stabilizing the tp phonetics for posterity

Tinkerers Anonymous: Some people can't help making changes to "fix" Toki Pona. This is a playground for their ideas.
Tokiponidistoj: Iuj homoj nepre volas fari ŝanĝojn por "ripari" Tokiponon. Jen ludejo por iliaj ideoj.
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janMato
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stabilizing the tp phonetics for posterity

Post by janMato »

Words tend to erode with usage by losing initial and final vowels and consonants, especially the final ones. Because toki pona is analytics and never morphologically makes words longer (except one could argue by adding "li" to give it a verb sense.), as it erodes there will be clash on words like

mu -> mu
mun -> mu (nasalized u?)
musi -> mu (rising tone?)
mute -> mu (falling tone?)

Once toki pona becomes tonal, then it isn't an easy language anymore and learners of tp as a 2nd language will be at a significant disadvantage.

toki pona has enough space for CV words with distinct vowels, but because it tried to echo words from natural languages, we get strings of words that aren't differentiated by the 2nd vowel. It would probably also help if there were dipthongs, which aren't all that hard to pronounce, but allow for musi to turn into mui (or mu'i), mute to mue (or mu'e)

Anyhow, it isn't so much of a realistic suggestion for mutating toki pona, as for advice for other small analytic/isolating conlangs that want to stay easy for the upcoming centuries.
bronger
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Re: stabilizing the tp phonetics for posterity

Post by bronger »

janMato wrote:...

toki pona has enough space for CV words with distinct vowels, but because it tried to echo words from natural languages, we get strings of words that aren't differentiated by the 2nd vowel. It would probably also help if there were dipthongs, which aren't all that hard to pronounce, but allow for musi to turn into mui (or mu'i), mute to mue (or mu'e)
Appropos mu'e: Does Toki Pona use glottal stops like German, or are adjactent vowels connected? I plead for glottal stops because it makes the language easier to understand (although it doesn't sound so good).
Torsten Bronger
janMato
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Re: stabilizing the tp phonetics for posterity

Post by janMato »

bronger wrote:Appropos mu'e: Does Toki Pona use glottal stops like German, or are adjactent vowels connected? I plead for glottal stops because it makes the language easier to understand (although it doesn't sound so good).
Officially, toki pona doesn't have adjacent vowels inside words. They only appear at word boundaries, e.g. mi anu ilo li pana e a a a. Either I or the radio was laughing. There is no official guidance on how to deal with the sandhi. Imho, smoothly reading without stops mianuilolipanaeaaa is hard and toki pona is supposed to be easy, therefore there should be a glottal stop betwixt word ending and starting with vowels.

Now looking at the phonotactics rules, which are CV*(N) (CV repeating with optional final N) doesn't cover ijo, unless we say ijo is 'ijo and the glottal stop is the consonant. Or we just and another rule just for ijo. (optional initial consonant, then CV, then optional N)

When the official specification is silent, I like to either run a mind experiment and think of how the language would likely evolve, or imagine what a rational speaker who wants to maximize his chances of being understood might choose if they had the choice-- such as invent a glottal stop or some other contrastive sound to go between the vowels. ie. if glottal stops were an option no one would choose to not use them.
janKipo
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Re: stabilizing the tp phonetics for posterity

Post by janKipo »

Depends on how good you are at pauses. You want the words to be distinct, but there is no rule about how you do this: you might do it like this or use glottal stops or even 'h's (or thetas, to drive Lojbaners crazy). A glottal stop is not an official tp consonant, but may occur in all sorts of places. Note that the second vowel in any sandhi will be stressed, which helps a bit even without junctions.
The phonological specs for tp syllable is (C)V(n)(CV(n))<3.
How is ' a diphthong? or do you mean 'ui' and 'ue' (which, if there is deterioration are more likely, given tps strong syllabic pattern, to become 'uwi' and 'uwe')?
The safest solution to prevent loss of word contrast is probably to use longer words. But that has other problems.
janMato
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Re: stabilizing the tp phonetics for posterity

Post by janMato »

What's a theta?

So we have:
1) a. a. a. -- pauses
2)a'a'a -- glottal stops
3) (h)ahaha -- voiceless glottal frictive
4) aaa -- a held for three times as long as a single a

1 & 4 look harder than 2 and 3. 3 probably sounds better.
janKipo
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Re: stabilizing the tp phonetics for posterity

Post by janKipo »

The voiceless 'th' in 'thin' (modern Greek pronunciation of the letter theta)
4 is not acceptable for 'a a a ' since that really is three repetitions of 'a' and the long form is one way in which 'a' itself might be said (to express satisfaction, for example).
For laughter, 'a. a. a.' seems al least artificial -- or maybe sardonic. But I can imagine cases where it would be appropriate (with crescendo in a sex scene, for example)
" a'a'a " is probably best for the admonitory "Don't do that" version -- and maybe others.
and, of course, the 'h's work best for laughter.
But note that all of these are spelled 'a a a' in tp; the interpretation is left to context or to explication in the DO or a modifier -- in writing, that is. In speech you can do your best oral interp as much as you want.
janMato
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Re: stabilizing the tp phonetics for posterity

Post by janMato »

janKipo wrote:In speech you can do your best oral interp as much as you want.
But only in a useless way. If I consistently say pilin exaggerated in one fashion for "to feel" and exaggerated in another way (say with reputed possibility of fire-truck tones we-e-we-e) then I'm really creating new words. if a. a. a. is sardonic and a'a'a is disapproval and ahaha are laughing, then it's three words, not one word with 3 alternative pronunciations.

If I want to use the existing flexibility to be useful in the sense of being easy to understand, I have to pick one way of saying a word and stick with it.
janKipo
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Re: stabilizing the tp phonetics for posterity

Post by janKipo »

But remember that 'a' is any and every vocal expression. This covers a large range of possibilities (oral interp 101 ch. 2 ex 2 or thereabouts). All of them are just 'a' or 'a a' or 'a a a' in their written form. What actually is uttered can be just about anything. Consider the similar case of 'mu', which covers moo and baa and meow and woof and maa and rraow and so on. But they are all written 'mu'. The rest is oral interp on your part or nature on the whatever's part. Each choice should be appropriate to the context and your understanding of what is going on: if you do 'maa' for the victim when you should have done 'rraow' for the predator, you screw up. But you still write 'mu'. I suppose the basic thing to say is that it is probably a mistake to take 'a' and 'mu', in there fundament use, as words at all -- they don't have a meaning, though they may express something.
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