguistically naïve than other artificial language creators, so they end up using themselves as the benchmark. Esperanto is a notorious example of this, where you have initial consonant clusters like 'sc' /st͡s/ and internal consonant clusters like 'tĉ' /tt͡ʃ/. Zamenhof essentially took a simplified version of the Polish consonant inventory and applied it Esperanto. There are plenty of studies of consonant and vowel frequencies in human languages. We know, for instance, that [p] [t] [k] are found in virtually all languages, that most languages have at least one liquid, one nasal consonant (which can be realised as [n], [m] or [ŋ] depending the position of the consonant that follows it is). Most languages also have [ʔ], but you never notice it as most only allow it initially and exclude it when spelling: if you were to choose any word in English beginning with a vowel in isolation, you will almost certainly start it with a glottal stop. As far as vowels go, the classical five-vowel system is very prevalent: some approximation of it is used in lots of languages, and there are very few languages that use simpler systems, though Modern Standard Arabic, with its three-vowel system ([a], [i], [u]) is a widely-spoken counterexample. If you wanted to include more consonant clusters, you could add schwa as a epithetic vowel: in our hypothetical language, the word _plum_ could be phonemically /plum/, but phonetically [pəlum] for speakers who have difficulty with that initial consonant cluster. Still, knowing what sounds people can pronounce is only half the battle: a good IAL would also have well designed _phonotactics_. That's a bit of a rabbit hole though!

by yoz-y 10y ago

yoplait_ 10y ago

Esperanto is very easy to pronounce even for Chinese

yoz-y 10y ago
But is it for Japanese? In general I think that an artificial language should never put two consonants together.
- yoplait_ 10y ago
  I only have second-hand accounts from proselytes, and they say esperanto is nowhere as bad as English for Chinese, Japanese and Koreans. Just google around if you want to read from them. English is so difficult to pronounce correctly than my prior is to believe them.
  - talideon 10y ago
    One infamous example being the consonant car crash that is 'strengths'.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
tokenadult 10y ago
廢話。How many native speakers of various Chinese languages do you know how converse with you regularly in Esperanto? The phonological system of Esperanto is noticeably worse than that of English for native speakers of Chinese to acquire.
- yoplait_ 10y ago
  that's just false. English is the worst language ever from the point of view of phonetics
  - Jtsummers 10y ago
    Question: Are you referring to the spelling<->phonetic consistency of the language or to the sounds the language use? I think you and tokenadult may be speaking about different things here.
    - yoplait_ 10y ago
      I was referring to the latter, though the former is bad as well :)
  - DonaldFisk 10y ago
    What does that even mean? Have you tried pronouncing any Khoisan languages (or other languages with clicks) for example? If your native language is English, you'll have a much harder time than a native Zulu speaker would have. Whether a target language is easy to pronounce depends on your native language (and other languages you can pronounce accurately). If you're a native Chinese speaker (whichever variety, but particularly Mandarin), English isn't anything like as difficult as French to pronounce.
    - yoplait_ 10y ago
      that was a figure of speech dude. If we're talking about languages you ought to spot these

arundelo 10y ago

If you're not already familiar with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona , check it out. "Both its sound inventory and phonotactics (patterns of possible sound combinations) are found in the majority of human languages and are therefore readily accessible."

talideon 10y ago

It very much depends on the auxlang. Most of them do try to make things easy, but auxlang creators tend to be a little more linguistically naïve than other artificial language creators, so they end up using themselves as the benchmark. Esperanto is a notorious example of this, where you have initial consonant clusters like 'sc' /st͡s/ and internal consonant clusters like 'tĉ' /tt͡ʃ/. Zamenhof essentially took a simplified version of the Polish consonant inventory and applied it Esperanto. There are plenty of studies of consonant and vowel frequencies in human languages. We know, for instance, that [p] [t] [k] are found in virtually all languages, that most languages have at least one liquid, one nasal consonant (which can be realised as [n], [m] or [ŋ] depending the position of the consonant that follows it is). Most languages also have [ʔ], but you never notice it as most only allow it initially and exclude it when spelling: if you were to choose any word in English beginning with a vowel in isolation, you will almost certainly start it with a glottal stop. As far as vowels go, the classical five-vowel system is very prevalent: some approximation of it is used in lots of languages, and there are very few languages that use simpler systems, though Modern Standard Arabic, with its three-vowel system ([a], [i], [u]) is a widely-spoken counterexample. If you wanted to include more consonant clusters, you could add schwa as a epithetic vowel: in our hypothetical language, the word _plum_ could be phonemically /plum/, but phonetically [pəlum] for speakers who have difficulty with that initial consonant cluster. Still, knowing what sounds people can pronounce is only half the battle: a good IAL would also have well designed _phonotactics_. That's a bit of a rabbit hole though!