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how to "mermaid" language?

 
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Kiri



Joined: 13 Jun 2009
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 05, 2013 7:49 pm    Post subject: how to "mermaid" language? Reply with quote

How would you go about making a "mermaid" language?

I want to create one, but I'm not sure about what might be some restrictions underwater people would need to put up with... The only way to figure it out I can think of is actually putting my head under water, but I can't do that right now....

So maybe you guys have a theory or smth?

If I'm not clear enough here, I'm speaking phonetics and stuff.
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Aert



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PostPosted: Sat Apr 06, 2013 12:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I suppose that depends - do you want them to be able to speak in a human manner above water, below water, or both?

If neither, you probably want to look at modes of underwater communication, eg. dolphin whistles/clicks, humpback songs, and etc.

Of course, these would require a very different vocal apparatus, and very likely prohibit any form of human-like communication, but not much is absolute! Once you decide on a style (human-like vs. dolphin-like, etc), you can go about designing/adapting the vocal mechanism, which may not even be in the throat area.

You might also want to look at models of human vocalization, and see what could happen if you tried the same thing under water: what would happen to the vibrating tissues, and what would they sound like? What about the formant structures, given that water is so much more dense than air?

Good luck!
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Kiri



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PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 8:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I was thinking human-like (more or less) under water (well, in SCl2 to be exact, but that doesn't change much for our purpouses)
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Aert



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PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 7:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sulfur dichloride? Interesting choice. Obviously you'll need some very specialized anatomy to allow for this kind of environment, but I'm not sure how in-depth you want to go.

As a liquid, it's denser than water (1.621 g/cm^3), so the sonic properties will vary at least slightly. Sounds will travel faster than in water (just as it travels faster in water than in air), and more forceful production may be required to have the same effect (wave amplitude). This would suggest a larger thoracic cavity if the creature vocalizes like a human.

Question: do your mermaids breathe air or SCl2? If SCl2, then I would assume they have gills, which suggests no lungs, meaning no respiratory-based vocalizations. If you want human-like vocalizations, you're probably going to need an air-breathing creature.

Unless of course you don't base your mermaids on common Earth-based sea creatures and humans: you could probably get away with a liquid-breathing creature which uses an internal ballast structure as a sound box, as long as it's connected in some way to the esophagus (assuming you want the vocalizations to be from the mouth). An alternate could be something like the amplifying organs in the heads of some sea mammals, dolphins I think.

Either way though, in liquid it seems like mouth shape and especially tongue placement would be much more difficult to distinguish perceptually, so I'd probably think about doing a tonal/pitch-based language, possibly with amplitude being useful in some way. Of course, gross structural differences like mouth open/closed and lips tight or wide (assuming lips) would probably be used as well.

Based on this, you'd have a very simple standard phonology, with a more complex intonation pattern, suggestive of a language with heavy agglutination or affixation of simple (syllable) segments to a simple root.

Interesting topic!
Good luck!
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 2:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

So far, I like it.

Added in edit:
Sounds would be lower in pitch than in water; much lower than in air.
As a result, there'd be a lower limit on the speed of speech in phonemes-per-second. For comparison look at the U.S. Navy's ELF system.

Sounds also would travel a lot farther a lot faster.
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Kiri



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PostPosted: Thu Apr 25, 2013 1:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I want something that at least remotely resembles a human language, so some kind of human-like articulation would be nice. I'm thinking three places of articulation – bilabial, velar and maybe palatal? My logic is that in situations of hard audibility [t] sounds more like [k] or [p] than [c] does. But maybe it's just me, having used to [c] and [J\] in Latvian. On the other hand, maybe retroflex would be more logical as the middle one...

Anyway, do you think voiced consonants are more likely or do you think voiceless consonants are more likely in "underwater" conditions. Or maybe you have some other versions?
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 26, 2013 12:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

In natlangs voicing contrasts are more the exception than the rule; or at least one conlanger told us so on some forum or bboard or mailing list or something and nobody ever objected.

As you have doubtless heard (nearly?) every natlang has at least three of the four PoAs bilabial, alveolar, velar, glottal.

And commonly, for more than one PoA it has the MoAs nasal, fricative, and stop/plosive.

You can look up information about natlangs' consonants in WALS.info feature 1A, features 3A through 9A, and features 18A and 19A. Also Chapters 1, 3 through 9, 18 and 19.

Especially look at Features 4A and 5A, and chapters 4 and 5. 4 and 4A are about voicing of plosives and fricatives, and 5 and 5A are about voicing and gaps in the system of plosives.

http://wals.info/feature/combined/4A/5A

I just searched http://web.phonetik.uni-frankfurt.de/cgi-bin/upsid_sounds.cgi for languages with 4 or more 'short voiced no_mod1 no_mod2 no_mod3 plosive no_mod4' consonants and found 114 languages, over 25% of their database.

Looking for 4 or more 'short voiceless no_mod1 no_mod2 no_mod3 plosive no_mod4' phonemes I found 269 languages, more than 59% of their database.

Looking for 4 or more 'short voiceless no_mod1 no_mod2 fricative no_mod4' I found 156 languages, more than 34% of their database.

Looking for 4 or more 'short voiced no_mod1 no_mod2 fricative no_mod4' I found only 39 languages, less than 9% of their database. But if I look for 2 or more, I find 148 languages, over 32% of their database.

Just looking for 9 or more 'short voiced no_mod1 no_mod2 no_mod3 no_mod4' phonemes I find 237 languages, more than 52% of their database.
And looking for 5 or more 'short voiceless no_mod1 no_mod2 no_mod3 no_mod4' phonemes I found 331 languages, more than 73% of their database.

mod_3 is the one that lets you pick sibilants and laterals. Omitting my "no_mod_3" requirement, I found that 229 languages -- over 50% of their database -- have 8 or more 'short voiceless no_mod1 no_mod2 no_mod4' consonant phonemes, and 264 languages -- more than 58% of their database -- have more than 10 'short voiced no_mod1 no_mod2 no_mod4' consonant sounds.

_____________________________________________________________

I'm not sure any of that makes a difference to your mermaid conlang in that non-H2O ocean.

I would think that the contrasts that depend on the higher frequencies would be less useful and thus less used. That would (my guess) include the voiced-vs-voiceless alternation; and would also (another guess) include the sibilant-vs-nonsibilant alternation. I'm not sure the nasal-vs-nonnasal alternation wouldn't also be less useful. In general differences between non-sonorant consonants might be less useful?
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Kiri



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PostPosted: Fri Apr 26, 2013 10:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks loads! I didn't understand most of it, but still, thanks! Smile

So, voicing contrast is probably not gonna occur. As I understand it, usually this means that voiceless is the default, right? Do you think these conditions would make it different or not? I don't think voicing has anything to do with frequencies so... IDK...
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 26, 2013 8:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, I could be right or I could be wrong.

Pitch is governed by the equation:
wavelength times frequency equals speed-of-sound.

The speaker and the addressee have no control over the speed-of-sound; but the conlanger does.

I had more to say, but unfortunately didn't log on until ten minutes before closing time; so, more tomorrow, about mid-morning I hope.

(edit:)
If, as Aert says, sound travels quicker in SCl2 than in water, the same wavelength will correspond to a higher frequency; in other words the same frequency will correspond to a longer wavelength. If the merpeople's speech-apparatus is similar in size to a human's, and their ears are similar to ours (though why should they be?), that probably means that sometimes the highest formants will be ultrasonic to them. The lower formants will travel better than the higher ones, and sometimes will drown them out, just as happens to human speech sometimes, but the effect will be more pronounced in liquid than in air; maybe, also, more pronounced in SCl2 than in water. The difference between one consonant and another, and between a consonant and the lack of one, is mostly governed by the higher formants (F6 and F5 and a bit of F4) rather than the lower ones (F1 and F2 and a bit of F3). This is especially true in voiceless consonant sounds, where there is no "F0".
(/edit)

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Last edited by eldin raigmore on Sun Apr 28, 2013 7:40 pm; edited 3 times in total
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 27, 2013 6:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Speech is pretty much dependent on eight "formants" (actually six formants, one anti-formant, and one pitch).

The glottis or larynx or voice-box or vocal chords or vocal folds produce a sound that approximates a square-wave as closely as is relevant. The pitch of this vibration is nicknamed "F0" even though it's not really "the zeroth formant". It's important for tonal languages, and pitch-accent languages, and prosody; but it's mostly not important for telling one phonemic segment from another (except in languages with phonemic tone in their vowels, which is a much smaller group than languages with lexical tone, morphological tone, syntactic tone, or pitch-accent).

The formants are all convolved with the F0 sound, rather than sounded themselves. Their average frequencies are determined by the length of the voice-tract after the vocal folds up to the lips.

The first formant F1 has an average wavelength four times as long as the distance from the vocal folds to the open air just outside the lips.

Formants F2-F6 all have average wavelengths a unit fraction of F1's average wavelength, and the denominators are the consecutive odd numbers.

The second formant F2 has an average wavelength one-third as long as the first formant's. F3's average wavelength is one-fifth as long as F1's; F4's is one-seventh as long as F1's; F5's is one-ninth as long as F1's; and F6's is one-eleventh as long as F1's.

So as you would expect F2's average frequency is 3 times F1's; F3's average frequency is 5 times F1's; F4's is 7 times F1's; F5's is 9 times F1's; and F6's is 11 times F1's.

(As an aside: Obviously the formants' wave-lengths and frequencies are subject to manipulation, largely though not entirely independently of one another. "Throat-singing" (aka overtone singing) is accomplished by raising F1 and lowering F3 until they both match F2.)

____________________________________________________________

I'm about to discuss which phonemes are distinguished by which formants, and which formants distinguish which phonemes.
This was extensively investigated by Roman Jakobson (or was it Otto Jespersen? Somebody whose last name begins with a J, anyway. Wikipedia's articles on those two men don't mention phonology or phonetics at all.).
(I've decided it was probably Jakobson.)

Nasality changes or introduces an "anti-formant" sometimes called F7 or sometimes called FN. The tract between the vocal folds and the open air just outside your nose is not the same length as that from the vocal folds to the lips, so the nasal "anti-formant" doesn't really fit into the same system as F1 through F6 (just as the frequency of "F0" doesn't, since it's not governed by the same thing as F1 through F6).
I do not understand why it's called an "anti-formant". I wish I did. Maybe you can find out and let us all know?

Vowel sounds are mostly governed by F1 and F2, with a big assist from F3. F1 and F2 are governed by height (closeness) and backness; F3 is governed by roundedness. F4 hardly shows up and is mostly not important in vowels; F5 and F6 mostly don't show up at all and are never important at all in vowels.

Glides like [j ] and [w ] are mostly governed by F2 and F3, with perhaps some assist from F1 and/or F4. F5 and F6 are mostly not important in glides, and F1 and F4 are less important than F2 and F3.

Liquids like [r\`] and [l ] are governed mostly by F3 and F4, with perhaps some assist from F2 and/or F5. F1 may be totally suppressed in liquids; so may F6. The relationship between F4 and F3, however, is very important in liquids, especially in rhotics.
If I remember right, the main thing in rhotics is that F3 is raised and F4 is lowered and both are very prominent compared to all the other formants.
Also, F2 is (or often is, or may be) lowered and F1 is (or often is, or may be) raised. F5 and F6 don't usually show up on a spectrogram of a rhotic sound.
If I am not mistaken Jakobson said something like that: F4 and F3 are close together, F2 and F1 are close together, and F3 and F2 are far from each other.

Most other non-sonorant consonant sounds (not nasals, not semivowels, not approximants, not glides, and not liquids) are governed mostly by F4 and F5, with some help from F2 and/or F6. F1 is mostly suppressed and unimportant for these sounds.

Sibilants and related sounds, though, feature F6 quite heavily. They're governed mostly by F6 and F5 with some help from F4. F1 and F2 are mostly suppressed for such sounds.

_____________________________________________________________

It would be natural to wonder why, when human average headsizes between children and adults vary on the average by a ratio of up to two to one, can people understand both children and adults and not really have to work to figure out when they're saying the same phoneme?

Also, the speed of sound slows with increasing altitude (decreasing atmospheric pressure). Why don't we think our friends from the plains are speaking with an accent when we ascend the mountains with them?
For that matter, if the barometer suddenly drops sharply or rises sharply, why do we have no trouble understanding anyone?
And we don't notice their voices changing pitch, either. (Well, we do notice that a person's grown-up voice is lower than their toddler voice; but that's size, not air-pressure.)

Changes in the atmosphere do influence our perception of pitch, sometimes enough to make it more effortful to understand. For instance an atmosphere of mostly helium makes everyone's voice rise in pitch; the formants' frequencies change also in proportion.

_____________________________________________________________

If the size of your mer-people's bodies and heads are about the same as real-life humans', the nature of the medium you have them inhabit might mean that their formants change in frequency. You could get around any problem that might present by just giving them ears that can hear all that, though. Cetaceans, possibly among other creatures, can sense sounds we regard as ultrasonic, as well as the low-frequency "whalesong" that can travel across an ocean and even into the next ocean.

You need to decide whether your people use a pulmonic egressive source for most of their sounds. Do they even have lungs? And if they do, do they use them to make their speech-sounds with? And if so, do they have a larynx and vocal folds? Does their esophagus cross their trachea? How prehensile are their tongues and lips and jaws and teeth? Do they have noses? Do they have nasal sinuses? If they don't, why would they have nasal sounds? Even if they do have noses and nasal sinuses, do they use them to modify their speech-sounds?

Cetaceans have lungs, and make their sounds using air they let out of their "blow-holes" (evolutionary descendants of nostrils). Cetaceans don't use their mouths at all to make their "speech"-sounds.

Cetaceans therefore don't have "formants" like humans do. I don't know exactly how they imitate human speech-sounds.

If your mer-people make their sounds using the liquid they live in instead of air they've inhaled, they may take it in through their gills and then force it out through their mouths in order to make their speech-sounds. If they don't have lungs they won't need nor have tracheae. If they don't have a trachea crossing their esophagus they won't need nor have a larynx.

Actual fish do in fact make sounds underwater. Do you know how? I admit I don't.

Are your mer-people amphibious?
If so, when a child is growing lungs but still breathing "water" (or whatever chemical their ocean is made of), every breath will be a hiccup; while it pulls in "water" through its gills, it will use its larynx to close off its trachea so none of the liquid will get into its still-developing lungs.
Possibly grown-up speech will also be very hiccup-driven. Maybe every phrase, or every clause, or every sentence (except the longest), will begin with a hiccup; possibly end with one too.

____________________________________________________________

I don't remember what else I was going to say.
Anyway, I'm not sure you need to worry about all the above unless you want a couple of humans to learn the mer-people's language or want a couple of mer-people to learn a couple of human languages. Or both.
But if you don't want one or the other of those two things, why would you bother developing a conlang? So I'm guessing you do.
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Kiri



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PostPosted: Sat Apr 27, 2013 8:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I want to develop a conlang because I'm obsessive like that... and the story might involve a human consciousness having to learn the language.

But in reality all I need is a simple idea of the sound possibilities and I'll be able to go on from there.
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 28, 2013 7:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kiri wrote:
I want to develop a conlang because I'm obsessive like that... and the story might involve a human consciousness having to learn the language.
But in reality all I need is a simple idea of the sound possibilities and I'll be able to go on from there.

So, do you have such a simple idea yet?
If so, what is it?
Also, how much (and which parts) of this thread did you find helpful in doing that?
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PostPosted: Fri May 31, 2013 8:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

bump to repeat the questions in my previous post.
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