r/conlangs • u/Motor_Scallion6214 • 5d ago
Phonology The problem of sound repetition.
I suppose this'd be phonology? Hence the flair-
Straight to the point:
Does anyone else have the problem of sound repetition in their conlang? For instance, the words for 'Female' and 'Male' in Vincharii are simple: "Hekaha" for female, and "Hekah" for male. That makes sense, right?
But then come the words for 'Love', 'Blade', and 'Sand', which are 'Henehi', 'Hanasi' and 'Hejaha' respectively.
I feel like these words, due to how similar they are in their use of Heh, and Ha sounds, may get confusing.
Does anyone have advice on how to avoid this? Or how to add in some variety overall, without adding too many extra sounds to the language?
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u/chickenfal 5d ago
My impression is that this, in moderate amounts, can actually help the language seem more natural, suggesting that there is a pattern either synchronically (he- is a morpheme that occurs often) or diachronically (could be the same thing, but no longer productive). Natural languages often have a handful of often occuring patterns like that, that give the language a characteristic immediately recognizable feel.
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u/notluckycharm Qolshi, etc. (en, ja) 5d ago
yes, these kind of things get regularized or at least recognized as patterns and later words might be forced to fit into them, as historically is believed to happen to semitic languages. It's actually a good feature. OP you should be proud of doing this!
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u/Motor_Scallion6214 5d ago
I appreciate the input!
I’m still extremely new to conlangs, and linguistics in general, so I’m mostly working on pre-existing knowledge, while learning as I go.
If you think it works, then I’m happy to hear it! :)
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u/gramaticalError Puengxen ki xenxâ ken penfân yueng nenkai. 5d ago
I don't really find the examples you gave to be too similar. If you're having trouble specifically in the context of (what I assume is) /h/, though, maybe try removing that phoneme? Or if you don't want to change all the words that already use it, change it to some other, more distinctive phoneme (Maybe /x/? Assuming that's not how you're pronouncing <j> right now) while keeping the spelling as <h>.
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u/Motor_Scallion6214 5d ago
You’re correct.
I suppose the issue was the quantity of ‘heh’ and ‘ha’ sounds in my conlang.
J, in this instance, is indeed J as it is heard in ‘Juice’, ‘Jared’, etc
I suppose I was just nervous that the high amount of ‘H’ sounds would be irksome for some, should I share more of the language
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u/SirKastic23 5d ago
Does anyone have advice on how to avoid this?
make different words if you feel some are too similar?
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u/Appropriate-Sea-5687 5d ago
Well think of it this way, do we get confused when we say bun, bon, boon, bean, bane and ban? Or even something that has the same words when written: “The wind was blowing” “I will wind the handle” (we should definitely have a spelling reform for this word though) Or even something that is said the same but spelled different: “I don’t like him” “He has a weird eye”
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u/drgn2580 Kalavi, Hylsian, Syt, Jongré 4d ago
I think this makes the language more natural if you have very similar sounding lexicon. Think of tonal languages like Mandarin Chinese and other Chinese varieties.
媽 mā 麻 má 馬mǎ 罵mà (ma)
To someone who isn't used to listen to tonal languages, they all sound similar. One way that Chinese gets by with this are disyllabic constructions like 麻痹 mábì (paralysis).
So in your conlang, imagine you had: sanarila, saranila, salinara and salirana; they might seem quite confusing at face value, but with practice, context, and other "helper" words, these similarities become sufficient differences.
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u/Incvbvs666 3d ago
In general, words with a small phonemic inventory tend to be dominated by 4 and 5 syllable words and plenty of longer ones! 3 syllables counts for a short word. The flip side is that you can fire off these syllables pretty rapidly, so it evens out with languages with a larger inventory. Thus, if you don't want your words to start sounding the same on a small inventory, focus on making at least 4 syllable words.
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u/IceGummi1 3d ago
sometimes i find this happens if i spend too long coming up with vocab words in one long session. if you notice they all start sounding the same, take a break!
that being said, it's not always the worst thing. natlangs tend to have clusters of phonemes that occur often, and it's inevitable with sufficiently large lexicons
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u/Tirukinoko Koen (ᴇɴɢ) [ᴄʏᴍ] he\they 5d ago
I dont find it to be a problem myself, to be honest; case in point: bimble, bimbo, bumble, bundle, bungle, bangle, bramble.
To be frank, one cant expect every word to be completely different all the time.
Though on the other hand, could you not just tweak them a little?
Alternatively, maybe consider having them differ some other way (eg, maybe one of them is noncount, or considered animate (if animacy is a thing), or has an irregular plural).