Our goal is to create a coherent pidgin from language contact using no English and no translation. We have 15 members as of Oct 31.

Join here: https://discord.gg/Yx9uwuMnxZ

The conpidgin right now has mostly German, Frisian, and Old English influence, so it would be nice to see people who speak other languages join us!

https://github.com/barumau/panlexia/pull/4

For those wondering, This is what Gehon is about:

I'm not a big fan of english (the grammar rules and phonetics especially) but somehow it's still the international language. I've created an alternative for english which has clear grammar rules (with no exceptions), potentially rich vocabulary, culturally neutral and I would say much easier than english but still maintaining a good amount of rich vocabulary as english.

One thing I like about Gehon is that everyone has the same difficulty, no matter where you're from, but for english (and esparanto), europeans have higher advantage than for example an arabic or a chinese speaker would but Gehon solves that by giving everyone the same difficulty.

I have a question, how do I make a community for Gehon?

Hello!

I'm interested in having a crack at an auxlang and was wondering if any of them were mutually intelligible with french as I have some french speaking family so it'd be useful if the auxlang I picked gave me a leg up in that arena. I'm not looking to learn french as that's a much more in-depth commitment than, say, noodling about with LFN for a month or two, but a language that's got a lot of french influence - even if not a language they could understand directly - could be useful for giving me a leg up if I decide to learn later.

Any suggestions? It seems like LFN or Interlingua might be my best bets but often the claims of mutual intelligibility from auxlangs are a little overblown.

do you know any?

My last post clarified the core traits of the phonology of the suggested new worldlang Kikomun. Now it's time to flesh out the details. For this, I have relied mostly on PHOIBLE, a database that collects the exact phoneme inventories of various languages, in order to choose the consonant and vowel sounds that will make it into Kikomun. I have also decided how best to spell each of these sounds, based on which spellings are most typical among Kikomun's source languages.

Eleven of the 24 source languages use the Latin alphabetic, while no other writing system is shared by more than two of them. Therefore we use the Latin alphabet too. About half of our source languages using the Latin alphabet tend not to use any diacritics at all (English, Indonesian, Nigerian Pidgin, Swahili, Tagalog – Indonesian has one diacritical character, but its use is optional and seems to be very rare in practice). Among the others, there is little agreement on which diacritics they use. Only three diacritics (é, ê, ü) are shared by three or four of them. Two or three additional letters would do little good, and since an auxiliary language should be easy to type by all, Kikomun won't use any diacritics.

Vowels

We accept all vowels that occur in at least half of the source languages. Any additional vowels that occur in at least a quarter of them (six languages or more) are accepted as alternative pronunciations of the closest vowel. Accordingly, Kikomun has five vowels:

• a /a/ as in Spanish or Italian casa, and like or similar to the a in father and for many (especially British) speakers in bat (open front unrounded vowel).
• e /e/ as Spanish bebé, French fée, or the e in hey – but without the following i-like sound (close-mid front unrounded vowel). May also be pronounced as /ɛ/ as in ten (open-mid front unrounded vowel).
• i /i/ as in free or Spanish tipo (close front unrounded vowel). May also be pronounced as /ɪ/ as in fit (near-close near-front unrounded vowel).
• o /o/ as in Spanish como or French sot, and like or similar to the o in tore (close-mid back rounded vowel). May also be pronounced as /ɔ/ as in German voll or in not (British pronunciation) or thought (American pronunciation) (open-mid back rounded vowel).
• u /u/ as in boot or Spanish una (close back rounded vowel). May also be pronounced as /ʊ/ as in book (near-close near-back rounded vowel).

Actually the five main vowels all occur in 17 or more source languages, while none of the alternative ones occurs in more than 10, making this a very clear-cut choice. It also agrees with the WALS results discussed in my previous article, according to which Kikomun should have five or six vowels (WALS chapter 2), among them no nasalized and no front rounded vowels (chapters 10 and 11).

While some source languages distinguish between short and long vowels, vowel length is not phonemic in Kikomun. Typically the stressed vowel will be pronounced a bit longer or stronger, but that only helps to detect word boundaries and never changes the meaning of words.

Here's a chart of the vowels:

Consonants

We accept all consonants that occur in at least half of the source languages (twelve or more). Consonants may have an alternative pronunciation that's sufficiently similar to the primary pronunciation and occurs in at least three source languages. This alternative pronunciation may help a consonant to reach the necessary quota of twelve source languages if the main pronunciation by itself doesn't – instances where that's the case are documented below. Additionally, at least three of the top-5 source languages must have the phoneme, otherwise we consider it as optional (see below).

There is one consonant that occurs in less than half but more than a third of the source languages: /v/. We accept it too because it nicely fills a gap in the Latin alphabet that would otherwise go unused, facilitating the adaption of international words like video and virus. But because it doesn't reach the 50% threshold, we treat it as optional: people who have difficulties pronouncing this sound may pronounce it like another consonant instead, without risking confusion. The details will be motivated and explained below.

Based on these principles, Kikomun has 21 consonants, three of which are optional:

• b /b/ as in bus (voiced bilabial plosive).
• ch /t̠ʃ/ as in child (voiceless postalveolar affricate). May also be pronounced /tɕ/ as in Mandarin Chinese 叫 (jiào) or Russian чуть (čutʹ) (voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate). While /t̠ʃ/ already occurs in 14 source languages, the alternative pronunciation brings the total to 17 languages.
• d /d/ as in dog (voiced alveolar or dental plosive).
• f /f/ as in fish (voiceless labiodental fricative).
• g /g/ as in get (voiced velar plosive).
• h /h/ as in hat (voiceless glottal fricative). May also be pronounced /x/ as in Scottish English loch or German Buch (voiceless velar fricative). While /h/ already occurs in 17 source languages, the alternative pronunciation brings the total to 20 languages. Moreover it is needed to surpass the top-5 threshold (while /h/ occurs in Arabic and English, /x/ can be found in Mandarin and Spanish; Hindi has the similar sound /ɦ/, the voiced glottal fricative).
• j /d̠ʒ/ as in jump (voiced postalveolar affricate). May also be pronounced as /ʒ/ as in the middle of the English word vision or in French jour (voiced postalveolar fricative). While the affricate variant occurs in ten source languages, the fricative occurs in six, and at least one of them can be found in twelve source languages, just enough to pass the threshold.
• k /k/ as in kiss (voiceless velar plosive).
• l /l/ as in leg (voiced alveolar lateral approximant).
• m /m/ as in mad (voiced bilabial nasal).
• n /n/ as in nine (voiced alveolar or dental nasal).
• ng /ŋ/ as in long (voiced velar nasal). This sound occurs in 12 source languages, just surpassing the threshold, but since it can be found in only two of the top-5 languages (English and Mandarin), we consider it optional – those who find it challenging can instead pronounce a simple /n/. Moreover, we had already resolved in the last article that, per WALS, this sound is only allowed at the end of syllables, never at their beginning (since only a small number of source languages allows it at the beginning). What this means for the pronunciation of ng in the middle of words will be resolved below.
• p /p/ as in pop (voiceless bilabial plosive).
• r /ɾ/ as in Spanish caro (voiced alveolar tap or flap). May also be pronounced /r/ as in Spanish perro (voiced alveolar trill, "rolled R"). While the tap or flap occurs in 11 source languages, the trill occurs in 8, and either of them can be found in 17 source languages, well above the threshold. Together they can also be found in three of the top-5 source languages (Mandarin and English contain different rhotic sounds instead).
• s /s/ as in sit (voiceless alveolar sibilant).
• sh /ʃ/ as in ship (voiceless postalveolar fricative). May also be pronounced /ɕ/ as in Mandarin 小 (xiǎo) or Russian счастье (sčástʹje) (voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative). While /ʃ/ already occurs in 12 source languages, the alternative pronunciation brings the total to 15 languages.
• t /t/ as in top (voiceless alveolar or dental plosive).
• v /v/ as in view (voiced labiodental fricative). Since this sound only occurs in nine source languages (38%), it is considered optional – those who find it challenging can instead pronounce the semivowel /w/. This alternative is inspired by the example of Hindi, where /v/ and /w/ are allophones, with speakers pronouncing one or other (sometimes based on the context, sometimes in free variation) without a change in meaning.
• w /w/ as in weep (voiced labial-velar approximant). This semivowel is often written with the corresponding vowel letter u instead, see below for details and explanation.
• y /j/ as in you (voiced palatal approximant). This semivowel is often written with the corresponding vowel letter i instead, see below.
• z /z/ as in zoom (voiced alveolar sibilant). This sound occurs in 13 source languages, just surpassing the threshold, but since it can be found in only two of the top-5 languages (Arabic and English), we consider it optional – those who find it challenging can instead pronounce /s/, its voiceless equivalent.

The voiceless plosives (k, p, t) and the voiceless affricate (ch) may be pronounced with aspiration, as frequently used in certain English words such as pin, in Chinese 口 (kǒu), 旁 (páng), 透 (tòu), and in Hindi छोड़ना (choṛnā). We allow this as a variant since various source languages generally or occasionally use aspiration with these consonants, but it's not the default pronunciation, since the non-aspirated variants are more widespread.

Here's a chart of the consonants – their spelling is shown in parentheses if it differs from the IPA representation:

Reasons for consonants spellings

In most cases the chosen spellings are obvious, but there are some whose spelling is debatable – especially the digraphs and the sound values assigned to j and y. Generally I'd say that in all cases where the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and English, our most widely spoken source language, are in agreement, following their choice is self-evident. In cases where this is not so, the spellings most common among our Latin-written source languages were adopted, which resulted in the spellings listed above. Specifically:

• ch is used for /t̠ʃ/ in English, Nigerian Pidgin, Spanish, and Swahili. In Hausa and Indonesian, this sound is spelled c instead. While that spelling would be charming because it uses only one letter and because c isn't used for any other purpose, one shouldn't overlook that the ch spelling is twice as common – and it's used in both of the top-5 languages that use the Latin alphabet, English and Spanish. Moreover, c alone would be much more likely to be misread, as it often represents other sounds (such as /k/ and /s/) in the source languages. For both reasons, ch seems preferable. There is no other alternative spelling commonly shared by two or more source languages.
• j is used for /d̠ʒ/ in English, Hausa, Indonesian, Nigerian Pidgin, and Swahili, making this a very clear-cut choice. Moreover, in French it typically represents the related sound /ʒ/, which we allow as alternative.
• ng is used for /ŋ/ in all essentially Latin-written source languages that commonly have this sound (English, German, Indonesian, Tagalog, and Vietnamese). The only slight exception is Swahili, where ng represents /ŋɡ/ (with a following /g/ sound), while the velar nasal by itself is written as ng' (with an apostrophe at the end) – still quite close.
• sh is used for /ʃ/ in English, Hausa, Nigerian Pidgin, and Swahili. There is no alternative spelling shared by several source languages.
• y is used for /j/ in English, French, Hausa, Indonesian, Nigerian Pidgin, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, and Turkish, making this a particularly clear choice. Several of these language write this semivowel instead as i before or adjacent to other vowels, which is something we adapt too, as will be discussed below.

Kikomun's spelling system uses all letters of the basic Latin alphabetic, except for q and x. The letter c occurs only in the digraph ch.

While x is not needed for any single sound, one could consider to adopt it for the sound combination /ks/ (or alternatively /gz/), as in English, French, German, and Spanish. However, six of Kikomun's other Latin-written source languages rarely if ever use this letter (Hausa, Indonesian, Nigerian Pidgin, Swahili, Tagalog, and Turkish), while in Vietnamese, for historical reasons, it is pronounced /s/. Since a majority of the Latin-based source don't use this letter and since no special spelling for sound combinations is needed anyway, Kikomun won't use this letter.

Spelling of semivowels and allowed vowel–semivowel combinations

As already mentioned in my initial post, there will be two different spellings for the semivowels, depending on position.

• /j/ is written y as the beginning of words and between vowels, i (like the vowel to which it is closely related) elsewhere.
• /w/ is written w as the beginning of words and between vowels, u (like the vowel to which it is closely related) elsewhere.

In positions where they are written with a vowel letter, the rules for their pronunciation are relaxed: while by default they should still be pronounced as semivowels, those who find this easier can pronounce the written vowel instead – but the vowel should be pronounced unstressed and fairly short. In this way, semivowels can be used flexibly without unduly burdening speakers that find them hard to pronounce in certain contexts.

The above rule also helps to integrate words from Latin-written source languages in a form that remains closer to their original spellings, since many of these source languages use such a convention – if not always, then at least in certain words. As examples, we may consider a few fairly international words:

• English/en automatic, German/de automatisch, Spanish/es automático, French/fr automatique, Indonesian/id automatik, Turkish/tr otomatik – generally this word starts with a diphthong written with two vowel letters as au, not aw or similarly.
• Europa could be used as a similar test case for the diphthong /ew/ (exact pronunciation varies between the source languages), which is usually written eu rather then ew.
• en million, de Million, es millón, fr million, Tagalog/tl milyón, tr milyon. Most languages that have it, tend to pronounce this word with a rising diphthong (semivowel followed by vowel), /yo/ or similar. The spelling preference is less clear here, as Tagalog and Turkish write yo rather than io. However, for consistency I prefer to treat rising diphthongs (that start with a semivowel) in the same way as falling diphthongs (that end with one), therefore choosing the vowel spellings also in such cases. This also has the advantage that one doesn't have to define a precise list of consonant–semivowel pairs that are allowed as start a syllable (as I did for Lugamun). Instead we can simply express the semivowel pronunciation as the preferred one, but with the vowel pronunciation as a valid fallback for those who find it easier. For example, the standard pronunciation of the international word Bolivia is /boˈlivja/ (with a semivowel), but with /boˈlivia/ (with a short unstressed vowel) as an acceptable alternative.

On the other hand, to see that the semivowel spellings should be used at the start of words, we can use as test cases the international words en/es/fr/id/sw (Swahili)/tl/tr yoga, de Yoga as well as en yogurt, de Joghurt, es yogur, fr yaourt, id yoghurt, tl yogart, tr yoğurt – both generally written with a consonant letter (y or occasionally j) at the start. For international words starting with the semivowel /w/, whisky/whiskey and web could be used as similar test cases.

To check that the same also holds between vowels, we can consider the word en/fr/sw kiwi, de Kiwi, es kiwi/kivi, tr kivi – generally written with a consonant letter between the two i's. To see that the same also applied for the semivowel y /j/, the international words kayak and papaya could be used as test cases.

Which vowel–semivowel combinations should be allowed in Kikomun's phonology and which ones shouldn't? I don't see any particular problem with rising diphthongs (starting with a semivowel), but falling diphthongs (ending with a semivowel) tend to be hard for many speakers if the contrast between the two sounds is low. Therefore I'll adapt the following rule for falling diphthongs: between both sounds, if regarded as vowels, there must be at least one other vowel in the vowel chart (see above), i.e. they must not be directly next to each other, neither horizontally nor vertically. Only four for the ten theoretically possible falling diphthongs fulfill this condition: ai /aj/, au /aw/, eu /ew/, and oi /oj/.

If there are other falling diphthongs in the source vocabulary, only the first vowel will be kept, so the English word train (with the vowel /eɪ/, similar to /ej/) might become tren in Kikomun.

If i and u are written next to each other, the resulting sequence unambiguously represents a rising diphthong, since the corresponding falling diphthongs are forbidden. Hence iu is pronounced /ju/ and ui /wi/.

However, repetitions of the same letter should not represent a diphthong, since it could be confusing seeing the same letter being pronounced in two different ways in such a pair. Therefore, should the rising diphthongs /ji/ and /wu/ occur in any words, they are to be written as yi and wu instead.

One theoretical possibility hasn't yet been covered. Kikomun's "moderately complex" phonology allows syllables to start with two consonants as long as the second one is a liquid (l or r) or semivowel. But what if the first consonant in such a syllable is a semivowel – how should it be written? The best answer to this, I think, is to prohibit such combinations altogether, i.e. to postulate that, if a syllable starts with two consonants, the first of them won't be a semivowel. Otherwise there could be cases where syllables start with two semivowels followed by the actual vowel, resulting in a sequence that would be hard to pronounce for many. The other possibility would be a semivowel followed by a liquid, but this violates the typical sonority hierarchy, according to which more "sonorant" sounds are typically closer to the syllable nucleus (the vowel that forms its core). Semivowels are more sonorant than liquids, hence if both occur at the start of a syllable, the semivowel should be second – and Kikomun will follow this widespread tendency too. (In English, there are examples of the inverse order in writing, e.g. in the word write, but the written semivowel is always silent in such cases.)

Pronunciation of ng and of n before k

As determined, the velar nasal, written ng, will only occur at the end of syllables. Word-initial ng should therefore never occur. But what about cases where ng occurs between vowels or in other positions where it could reasonably be interpreted as starting a new syllable? One could simply forbid this, postulating that in the middle of words, ng must always be followed by another consonant that starts the new syllable.

However, an alternative solution which I consider preferable, is that the g becomes audible as a separate consonant in such cases. Hence, ng before a vowel letter (which might represent a semivowel sound) and before the liquid l or r should be pronounced as /ŋg/, with the /g/ opening the new syllable, while the /ŋ/ closes the old one. (The reason to make this rule also apply before liquids is that they are allowed as second consonant in syllables starting with two consonants in Kikomun's "moderately complex" phonology). This corresponds to the pronunciation of ng in English words like England, finger, longer, and it corresponds to the general pronunciation of ng in Swahili (where the velar nasal /ŋ/ without a following /g/ is instead written ng' with a trailing apostrophe).

Since /ŋ/ is an optional sound, pronouncing /ng/ instead of /ŋg/ in such cases is also allowed and should not hinder comprehension.

For consistency, we allow the same variability in pronunciation for the combination nk in roots: typically it will be pronounced as /ŋk/ with a velar nasal (following the model of English, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Mandarin, and other languages), but pronouncing it as /nk/ is also allowed. The written sequence ngk should be avoided in roots, since it is written as nk instead.

In cases where ng and nk occur across morpheme boundaries (say if a prefix ending in n is attached to a word starting with g and k), they should, however, be pronounced just liked they would be in isolation, as /ng/ and /nk/.

A small modification and clarification of the stress rule

Since my last post I have found a small modification to the stress rule that makes it a bit simpler and brings it closer to the rule used in Spanish:

If a word ends in a consonant sound (including a semivowel), its last syllable is stressed. Otherwise its second-to-last syllable is stressed.

(The old rule that the stress falls on the third-to-last syllable if a words ends in two true vowels, which doesn't exist in Spanish, has been dropped.)

Note that to find the stressed syllable, you have to distinguish true vowels (representing a vowel sound) from semivowels (which are often written as vowels, but are phonetically considered as consonants and never form a syllable of their own). Each true vowel is the core (nucleus) of a syllable, hence the number of syllables is identical to that of true vowels.

For example, if the international word bonsai makes it into the language in this form, it'll be stressed on its second and last syllable, due to ending in a consonant sound (semivowel): /bonˈsaj/. The words video and idea will both be stressed on the e, as it's the second-to-last syllable: /viˈdeo/, /iˈdea/. The word audio contains only two syllables (because the u and i are pronounced as semivowels) and is stressed on the first of them: /ˈawdjo/.

Methodology

While PHOIBLE collects the phoneme inventories of many languages, it often has several inventories (collections of the sounds of a language) for the same language. In their web interface, these inventories are all listed in the order of their inventory ID, probably representing the order in which they were added to PHOIBLE. For example, five inventories can be found for Hindi (as I write this).

They also have a repository of their data in machine-readable form on GitHub, and I have used it to collect the phoneme inventories of Kikomun's source languages, on which the above phonology is based. In principle I have used for each source language the first listed inventory (the one with the smallest inventory number), but with two restrictions:

1. Some of the inventories distinguish marginal phonemes (those that occur only rarely, e.g. only in some partially adapted foreign words) from normal ones (that are fairly common). Other inventories don't make this distinction. Since the distinction is useful, I skip any inventories that don't make it. In the chosen inventory, I skip all phonemes marked as marginal, considering only the non-marginal ones for this language.
2. Occasionally I noticed an error in an inventory, for example, inventory #286 for Mandarin doesn't include the sound /x/, despite it occurring in Mandarin (it's written h in Pinyin). While I didn't actively check for errors, in cases where I noticed one, I have excluded the inventory, meaning that the next one was used instead. In the case of Mandarin, PHOIBLE has collected four inventories. The first one was excluded because it doesn't have marginality information, and the second one because of this error. The actually chosen one for my study was therefore the third one, inventory #1047.

To count how often each phoneme occurs across all languages, I counted at first only the basic "quality" (as WALS calls it) of each sound – that's the basic letter (or letter combination) used to represent it in the IPA, without any modifiers. For example, the IPA adds ː (a colon-like symbol) after a sound to mark it as long; it adds a tilde to a vowel to mark it as nasalized and an ʰ (superscript h) after a consonant to mark it as aspirated. For our statistics, any such variants are counted for the base vowel – so if a source language has /aː/, that counts for /a/, /ẽ/ counts for /e/, aspirated /tʰ/ counts for /t/, etc.

Variants that can be found in at least five source languages are mentioned as explicitly permitted variants above (long vowels and aspirated voiceless plosives). For consistency I have also added the aspirated voiceless affricate /t̠ʃʰ/, though PHOIBLE lists it for only three source languages. In all cases these variants are less common than the basic phoneme itself, therefore these are only allowed variants, not the preferred pronunciation.

Next steps

I will proceed to develop Kikomun's grammar based on what WALS describes as most common features, continuing with section 2 (morphology). In parallel I will work on adapting the old word selection process I had develop for Lugamun to make it fit for Kikomun. Especially that means extending the automatic candidate generation to cover all 24 source languages (the words found in these languages must be adapted to fit Kikomun's phonology and spelling) and for finetuning the algorithm used for choosing the best of them in each case. Once that's done – but it'll be a while – the actual generation of Kikomun's vocabulary can begin!

One detail that still needs to be clarified regarding the phonology is which consonants will be allowed at the end of syllables. Syllables can end in at most one consonant per WALS, but besides that, neither WALS nor PHOIBLE has information that could help us to determine which of them should be allowed in this position. Once the candidate generation process is sufficiently set up, I plan to do a little study on which final consonants are most common in the source languages in order to decide this. (As I had already done for Lugamun with its smaller set of source languages.)