CLS I: Sounds

December 15, 2007 at 2:41 pm (Linguistics)

I’d apologize for not posting for two weeks, but I have no doubt you’ve heard it all before. Anyway, this is the first post of me diagramming my language, CLS.

Okay. First off, here are the various sounds that make up CLS:

Vowel Sounds:
a – as in “bar”
e – as in “lend”
u – as in “bun”
ä – as in “lay”
ë – as in “bean”
ü – as in “boon”

Consonant Sounds:
p – as in “put”
t – as in “take”
k – as c in “cat”

b – as in “bun”
d – as in “dog”
g – as in “god”

f – as in “far”
th – as in “thin”
s – as in “sat”
sh – as in “shut”
kh – as ch in german “Bach”

v – as in “vanguard”
dh – as th in “they”
z – as in “zap”
zh – as s in “pleasure”
gh – no english/german equivalent, voiced ‘kh’. Form sound by going through the unvoiced fricatives (f, th, s, sh, kh) and then going through the voiced fricatives (v, dh, z, zh, gh)

pf – combination of p and f, as german “pferd”
ts – combination of t and s, as german z at beginning of word
ch – combination of t and sh, as in “chain”

bv – combination of b and v, no english/german equivalent
dz – combination of d and z, no english/german equivalent
j – combination of d and zh, as in “jail”

r – as in “red”
l – as in “lore”

If you’ll notice, the consonants are sorted into seven sections: unvoiced stops, voiced stops, unvoiced fricatives, voiced fricatives, unvoiced affricates, voiced affricates, and approximants. I know those words don’t mean anything to you unless you’ve got some knowledge of linguistics, so I’ll explain: stops are consonants that stop the airflow entirely. Fricatives only partially block it. Affricates are combinations of stops and fricatives. Approximants barely stop the airflow. The difference between a voiced and an unvoiced consonant is whether or not your vocal cords are vibrating. There are also nasals, like n, m, and ng, but I don’t have any of those in my language.

Anyway, those are the sounds that make up my language. Next post I’ll begin with some common words and some elementary grammar.