phonology
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The Bèshus Language: Phonology
This is a summary of the pronunciation of the Bèshus language, focusing on the standard language. Bèshus is a mora-timed language with pitch-accent. The phonemic inventory comprises 21 consonants and five vowels. An introduction to the language can be found here. Consonants Broad transcription IPA is given in // where…
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Phonaesthetics in Conlanging
Many conlangers (including myself) focus on linguistics when creating our conlangs. But while learning linguistics is very useful, we shouldn’t forget there is a creative side that needs to be considered. One way in which you can express creativity is through how the conlang ‘sounds’, i.e. its phonaesthetics. This is…
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An In-Depth Guide to Creating a Phonology – Part 5: Phonotactics
So far in this series, I’ve been explaining the various kinds of sounds that you can include in your conlang. But in addition to having a limited inventory of sounds, languages also have restrictions on how those sounds can be arranged in a syllable. These restrictions are called phonotactics. The…
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A Conlanger’s Guide to the Icelandic Language
In this article, I’m going to try something new. I’ve decided to talk about some features in a language that I have found interesting, which I hope will give you some ideas for your conlangs. The language that I will discuss in this article is the Icelandic Language. Icelandic is…
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An In-Depth Guide to Creating a Phonology – Part 4: Tones and Pitch Accent
In the previous part, I explained the various different types of suprasegmentals that you could include in your conlang. However, I intentionally left out pitch accent and tone because I wanted to talk about them more in-depth. A lot of people see tone as a difficult concept to grasp, but…
artificial language, Chinese, conlang, Conlanging, constructed language, contour, contour tone, downstep, fictional language, floating tone, language, linguistics, Mandarin, phonetics, phonology, pitch, pitch accent, register, register tone, suprasegmentals, syllable, tone, tone sandhi, tone terracing, tonogenesis, upstep, Worldbuilding
Stephen Escher 