Winter: An artlang phonology

[roninbodhisattva]

It's cold and snowy here, and I've been inspired to make a language that...well, that sounds like those things to me. I'm calling it simply Winter. This is a very 'artsy' phonology for me; it's designed to achieve a certain aesthetic, and hopefully it does that. It's not designed to be totally naturalistic (though it's not completely off the way either). This isn't really a full phonology, of course..I've made it in the past 20 minutes, and thus it's not fleshed out. But it's something.

Consonants- /t d k f s ɬ h m n ʁ l j~ʒ/ t d k f s ll h m n r l j
Vowels /i a ɛ u ɔ ea eo iə uə/i a e u o ea eo ue

The syllable structure is basically CV. The first syllable of a word may begin with a vowel, however. Word finally, the consonants /n d r s/ may occur. There are only a few restrictions on the occurrence of phonemes. First, the labio-dental fricative /f/ only occurs word initially. Second, the phoneme /j~ʒ/, which varies freely between [j] and [ʒ], may not occur adjacent to an /i/. Historically, the sequences */ji/ and */jie/ have merged to /je/, and the sequence */ij/ has become /j/. This has resulted in some medial clusters of the shape Cj as in the word for blizzard feakju. At this point, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with this phonology, but here are some words that I've generated and like:

jued
koli
llodaren
fillad
lleasomed
mihid
nuemesean
rillea
nejuer
imun
ader
anied

[KiKi Tampusa]

I would get rid of /d/ it is hard and to me winter is soft fluffy with an unusual coldness but otherwise good.

[Micamo]

Out of all the plosives my favorite is definitely d. I'd say keep it.

Though, have you considered a vowel dissimilation process? mihid just sounds bad.

[Ceresz]

I think /d/ is nice too, so I say keep it.

I really like this phonology, and the generated words. I hope you do something with this language :-). A winter language would really interest me right now (as it's the middle of winter over here).

[roninbodhisattva]

Varied opinions! /d/ is one of my favorite plosives too, especially here, so I'm going to keep it. KiKi, I agree with your characterization of winter 'soft fluffy', but I don't find voiced stops 'hard'. I think I find winter kind of ... muted, and quiet. And that's what this phonology is designed to be. I might add voiceless vowels somehow, maybe word finally?

Anyway, yeah, Ceresz, I do actually plan to do something with this. It's one of my favorite phonologies that I've come up with recently (I've been going through a period of rapid phonology making, I suppose), and I would really like to take this somewhere. We'll see what happens! I have to figure out if there are any grammatical feature that I would assign to winter...

Though, have you considered a vowel dissimilation process? mihid just sounds bad.

I actually hadn't thought of a vowel dissimilation process, but then again, I don't think mihid is a bad sounding word. Something like /i...i/ > [i....e]? And maybe /u....u/ > [u...o]?

Also, I'm thinking about these three things:

1) allowing /l/ as a coda
2) Changing /u/ to /ɯ/ and have it only have rounding after syllables containing /o/
3) Leniting /d/ to [ð] after a vowel.

[Micamo]

Vowel affection would definitely be a great way to spice up the morphology, if/when you get around to doing that. And I think voiceless sonorants are a great idea.

[Raydred]

How can a language about the winter not have [ʙ]!?
It's outrageous!
(sorry I just love this consonant)

[teh_Foxx0rz]

I think /d/ sounds quite warm, but it could be the warmness of snuggling up by the fire on a snowy evening! :)

[KiKi Tampusa]

Well it also needs to be stated what face of winter, blizzard, light snowfall, heavy calm snowfall, clear day, cloudy day, first day after snow, week after snow, sleet, hair rain L.A snow, Rockies snow, alps snow, tundra snow, inside by a fire looking out the window snow...

[roninbodhisattva]

The first sentence in Winter, which, funny enough, has nothing to do with the season:

Men tanel sa. Ire ja men (llo) tinea sa jued
1sg cat COP.PRS:1/2.. now FOC 1sg (NEG) be.called INFL.PRS:1/2 nothing
'I am a cat. Now, I am called nothing.'

I did it for a TC over at the ZBB. Another sentence:

feara si.
snow INFL.PRS:3.
'It's snowing.'

The words sa (seen in the first two) and si are present tense forms of the copula/inflectional element that must be present in every predicate in the language. These inflectional elements make a distinction between a subject being 1st or 2nd person (sa) or 3rd person (si). I haven't figured out how they work exactly, but it's gonna be something that I carry out.

[Kehgrehdid]

Somehow I'd think that a language about winter would be heavily weighted towards unvoiced consonants (coldness, quiet), as well as having /ʃ/, (and maybe more fricatives, in addition to /f/ and /s/) to represent the wind. I'd personally also include "kh," but I usually think of winter as harsh first. My humble opinion, do with it what you will, but most of all have fun with this!

[Ceresz]

I have to admit that I really like the look of this language so far, and I'm glad that you're continuing to work on it :-).

[Golahet]

A winter language without ejectives??

I propose /tʼ kʼ sʼ ɬʼ/ [tʼ kʼ sʼ ɬʼ] or [tʼ kʼ tsʼ tɬʼ]

[Ceresz]

Obviously everyone associates winter with different sounds. I myself would never think of ejectives as wintery sounds :-s.

[Golahet]

Ejectives sound like walking in snow, or the sparkings of a fire in the winter night.

[Ceresz]

Each to his own. I do agree with whoever said that [ʙ] is pretty wintery, due to obvious reasons.

[roninbodhisattva]

Well, the majority of the consonants in this language are voiceless...personally, I like /K/ better for winter than /S/...but as someone says, everyone has their own ideas! Ejectives to me I could see, but it would have to be done in a specific way. Maybe only used in some kind of sound symbolism. Or very limited distribution. I might actually think about that.

[Raydred]

Voiced consonants are warm. Ejectives are warm too.
Simbilants and voiceless fricatives in general are cold too. Voiceless fricatives which are harsh but at the same time weak, sound winterish too. Uvular trills sound nordic but not necessarily cold or winterish.
I vote for: [ʂ] or [ʃ], [ʙ] and [x]

Yours truly, a non-synesthete (sarcasm off)

[teh_Foxx0rz]

I agree with Mahal that ejectives sound like a crackling fire or something... not all warmness in this lang is bad necessarily :)

[Micamo]

You could make an argument for any type of sound to be included with such loose analogies. Clicks sound like tree branches snapping under the weight of snow.