{"id":548,"date":"2010-01-07T09:14:53","date_gmt":"2010-01-07T14:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/?p=548"},"modified":"2010-05-14T18:25:02","modified_gmt":"2010-05-14T22:25:02","slug":"whats-in-a-name-tone-and-sound-constraints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/07\/whats-in-a-name-tone-and-sound-constraints\/","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s in a Name? Tone and Sound Constraints"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"zemanta-img\">\n<div>\n<dl class=\"wp-caption alignright\">\n<dt class=\"wp-caption-dt\"><a href=\"http:\/\/commons.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Image:Small_a_with_acute.svg\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Small latin A with acute (\u00e1)\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/6\/69\/Small_a_with_acute.svg\/100px-Small_a_with_acute.svg.png\" alt=\"Small latin A with acute (\u00e1)\" \/><\/a><\/dt>\n<dd class=\"wp-caption-dd zemanta-img-attribution\">Image via <a href=\"http:\/\/commons.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Image:Small_a_with_acute.svg\">Wikipedia<\/a><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Here&#8217;s part 4 of our series on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/11\/whats-in-a-name-language\/\">creating a naming language<\/a>. Today we&#8217;re talking about tone and sound constraints.<\/p>\n<h3>Tone<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tone_(linguistics)\">Tone<\/a> in language is the way you inflect a word or phrase. We don&#8217;t use tone on word basis in English, but several Asian languages (and there may be others) use it. The best known of these is Mandarin Chinese, where a change of inflection can change the meaning of a word. As an example, let&#8217;s look at the Mandarin word <em>ma<\/em>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>ma<\/strong> (flat, no intonation) means &#8216;mother&#8217;. There should be a bar over the &#8216;a&#8217;, but I&#8217;m limited by HTML&#8217;s available diacritics.<\/li>\n<li><strong>m\u00e1<\/strong> (rising intonation) means &#8216;hemp&#8217;<\/li>\n<li><strong>m\u00e2<\/strong> (falling then rising intonation) means &#8216;horse&#8217;. Actually, the circumflex on this &#8216;a&#8217; should be inverted, but HTML doesn&#8217;t seem to support that.<\/li>\n<li><strong>m\u00e0<\/strong> (falling intonation) means &#8216;curse&#8217;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As you might suspect, this does make the language more complex &#8212; probably too complex for a simple naming language, but it can be a lot of fun to play with.<\/p>\n<p>A simpler way of adding tone to your words is to use a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pitch_accent\">pitch accent<\/a>. Here you denote that the stressed syllable of a word has either a high pitch or a low pitch. Some languages that use a pitch accent are Japanese, Norwegian, as well as Latin and Ancient Greek. While there&#8217;s no reason you couldn&#8217;t use a rising then falling pitch or visa versa, it might make the language more complex than you actually want to use.<\/p>\n<p>Of course you don&#8217;t have to use a pitch system. Many, many languages (including most\u00a0 of the European ones) get by just fine without it.<\/p>\n<h3>Sound Constraints<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Phonological_constraints\">Sound constraints<\/a> can go a long way to making a language sound not only internally consistent, but also distinctive. Sound constraints help determine what can and cannot be a particular word in a specific language. For example, English speakers know that <em>coss <\/em>and <em>trannel<\/em> could possible be English words, while <em>ctain <\/em>and <em>mtour <\/em>couldn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>Developing sound constraints for your language is easy. Simply develop a syllable pattern. For example, my language of Keshari uses a<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>(C)V(C) constraint. Every syllable must have a vowel and there may or may not be a consonant at the beginning and\/or end of the word. It cannot have two consonants or two vowels next to each other.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Make up any syllable pattern you like. Some languages even include a restricted set of letter options. For example, Mandarin Chinese has a syllable structure of<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>(C)(i,u)V(w, y, n, ng). Every syllable must have a vowel and may end with one of four sounds &#8212; w, y, n, or ng. Also, a syllable can begin with a consonant, possibly followed by an i or u.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For sake of ease, I&#8217;d suggest using a simple and very general pattern. Even something as easy as requiring a structure of CV(C) can really make your language sound unique, particularly when you pair it with and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/14\/whats-in-a-name-the-music-of-language\/\">unusual phoneme frequency<\/a>. These two things alone may be all you need to create your new language.<\/p>\n<p>Next time we&#8217;ll cover creating an &#8220;alphabet&#8221; and a pronunciation guide.<\/p>\n<h3>Other Posts in this Series<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/11\/whats-in-a-name-language\/\">What&#8217;s in a Name? Language!<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/14\/whats-in-a-name-the-music-of-language\/\">What&#8217;s in a Name? The Music of Language<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/30\/whats-in-a-name-stress-is-good\/\">What&#8217;s in a Name? Stress is Good<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/15\/whats-in-a-name-alphabet\/\">What&#8217;s in a Name? Alphabet<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h6 class=\"zemanta-related-title\">Related articles by Zemanta<\/h6>\n<ul class=\"zemanta-article-ul\">\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=2001\">Three-syllable Mom<\/a> (languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/horsesass.org\/?p=24353\">How do you solve a problem like people who think they can rhyme when they can&#8217;t?<\/a> (horsesass.org)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/r.zemanta.com\/?u=http%3A\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/booksblog\/2009\/aug\/05\/idiotic-joys-idioms&amp;a=6740825&amp;rid=71010a13-b89a-4fa8-a4eb-6129b4d20411&amp;e=bd43c3233c4178e1f5a143812942cb73\">The idiotic joys of idioms<\/a> (guardian.co.uk)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.revenueherald.com\/2010\/01\/25\/a-primer-on-foreign-language-e-discovery\/\">A Primer on Foreign Language E-Discovery<\/a> (revenueherald.com)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Reblog this post [with Zemanta]\" href=\"http:\/\/reblog.zemanta.com\/zemified\/71010a13-b89a-4fa8-a4eb-6129b4d20411\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/reblog_c.png?x-id=71010a13-b89a-4fa8-a4eb-6129b4d20411\" alt=\"Reblog this post [with Zemanta]\" \/><\/a><span class=\"zem-script more-related more-info pretty-attribution\"><script src=\"http:\/\/static.zemanta.com\/readside\/loader.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image via Wikipedia Here&#8217;s part 4 of our series on creating a naming language. Today we&#8217;re talking about tone and sound constraints. Tone Tone in language is the way you inflect a word or phrase. We don&#8217;t use tone on &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/07\/whats-in-a-name-tone-and-sound-constraints\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":674,"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions\/674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rpggm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}