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Common (na Xafen): Difference between revisions
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===Phonotactics=== | ===Phonotactics=== | ||
Common allows a relatively complex syllable pattern, one of the chief criticisms raised against it for the suitability of its design as an international language in earlier debates within the Globalist movement. We will use the Common orthography directly in talking about syllable patterns and ignore allophony - allophony happens automatically and does not influence allowed syllable patterns. The allowed pattern of a Common syllable is: | |||
(C1)(C2)V(C3) | |||
V can be any vowel or diphthong. C3 can be any consonant other than a semivowel (j and w are out - if they appear, it will be in a CV type syllable where V is a diphthong). C1, C2 and C3 are all allowed to be ∅, so V is an allowed syllable. If C1 is ∅, C2 can be any consonant. If C2 is a stop, lateral or nasal, C1 can be s. If C2 is a trill [r], it may be preceded in C1 by a dental consonant, z or t. Those are all of the allowed onset patterns. Listing off the possible syllable onsets, they are: | |||
Null: ∅ | |||
Single consonant: c, f, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, w, x, z | |||
Two consonants: sk, sl, sm, sn, sp, st, tr, zr | |||
In addition, while the only Cr combinations that appear in native Common words are tr and zr, Common speakers don't have much trouble with stops and fricatives other than h before r, so pr, fr, sr, xr, and kr show up in some loanwords without a repair strategy explicitly employed. Speakers who need a repair strategy insert an epenthetic y into the cluster to break it up in speech. | |||
===Stress=== | |||
Common roots have stress on the first syllable. In compounds, there will usually be a primary stress on the first syllable, and a secondary stress on the first syllable of the head. Prefixes are generally not stressed, but may have a secondary stress on their first syllable if they have more that one syllable. Some suffixes may take a secondary stress on their first syllable. | |||
Stress is not usually indicated in orthography and has to be learned. In a few cases, stress is indicated orthographically with an acute accent on the stressed vowel for words with irregular stress - this is most common in personal and place names. It is common to use an acute accent to indicate stress for the benefit of learners, but real-world Common often omits the accents. | |||
Stress in Common is typically indicated by loudness, and depending on the regional variety, may also be indicated by pitch and by articulating the vowel more carefully and distinctly. While all syllables in Common generally take the same amount of time to pronounce, there are regional varieties where the vowel of the stressed syllable may be pronounced appreciably longer than the other syllables of the word. | |||
A number of words that fictively or actually arose from compounding a prefix onto a root have irregular stress on the first syllable of the putative head. This creates words with irregular stress. For the benefit of the reader, we will indicate irregular stress in most places that it occurs. | |||
===Prosody and Intonation=== | |||
Common is a syllable-timed language, with each syllable taking about the same length of time to produce. It does not tend to vowel reduction, although in casual speech and in some dialects, the sound y in unstressed syllables may be prone to reduction or deletion. Deletion of y has been a historically important process in the development of modern Common from early 21st century Common. | |||
Difference in characteristic intonation patterns is a common feature of different regional accents of Common, but in general, the intonation pattern will not be too unfamiliar to English speakers, with a characteristic falling tone at the end of declarative sentences, and a typical rising tone at the end of yes/no questions. The intonation pattern of Common is heavily influenced by English, because this is one area that was little-specified in the original language, and the early speakers, who were predominantly English-speaking, tended to apply intonation patterns from their native language without much thought. | |||
Tempo is another area that is not greatly defined in Common. Certain dialects, such as the Nuják (New York) or Hintustan (India), are known for rapid speech, while others, such as Kaskétija (Cascadia, a state in Western North America stretching from the tip of Baja California to the tip of Alaska) are known for slower speech. Speakers trying to sound like they do not have an accent, such as screen announcers, will tend to speak more slowly and enunciate carefully in order to sound more like a Cascadian, as this is a very prestigious variety of Common. | |||
==Orthography== | ==Orthography== | ||
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| style="text-align:center" | ze | | style="text-align:center" | ze | ||
| /θ/ | | /θ/ | ||
| [θ], [ð] | | [θ], [ð] | ||
|} | |} | ||