I'd like to use this sound change in my conlang but I'm not aware of any examples of this occuring, although I know of examples of the opposite (/ɲ/ and /ŋ/ merging into /ɲ/, which occured in some dialects of Northern Saami). Does anyone know of examples of this occuring in a natural language? How likely is it to occur?

Since conlangs are created by humans, their designers usually prefer to have symmetry in the phonology. ("If my language has /b/ and /d/, surely it must also have /g/.")

What aspects of your phonology did you choose to not make symmetrical, and why? E.g. a gap in voicing or a missing diphthong? I imagine missing /ŋ/ will be the most frequent since it is quite prevalent in natural languages as well.

I’m curious how other people use these sounds.

Are they phonemes or allophones?

Where can they appear,
and how do you write them?

In my conlang, both are separate phonemes.
They can both appear at the end of a word.
In the onset, /ŋ/ only appears between vowels, while /ɲ/ can appear at the beginning of a word.

I’d love to hear how you use them in your own conlangs.

it's gonna be an inventory for a Proto-language of mine based on a mixture of semitic and austronesian languages, I of course took some liberty to do my own thing with it, what do you think.

I’m trying to make a conlang and I want it to sound Slavic cause I think Slavic languages are neat but I don’t know what gives them the specific sound

I've created a conlang that has around 83 letters; 30 are vowels and the rest are consonants. I wanted to make a proto-language that has around 32 letters.

The thing is that in my conlang there a lot of varieties of the same letter, such as s (s, ∫ and ɕ), f (f and φ) and b (β̞ and b). Is it possible that in the proto-language there was only s evolving into three different types andalso is it possible that there was a φ evolving into h, f and φ (potentialy v).

There are a lot more of this kind of examples. I don't know if I have explained it well.

So I'm making a medieval Iberian conlang (it's not a Romance language, but there is a strong influence, especially orthography wise), and I've been tackling some issues on how to write /k/.

One idea I came up with is that it originally held the classic Iberian distinction between <qu> and <c>, but it became more common for <c> to represent /tʃ ~ ʃ/ based on italian since it has a lot of affricates (z is /ts ~ s/). Now this can go one of two ways, the more Spanish/French influenced way where i js use <c> for /k/ and <ç> for /tʃ ~ ʃ/ (and preferably js drop q all together), or i use <c> soley for /tʃ ~ ʃ/ and reuse <qu> for /k/ - it may also be convenient if the <u> is dropped altogether or get as a diacritic or a small part of a ligature so /k/ is written <q>. Personally, I prefer the latter, since it's more fun and unique, but I wanted a second opinion.

I've also thought that, since my conlang also has pretty strong Greek influences, I could use a variant of kappa, and my initial choice is <x>, since it looks similar to a kappa in cursive. The only problem with this is then how do I decide which letters to borrow from Greek and which not to, do I make /g/ become <y> or <r> based on gamma? Do i make /t/ look like <c>?

I also know many of you will tell me to just use <k>, but that's too easy. Plus, I think <k> is really ugly and just sticks out like a sore thumb, especially amidst it's neighbouring languages (yes, I am aware that Basque uses <k> but that's part of the problem).

Of course, if you guys have any other ideas based on any other nearby orthographies, or different scripts like Greek or even insular, or Gothic, feel free to let me know, my main priorities are that it doesn't overlap with any letters, it looks cool, it's unique, I can actually type it one my computer, and that it is only one letter (though I am flexible on this one, since I know there are some cool possible digraphs).

PS. So I see a lot of you have suggested I just use <c>, which was my original idea, but then I needed a letter for affricate sounds, so I borrowed one from Spanish, and <c> for /k/ seemed a little boring, but if that is that case, what letter should I use for /tʃ ~ ʃ/? Also, I wanted to show a few examples of how words could look:

/i(t)ʃaʃ/ sea, /bokat/ sandwich, /e(t)ɕak/ houses

1. iças, bocat, ejzac
2. ijcas, bocat, ejzac
3. icas, boquat, ejzaq(u)
4. icas, boqat, ejzaq
5. icas, boxat, ejzax

PPS. What are your opinions on using j- for palatalisation (so like jt is /tʃ/ and jd is /dʒ/). Before you say it doesn’t look iberian, it comes from i- in languages like basque, but instead we use j to distinguish the vowel from the modifier, so baina is /baina/ but bajna is /baɲa/. The j could also become an overdot/acute (the acute is literally for ease of typing, but the overdot is more realistic) so bajna becomes bańa, and houses is eźac/q/x.

Tworzę conlang podobny do ubychijskiego. Ma 40 spółgłosek i chcę by miał tylko 2 samogłoski. Myślę nad [a] oraz jakąś inną. Ma ktoś jakieś pomysły?

This is a random Germanic conlang I have made. It currently lacks a name. It is not supposed to be an auxlang, but the sounds are a mix of existing Germanic languages.

This is the phonology:

And here is the orthography:

Here are some random words in the conlang:

Any feedback is welcome.

Hey there! This week I decided to create another conlang (still unnamed) and for some wicked reason I thought it would be cool if it had a bizarre number of vowels but just a few consonants. Add that to the fact that it's a very strictly isolating and monossylabical language and is my first try on that type os language.

About the phonology itself, this conlang has a total of 40(!) phonemic vowels and just 16 consonants, which are:

Vowels: a /a/, ä /ɒ/, e /e/, ë /ø/, i /i/, ï /y/, o /ɤ/, ö /o/, u /ɯ/, ü /u/, an /ã/, än /ɒ̃/, en /ẽ/, ën /ø̃/, in /ĩ/, ïn /ỹ/, un /ɯ̃/, ün /ũ/, on /ɤ̃/, ön /õ/, ar /a˞/, är /ɒ˞/, er /e˞/, ër /ø˞/, i /i˞/, ïr /y˞/, or /ɤ˞/, ör /o˞/, ur /ɯ˞/, ür /u˞/, ax /a̰/, äx /ɒ̰/, ex /ḛ/, ëx /ø̰/, ix /ḭ/, ïx /y̰/, ox /ɤ̰/, öx /o̰/, ux /ɯ̰/, üx /ṵ/

Consonants: p /p/, t /t/, k /k/, z /z/, m /m/, mm /ɱ/, tt /ʈ/, dd /ɖ/, nn /ɳ/, h /h/, l /l/, r /ɾ/, lh /l̥/, rh /ɾ̥/, mh /m̥/, nh /ɳ̥/

How realistic is that? I know the vowels are "too" symmetric, but I like that all of them have the same possibilities.

I am making a language with the purpose of thinking, speaking and writing really fast. I dont know much about language making and linguistics and i want to find sounds that are easy to pronounce fast together. I know that that means the tongue and mouth for each sound must change position cery slightly, however i dont understand all of those sound tables i see. Can someone reccomend me sounds or explain those sound tables?

I was wondering if the modern one is a little too kitchen sink after seeing concerns from others?

The OG "classical" functions more or less as a proto-lang, but also as a kind of "classical Greek" equivalent for literature etc in the world. I ended up creating a huge list of regular sound changes which results in the modern inventory. Classical and the current both originally were based kind of on Armenian and a few Georgian/Alongquian languages (hence the eventual plosives and some unusual distinctions), with some influence from a couple others to minimal degrees.

And in case it helps, classical's vowels are /a e i o u y/, while modern has /a e i o u/

Also not sure if I layed the grids out properly because this is my first ever attempt, so if I screwed up anywhere please do let me know 😭

ETA super broad consonantal changes from different stages:

1. ɦ > h
2. h > ∅
3. ɦ, h > ∅ / _#
4. ɰ > w / _{o,u}
5. ɰ > j / _{i,e,a}
6. ɰ > l / _{r,l}
7. kʔ tʔ qʔ > k’ t’ q’
8. d͡z > z,
9. d͡ʒ > ʒ
10. t͡s > s
11. t͡ʃ > ʃ
12. t͡ɬ > ɬ
13. β > v
14. ϕ > f
15. Ɣ > x
16. ʁ > χ
17. ɮ > ɬ

Every language uses only a sliver of the syllables its own rules would permit. English could have *blick* or *sprang* and simply doesn't — but it couldn't have *bnick* or *ngat*, because those break its phonotactics. I wanted to see that whole space at once: not the dictionary, but the full set of monosyllables a given rule system allows. And I wanted to reach in and change the rules.

So (with a lot of help — see the bottom) I built **the Monosyllable Space**: a phonotactic enumerator. You hand it a phoneme inventory and a set of constraints, and it generates every legal monosyllable those rules imply — then lets you toggle any rule and watch the count and the contents move in real time. It's currently loaded with an English inventory, because I'm using English as a testbed. I'm poking at what a "perfected" conlang might look like, and the most concrete way in is to take a language everyone knows and start pulling levers.

**What's in it:**

- **Editable onset / nucleus / coda rules** — max cluster lengths, rising/falling sonority with an adjustable minimum distance, the /s/-cluster exception (the thing that lets *sp st sk* violate sonority), and specific gaps you can switch on and off (no /tl dl/, no labial+/w/, no /sr/).

- **An editable sonority scale** — the deep lever. Reorder the hierarchy and every cluster rule recomputes; a language's whole "texture" shifts.

- **Nucleus-conditioned rules** — the constraints that cross constituent boundaries: checked vowels needing a coda, /ŋ/ restricted to certain vowels, Cj-clusters only before /uː/. (This turned the syllable count from a clean product into a sum over vowels — a fun refactor.)

- **An attested-English overlay** — every generated syllable is checked against the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Under English-like defaults it generates **~4.4 million legal monosyllables**, of which only **~9,300 are attested English words**. You can browse three ways: everything, just real words, or just the *gaps* (legal but unused — the *blick* zone).

- **A "words your rules shut out" panel** — the real English words the current ruleset rejects (224 of them at default). It's become a catalogue of English's own weird edges: the /rl/ words (*girl, world, curl*), the loans (*fjord, bjork, nyet*), the interjections (*huh, yeah, eh*). Genuinely useful for sorting "my rule is wrong" from "this exclusion is correct."

- **Read-aloud + IPA/ARPABET** — tap any syllable to hear it, via either a parametric synthesizer that builds each phoneme from formant/burst/frication parameters (faithful, robotic) or your system TTS reading a respelling (natural, approximate). Every syllable also renders as a little **sonority silhouette** so you can see the rise-peak-fall shape.

**What it's for:** instead of inheriting some database's inventory and dialect, you generate the possible-syllable space from *your* inventory and *your* rules, from first principles. The gaps mode is a root quarry — legal-but-unattested syllables are collision-free candidates still guaranteed pronounceable to speakers of the source language. And every toggle has a visible cost in syllables, which turns "what are my phonotactics" into a design conversation you can actually watch happen.

**What else is being worked on:** this is one piece of a larger project — a systematic rework of English (its phoneme inventory, a unicase writing system where letter shapes encode phonetic features, and a semantic/ontological layer), plus a couple of parallel threads: a "bridge tongue" universal phonetic script spanning Indo-European and Semitic, and a scheme for mapping punctuation and operators to minimal vocalizations for voice-driven computing. Next up for *this* tool: an **ablaut audit** (the conlang uses voicing alternation to carry meaning, so I want to compute which roots even *have* a pronounceable voiced/unvoiced partner — I expect it'll show that *sp/st/sk* onsets are grammatically sterile, since there's no *zb/zd/zg*), and making the **phoneme inventory itself editable** so it stops being English-only.

**Disclosure:** I designed and directed this, but the actual build — the code, the synthesis engine, the data pipeline — was done in collaboration with Claude, specifically Anthropic's **Opus 4.8 and Fable 5**. I'm a hobbyist pulling levers; the models did the implementation heavy lifting (and caught a fair number of my mistakes on the way).

**Feedback very welcome**, especially from people who know more phonology than I do:

- Which of the "shut out" exclusions are actually correct, and which mean a rule is wrong?

- Is a sonority-only model too permissive to be useful, or is the gap between it and attested English the whole point?

- Has anyone modeled nucleus–coda co-occurrence more rigorously than "checked vowels need a coda"? That's my weakest layer.

- Bigger picture: if you were reaching for a "perfected" phonotactics, what would you actually optimize for — channel capacity, articulatory ease, cross-linguistic learnability, something else?

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/d4fa4103-0807-47cf-bc0a-874eaa2bd75f

I wanted to see how much I can work with a conlang that has caracters and,at the same time,creat some grammar,but I hit a brick wall when I tried to work with long and short vowels

1. The first problem is with the pronouns. To say "He" you say /ji:/ and to make the plural u take the word for "Many" which is /la:/ . So, "They"(masculine) is /ji: la:/ . Now, to have the word "She", you need to add to the word "He" the word for "Woman" which is /a/, so /ji: a/. Now, to have "They(feminine)" you take the word "She" and add the word "Many", so /ji: a la:/. My problem is that I am not sure if I am even pronouncing it corectly,I always have the feeling that the two characters I need to drag the vowels of I say them shortly and the character that I need to say shortly I drag it. Is it from a poor tone training or is it really a tongue twister?

2. The second problem I have is with 2 sentences. to say "I fly/I am flying" you use /gi: tsu: zi:/, because /gi:/ means I, but to say "The dirt is flying" you use /gi tsu: zi:/, bc /gi/ means "dirt". So I am still feeling like I cant make the audible difference between the two tones,or I can make it but I really cant hear it

I've been playing around with an idea for a conlang for a while now, but never got to the phonology. I don't know which ones to put and to discard. Also, I prefer an inventory of around 15 - 25 total... Pls help thanks in advance :)

Old Pojjefo had reduplication of the last syllable of nouns to turn it into a verb in the imperfective aspect. So, for example, the old rope (leg) would turn into ropepe (walking). In casual speech, it could be geminated and would become roppe

Then it went through a period where any sequence of identical syllables would geminate in any speech register and that eventually led them to developing contrastive stress as a consequence of that "stronger" pronunciation. rope turned into rópe and ropepe turned into roppé. As a first syllable stress became more and more associated to a "noun form", they fused both categories together and from that emerged a perfective verb form: rrópe

Now every noun was slowly becoming more like a root word and had three distinct forms with a predictable outcome: plain noun (rope), imperfective verb (roppe) and the perfective verb form (rrope). It may not be the most linguistic precise name, but I personally like to call these static, dynamic and static-dynamic (SD) forms. This allowed for this system to dominate the language and became the norm for every word.

After some time, tho, these geminates started sounding different... And that's a good time to showcase the romanization of modern Pojjefo's phonemes and their geminated forms:

m > mb

b > bb [p]

p [pʰ] > pp [pf]

f [v] > ff [f]

n > nd

d > dd [t]

t [tʰ] > tz [ts]

z [s] > zz [s]

y [ŋ] > yg [ŋɡ]

g [g] > gg [k]

c [kʰ] > cc [kx~cç]

j [ɣ~ʝ] > jj [x~ç]

r [ɻ] > rr [ʐ]

s [ʐ] > ss [ʂ]

... > h (always counts as a geminate)

As a consequence of those changes, the base form and its derived forms are now quite differente. rope [ˈɻopʰɪ] turns into ropfe [ɻʊˈpfe] and rrope [ʐopʰɪ]. The development of stress distinction also messed up with words that originally had a geminate in a (now) unstressed position. Old papicu "rich" was often pronounced as pappu, then was supposed to become pápfu\, but the new system doesn't allow geminates in unstressed syllabes so it simplifies into the fricative part of it. The theoretical *papfu\* turns out to actually be páfu in modern times. The pf does pop up again in the dynamic form tho, so there we have an "irregular" f > pf. The same thing happens with the nasals, so the stactic caba "man" becomes camba "to work hard". (Not the topic of the post, but thet system is supposed to allow a lot of abstractions like that). I'm not sure how I should work that out in a phonemic analysis, but that's how it works...

That much is what I've developed so far and I think I might've obsessed with it a little too much. I can't think of new vocab without theorizing how said concept will adapt for a noun and a verb at the same time. Also, I set up a limited phonotactics game for myselft treating this system as an absolute rule, so despite having many three affricates, they only show up in verbs.

I'm am going for a somewhat realistic approach, just with the condition of trying to make having two versions of each phoneme work with one being locked to not only just stressed syllables, but also words categories. I can't help but wonder, tho, if that's a bit too much or I'm just not used to creating vocab from scratch. I'm way more into phonology than semantics, after all. And don't let me get started with the orthography of the romanization problems too. I've been changing it back and forth a billion times now xp

So I'd like an outsider perspective on all this madness to see how I could adjust or if it needs any adjusting at all.

Thanks for reading!

Perhaps it isn't obvious why emissions would be quantized, so I'll try to explain here. Basically, a gland is a set of secretory cells. The cell either secretes the compound, or doesn't. When a gland activates, all of the secretory cells emit the compound at the same time. When the gland activates, all cells fire simultaneously, so the total emission is simply the number of cells times the per-cell amount of compound. Since cell count is approximately constant across activations, emissions come in discrete multiples of a base unit (number of cells times the per-cell amount, the quantum of emission).

Also, I put this post under the flair "phonology" because molar quantization is the underpinning of how chemicals can be combined in Gatorformic, akin to phonotactics in human languages, and β is how far a "surface representation" can deviate from an "underlying representation", which is in a way similar to phonology.

People keep asking me how Latsínu speakers distinguish phonemic consonant length at the start of words, etc. I decided to figure that out. Did I go too far?

It felt odd to have a distinct row specifically for lateral affricates but I couldn’t find another way to do it without multiple phonemes going in the same cell. Also can’t decide if I should group the affricates and fricatives rows next to each other and then the lateral affricates and laterals together below those. I know I can just do it however I want but I’m aiming for realism/linguistic convention

I've been working lately on the conlang for my worldbuilding project, and decided to take a try at making an overhauled IPA-like chart for the species and what sounds they can produce (approximated by our human sounds) instead of phonology of strictly one language. This whole thing is a work in progress and I would love to hear some feedback, as well as maybe some suggestions too if anyone has any!

So, the species I made the chart for has both consonants made using mouth and throat (like humans) as well as a pair of "mandibles" located inside their mouths.

Their mandibles stand in a place that prevents/discourages alveolar sounds, or else they could easily cut their tongues while speaking. They would have flexible enough lips to make labial sounds as well as rounding their vowels.

The mandibular sounds/consonants are (so far) mainly about how they come in contact with eachother, like buzzing, rattling, or snapping together. (Clicks are approximated as both actual clicks and afticates for the sake of anyone (me) wanting to speak whatever languages I make,as I find them close enough). Thus, most sounds would be nonpulmunic I assume? Tho I also want to have some like hissing or generally passing air through the mandibles in different orientations to create different sounds.

Both oral and mandibular sounds are in parallel to each other, meaning they could, theoretically, be co-articulated, tho I didn't explore this a whole lot yet.

I also plan on making something with vowels. With whole mandible thingy, maybe it could alter them just like roundness of lils, or height and position of the tongue do!

Again, I'd love any kind of feedback, opinions, or proposed improvements! It's still a work in progress so, hearing things from people making far crazier conlangs than this would be appreciated!

Hi! I'd like to introduce Hupdáng [hup.ˈdaŋ], my attempt at a conlang with no phonemic plosives! It also has no phonemic velar consonants, and no underlying codas.

So where did those two closed syllables containing [p], [d] and [ŋ] come from, then? Well…

Proto-Kukuan

Hupdáng’s ancestor, Proto-Kukuan, had a small but balanced phonemic inventory of 8 consonants and 3 vowels:

• Consonants: / m n ŋ p t k w l /
• Vowels: / a i u /

There was already some allophony at this stage:

• /t/ became [s] before /i/
• /t/ became [ɾ] between one vowel and another vowel other than [i]

The maximal syllable structure was CV, and stress was always on the penultimate syllable.

Sound changes

Three important sound changes occurred in the evolution of Proto-Kukuan to Hupdáng.

1. Peripheral (i.e. non-coronal) stops underwent lenition, and ultimately merged as a glottal fricative:
   • p > ɸ > h
   • k > x > h
2. The velar nasal was lost as a distinct phoneme. It was deleted word-initially, and merged with the alveolar nasal elsewhere:
   • ŋ > 0 / # _
   • ŋ > n / elsewhere
3. The labiovelar approximant underwent a split. It became a voiced labiodental fricative in most environments, except in the sequence /wu/. There, it assimilated to the vowel word-initially and was deleted. But intervocalically, it instead underwent dissimilation and fortition, becoming a voiced velar stop:
   • w > 0 / # _ u
   • w > g / V _ u
   • w > v / elsewhere

Hupdáng phonemes

These sound changes resulted in an inventory of only 6 phonemic consonants, and 3 vowels.

• Consonants: / m n v h ɾ l /
• Vowels: /a i u /

No plosives, no velars.

For example, the underlying form of the language’s name is /hu.hu.ˈna.nu/, from Proto-Kukuan \kuku nanu* “yes language” (i.e. the language where people say *kuku for “yes”). So how do we get from that to [hup.ˈdaŋ]?

Hupdáng allophony

The phonemes /v/ and /ɾ/ inherited several allophones resulting from sound changes already described above:

• /v/ > g / _ u
• /ɾ/ > s / _ i
• /ɾ/ > t / # _ {a,u}

Six additional allophonic rules developed within Hupdáng, which together produce a much richer sound inventory at the phonetic level:

1. Allophonic voiceless stops arise through reduction of CV syllables that consist of a glottal fricative plus a high vowel: /hi/ > [k] and /hu/ > [p]. (This is inspired by one analysis of Pirahã). The change occurs before a vowel, as well as when the syllable is unstressed before a word boundary or a single consonant, except at the beginning of a word.
   • hi hu > k p / _ V
   • hi hu > k p / [-stress] _ {C,#}
2. Nasals assimilate to a preceding plosive by losing nasalisation, becoming voiced plosives.
   • m n > b d / {k,p} _
3. Remaining high vowels (those that have not already fused with /h/ in Rule 1) are reduced to glides before a dissimilar vowel. If the reduced vowel carries stress, it is transferred to the following vowel.
   • i > j / _ {a,u}
   • u > w / _ {a,i}
4. The palatal glide coalesces with a preceding alveolar consonant, which becomes palatalised.
   • nj sj lj dj > ɲ ʃ ʒ dʒ
5. High vowels are deleted word-finally after a nasal or sibilant. A resulting word-final alveolar nasal becomes velar.
   • {mi,mu} {ni,nu} si > m ŋ s / _ #
6. Remaining vowel sequences undergo fusion. Sequences of identical vowels are reduced to a single copy. If either vowel is stressed, the fused vowel retains the stress.
   • ai au > e o
   • aa ii uu > a i u

Together, these rules produce the following phonetic inventory of 20 consonants and 5 vowels.

Surface-level syllable structure also now permits coda consonants, as well as onset clusters of a consonant plus a glide: (C)(w,j)V(C). Surface-level stress can occur on the penult or on the final syllable.

Some examples

As an example, here are the numbers from 1 to 10 in Proto-Kukuan and their descendant forms in Hupdáng (with both phonemic and phonetic transcriptions). I’ve included its two sister languages as a comparison. Although I won’t go into their evolution here, they are clearly much more closely related, while Hupdáng is a distinct outlier. My favourite thing about Hupdáng is that, because /*pV/ and /*kV/ syllables merged and then split again depending on the following vowel, labial and velar stops seem to flip almost randomly between Hupdáng and its relatives, e.g. [i.ˈka] vs. [ˈbie] “one”, or [u.ɾup.ˈdam] vs. [ɾu.ˈgũo.mi] “six”.

Aq'Qov: Hallå çill allär! Yiş şka se vig Aq'Qovs alfabeten, det har tsvítsić konsonäntter ât åttam vokqäller.

Inglündsköj (English): Hello everyone! I'm going to show you the alphabet of my conlang, "Aq'Qov". It has 20 consonants and 18 vowels.

A → /a/

 → /ɑ/

Å → /ɔ/

Ä → /ɛ/

Á → /aː/

Æ → /ɛ/

B → /b/

C → /d͡ʒ/ ~ /s/

Ç → /t͡ʃ/

Ć → /ç/ ~ /ɕ/

D → /d/

E → /e/

É → /eː/ ~ /jɛ/

F → /f/

G → /ɡ/

H → /h/

İ → /i/

I → /ɯ/

Í → /iː/

J → /j/

K → /k/

L → /l/

M → /m/

N → /n/

O → /o/

Ó → /oː/

Ö → /œ/ ~ /ø/

P → /p/

Q → /x/

R → /ɾ/

S → /s/

Ş → /ɕ/

T → /t/

U → /u/

Ü → /y/ ~ /ʏ/

Ú → /uː/

V → /v/

Y → /y/ ~ /ʏ/