Welcome, Guest

Author Topic: Standard Soleani Lessons  (Read 4038 times)

atomic7732

  • Global Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 3848
  • caught in the river turning blue
    • Paladin of Storms
Standard Soleani Lessons
« on: January 01, 2015, 04:06:51 PM »
This thread is for anyone interested in learning about the Soleani language. Since it is a conlang and not an indoeuropean lang I will go over the pronunciation of words. I will explain the standard dialect spoken in Saelunavvk and nearby in the Lower Solekh River Valley.

In the standard Soleani latinized orthography, the language is spelled «zolethani». There's a reason I usually use the former spelling more often, because it will usually key the reader, experienced or not with linguistics, to pronounce the name of the language (and country) more closely.

I can explain the orthography and phonology together because for the most part, one symbol matches up with one single sound. Aside from a small bit of allophony which happens when two sounds are right next to each other and one of them changes, or they merge into one sound.
Soleani uses a special order of the latinized characters adapted from the grid which is used to teach the native script, kapunaki, as an alternative to an alphabet

So today I'll go over the consonants in Soleani:

p - pretty much the same but no word-initial aspiration (pat vs spat)
t - dental, so think Spanish
d - also Spanishy
k - pretty much same again, no aspriation
g - same as English
th - at first glance you might think 'th' sounds like th in 'this' or 'these', but it's actually a glottal stop. English has plenty of these and you probably don't even know it. it also appears in such phrases as 'uh-oh'

those are pretty easy, don't worry too much about these stops too much

q - Soleani picked up this single click from areal interaction with the nearby sevákgani languages which have an inventory of clicks and ejectives. q is a dental click in Soleani. Simply put your tongue behind your front teeth and suck air in, creating a click-like noise. This sound is onomatopoeically in English, and if you know what I'm talking about, you probably can easily make this sound, but it can be difficult to learn to put into a word.

The sonorants overall are pretty simple:

l - same as English
n - same as English, but dental (tongue on back of front teeth)
ŋ - this sound is in English as 'ng' and sometimes allophonically, such as in 'kink', pretty easy
r - Soleani 'r' is a voiceless alveolar tap. It's a sound in Icelandic. I can't really describe it better than devoice Spanish 'r'. To make it confusing, r can be used as a vowel as well, but that is a case we'll discuss later, it's pretty rare.

And then you have the fricatives. As a general rule, front fricatives have two forms, but use only one letter. At the beginning of a word, the sound is devoiced. Otherwise, the sound is voiced. This applies to the following:

v - English f word-initial, otherwise English v
z - English s word-initial, otherwise English z
j - The voiceless version of Soleani j is an allophone of English h, such as the sound in 'huge'. The voiced version is in Spanish and depending on dialect may be y or ll. It's a palatal sound.

The next fricatives each are one sound per character:

h - Scottich 'loch'
gh - voiced counterpart to Soleani h, Spanish g when followed by e or i
kh - voiceless uvular sound. place your tongue a bit further back than where it is at 'k' and keep it loose and let your uvula softly vibrate against your tongue
Å¡ - Welsh ll, place your tongue in the position of saying English l, and blow air on both sides of your tongue. it sounds kind of like 'sh'

And that's it for the consonants.

For IPA people: /p t̪ d̪ k g ʔ ǀ l n̪ ŋ ɾ̥ f~v s~z ç~ʝ x ɣ χ ɬ/

I'll update this thread as the language continues to evolve and people ask for clarification on things.
« Last Edit: January 01, 2015, 04:12:09 PM by atomic7732 »

Gordon Freeman

  • *****
  • Posts: 480
Re: Standard Soleani Lessons
« Reply #1 on: January 01, 2015, 04:15:25 PM »
"Scottich"

Pretty interesting. Do Soleanis have modern art for mouths?

FiahOwl

  • *****
  • Posts: 1234
  • This is, to give a dog and in recompense desire my dog again.
Re: Standard Soleani Lessons
« Reply #2 on: January 01, 2015, 04:59:27 PM »

This message is only viewable with Universe Sandbox Galaxy Edition. Access it and much more with promo-code '145319'.

« Last Edit: March 22, 2021, 12:57:41 AM by FiahOwl »

Gordon Freeman

  • *****
  • Posts: 480
Re: Standard Soleani Lessons
« Reply #3 on: January 01, 2015, 05:01:57 PM »
No, but people in the UAE have flags for rocks.

Darvince

  • *****
  • Posts: 1842
  • 差不多
Re: Standard Soleani Lessons
« Reply #4 on: January 01, 2015, 06:01:50 PM »
Interesting. Do UAEs poop gold?

also I thought soleani is an auxlang created to ease communication between the groups of zoletha

atomic7732

  • Global Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 3848
  • caught in the river turning blue
    • Paladin of Storms
Re: Standard Soleani Lessons
« Reply #5 on: January 01, 2015, 06:03:50 PM »
can we talk about soleani pls thanks

blotz

  • Formerly 'bong'
  • *****
  • Posts: 813
  • op pls
Re: Standard Soleani Lessons
« Reply #6 on: January 01, 2015, 06:29:44 PM »
how do you say hi

Darvince

  • *****
  • Posts: 1842
  • 差不多
Re: Standard Soleani Lessons
« Reply #7 on: January 01, 2015, 06:49:50 PM »
Initiator: kazagha
Responder: kaziha

I'm not sure about the grammar behind it

Gordon Freeman

  • *****
  • Posts: 480
Re: Standard Soleani Lessons
« Reply #8 on: January 02, 2015, 01:10:56 AM »
Interesting. Do UAEs poop gold?

No, the flamboyantly decorate mountainsides with paintings of the Emirate flag.

Initiator: kazagha
Responder: kaziha

How does that work

Darvince

  • *****
  • Posts: 1842
  • 差不多
Re: Standard Soleani Lessons
« Reply #9 on: January 02, 2015, 01:12:30 AM »
But the UAE is just sand dunes and rich oils!

atomic7732

  • Global Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 3848
  • caught in the river turning blue
    • Paladin of Storms
Re: Standard Soleani Lessons
« Reply #10 on: January 02, 2015, 01:13:33 AM »
Initiator: kazągha
Responder: kaziha

I'm not sure about the grammar behind it
an ogonek because stress, which I'll explain later, but it means you stress 'za' instead of 'ka'

Basically yes, there are two 'hello's, described well by dar. their usage is either alone, or before the beginning of a phrase. All interjections, kazągha/kaziha included are required to be placed before a sentence or phrase which is applies to. So for example, «kazagha, swthla tazaŋuluh zel?» ("Hello, what do you feel/how are you?")

How does that work
same way "Please" and "Thank you" do (and optionally "You're welcome").

Gordon Freeman

  • *****
  • Posts: 480
Re: Standard Soleani Lessons
« Reply #11 on: January 02, 2015, 01:19:47 AM »
But the UAE is just sand dunes and rich oils!

The north of UAE is quite mountainous, and most of the sand dunes I've been to are scattered on rocky grounds coupled with surreal electricity pylons. The rest of it is urbanized areas.

same way "Please" and "Thank you" do (and optionally "You're welcome").

ah.

atomic7732

  • Global Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 3848
  • caught in the river turning blue
    • Paladin of Storms
Re: Standard Soleani Lessons
« Reply #12 on: January 02, 2015, 02:05:53 AM »
Okay vowels... These are interesting. Soleani is kind of in between Spanish and English in this aspect because English vowels are quite messy, and in Spanish every vowel has one sound per letter. Soleani has 7 phonemic vowels, with a total of 13 sounds. Every vowel, except for <e>, has a base form and a reduced counterpart. <e>'s reduced form is exactly the same as the base form.

This is pretty simple because it is based on the phonotactics (the way sounds are put together to form words) of Soleani, which require that syllables be extremely simple. There are only 4 possible syllable structures in Soleani, 2 of which can only be found at the beginning of a word.

At any spot in the word, the syllable can take two forms. It can begin with a consonant, and be followed by a vowel. Or it can do the exact same thing as previously, and then end with a consonant. (CV, CVC)

But at the beginning of a word, and only at the beginning of the word, you can have a single vowel, or you can have a single vowel followed by one consonant. (V or VC).

That's where the two types of vowels come in. The base form of the vowel is the sound the vowel makes when the syllable in which it is the nucleus has no coda (consonant ending). An example of a syllable like this would be 'ka'.

The reduced form occurs when the syllable does have a coda. The vowel sound is "stopped short" and mutates to a different, related sound, such as in the syllable 'kak'.

Both of these types use the same letter because, to a Soleani speaker, if you switched the sounds out, it would sound weird, but it wouldn't change the word, because the vowels aren't truly "different".

There is another type of vowel, which is different, despite having the same sound as other vowels. This is the long vowel. A long vowel is any vowel marked with an acute accent, such as ú in «kúta». It will take the base form's sound, but will be spoken for twice as long. It's sound will not be reduced, even if the syllable it occurs in is capped by a consonantal coda. I say it is different because the word «kúta» is not the same as the word «kuta».

The seven Soleani vowels are, in their base form:

a - the basic 'ah' sound, pretty much like english 'caught/cot'
e - 'eh' sound in 'bet'
i - 'ee' in 'beet' - this form is used for the long vowel, but in normal form is always reduced unless it's at the end of the word
o - like Spanish o, but without lip rounding. it sounds kind of like 'foot' (but not quite)
u - 'ooh' sound such as in 'boot'
w - schwa sound. unstressed vowel pretty common in english 'concentration'
y - this sound is in some dialects of english, usually rhotacized, such as in 'bird' pretty similar to w/schwa.

IPA: [a ɛ i ɤ u ə ɜ]

Remember: i does not use it's base form unless it ends the word (or of course, is long)

The reduced forms:

a - 'aa' in 'bat'
e - As stated before, e's sound does not change.
i - 'ih' in 'kit'
o - 'ah' with rounded lips, much more so than it's occurrence in English
u - 'uh' in 'bun'
w - 'oo' without rounded lips
y - relatively common sound in English, colloquially called schwi sometimes, because it's a centralized i sound. the sound of the 'e' in the suffix 'es' such as in 'horses'

IPA: [æ ɛ ɪ ɒ ʌ ɯ ɨ]

All of the long vowels reset any sound changes to the base form and are "repeated" for twice the length.

And just to throw a wrench in your comprehension of Soleani vowels... Not all syllable nuclei are created equal. They don't all have vowels. They can have sonorants! But only some of them. In place of a vowel, a syllable in Soleani can have l, n, ŋ, or r. Soleani treats these exactly like vowels. So I guess they are. But by technical definition they aren't.

These sonorants do not have reduced forms, but r changes it's sound.

l - same as consonant sound
n - same as consonant sound
ŋ - same as consonant sound
r - r's sound changes because the consonant form is not a sonorant (it's not a sound that can have a pitch or be held for varying amounts of time). in this case, it uses the English r sound, the approximant.

Oh right, and there's also uvularized vowels. Fortunately for you guys, there's only three of them. They are marked with carons/háčeks, and take the same base form of the vowel which they are marked on.

These vowels are ǎ, ǐ, and ǔ.

For each of the vowels, you put your tongue in the position of <kh>, but the vowel <a>, <i>, or <u> is pronounced at the same time. This results in voicing (sounding more like French r) and an interesting sonorant-like effect. These can be difficult to co-articulate in a word, such as «tǔni».

Tomorrow... some words!
« Last Edit: January 02, 2015, 02:24:41 AM by atomic7732 »

Gordon Freeman

  • *****
  • Posts: 480
Re: Standard Soleani Lessons
« Reply #13 on: January 02, 2015, 01:35:21 PM »
That's one way to say tl;dr

atomic7732

  • Global Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 3848
  • caught in the river turning blue
    • Paladin of Storms
Re: Standard Soleani Lessons
« Reply #14 on: January 02, 2015, 01:38:50 PM »
you don't get words if you don't read the whole post though

Gordon Freeman

  • *****
  • Posts: 480
Re: Standard Soleani Lessons
« Reply #15 on: January 02, 2015, 01:46:47 PM »
I tried but the sounds you were describing did not have sufficient elaborations.

I'm not exposed to many dialects, sorry ;-;

atomic7732

  • Global Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 3848
  • caught in the river turning blue
    • Paladin of Storms
Re: Standard Soleani Lessons
« Reply #16 on: January 02, 2015, 02:08:40 PM »