Novoslovnica. Guide for a Slavic constructed language

Likewise vowels, consonants can be compared with each other in terms of softness / hardness. The common rule is that every consonant has its soft or hard partner.

Exception: Two sounds are exceptions to this rule.

• Also nasal velar consonant ŋ has no soft pair.

• And vice versa, the sound j is soft and has no hard pair.

Remember this exception, let’s look at the table 1.7 to get acquainted with pairs of consonants.

Hard and soft consonant allophones

As you see, every consonant from table has its own soft pair. The soft consonant is usually written as a hard consonant with the sound j attached, but some of them are provided as unique sounds by IPA, because in some languages they can be phonemes.[8 - There were some attempts to use IPA for creating a language alphabet. Thus, history of IPA itself dates back to the Romic alphabet in 1887 when it was suggested to use a phonetical alphabet for English. Also there were some other attempts for western language to use symbols that further became IPA units.]

Extra sounds

By reading this paragraph you should be aware about Novoslovnica phonemes. At the beginning we will speak about two main features of the language: reproduction and alternation.

Reproduction (extra sounds) – is a process of adding a new sound (consonant or vowel) in the word.

Alternation – is a process of changing some sound (consonant or vowel) or sounds to another one (s).

What are the purposes of alternation and reproduction? These terms both obtain the single aim – to make our speech comfortable for ourselves.

Every language has its own comfortable combinations of sounds and avoided ones. Some languages alternate these uncomfortable character rows into another ones that are comfortable for language speaker in writing, some languages keep writing etymological and alternate the pronunciation of the uncomfortable words. Take into account the fact, that the concept of comfort is relative, that means two different languages (which are spoken by different nations) have different modes of comfort.

Example: you can look at and compare German and Dutch languages. They are very close, but they have different ways for comfortable pronunciation. The word «book» in German sounds like «Buch», but in Holland it sounds like «boek». Thus, you see that these words are familiar, but their pronunciation differs a lot.

Moreover, even one language spoken in different areas can differ greatly in the areas it is spoken.

Example: American and British English. You know that it is still the same language, but pronunciation differs so greatly that American person can not always understand in ordinary speech (quick temp of speaking) what the British person have said.

This is the example how the same language differs in areas it is spoken. Furthermore, these areas may not be far away from each other. You can find information about different patois and even dialects in very small regions.[9 - Chinese can be a very good example of a writing being a link between different mutually incomprehensible dialects i.e. Mandarin, Canton, Taiwan. Only Chinese traditionalistic script keep the whole language variety together (Though today there are two different systems – Traditional in Hong Kong and Taiwan and Modern in continental China.)]

Novoslovnica as a panslavic language absorbs different conceptions of the comfort term of Slavic languages.

When reproduction is used, we add a new sound before the word we want to say. It can be whether a vowel or a consonant, depending on the previous letter in the word.

When should we reproduce a sound? To deal with this problem, you should know a thesis, which is widely used in Novoslovnica.

Rule n. 1: After consonant there should be placed a vowel. And after a vowel there should be placed a consonant.

This rule will help you in speaking and writing, when you construct your words with the reproduction.

There is a limited row of sounds that are allowed to participate in reproduction. In the table 2.1 you can see all of them.

Examples:

osem (eight) [`osɛm] – vosem [`vosɛm]

gra (game) [ɦra]} – ïgra [i`ɦra]

So now the only problem is to know about how should we reproduce these sounds.

Reproduction of consonants can be found in different parts of the word. There are three places, where reproduction can appear – the beginning of the word, middle part of the word and the ending of the word.

When we speak about the beginning of the word, we should take into account what sound is at the end of the previous word. Due to rule 2 we should try to keep the «consonant-vowel» sequence inside our sentence. That’s why, we should do actions from the list below:

If the previous word ends with the vowel and temporal word begins also with the vowel we should add in the beginning of the word a consonant V or J. The choice of what letter to add depends on the vowel which is in the temporal word.

• We should choose J for soft vowels

• We should choose V for hard ones.

• If there is one consonant and one vowel in the set of the first letter from the temporal word and the last letter from the previous word, we should not add nothing.

Speaking about word endings, thesis 1 is also very important. We should add a letter B to the end of the word, if the next word begins with the vowel and temporal word ends with the vowel too.

As you see these two principles are practically equal, because wherever we add a consonant, the result will be the same. So the question is, when we should add to the end of the word a consonant and when we should add it to the beginning of the word. In practice, almost always we use the first case, when we add a consonant to the beginning of the word. The second case is used in prepositional constructions with such a word as «O» (about) (Look: «O» – «Ob»). In other cases try to use letters V and J for reproduction.

The third case of consonant reproduction is to reproduce it in the middle of the word. It is used, when there is a row of vowels in the word and it is difficult to pronounce them all together. Then you can divide them by the consonant J, which is put between the neighbor vowels. Don’t confuse it with the case, when with the addition of a vowel letter Ǐ transforms to letter J (see the next paragraph for it) and you receive to vowels divided by this consonant two. Look at the examples of consonant reproduction in the middle of the word.

Examples:

ïdiot (idiot) [`idɪot] – ïdijot [`idɪʝot]

The same situation is about vowel reconstruction. You can find it in the beginning, in the middle and in the end of the word, but it is a bit simpler than a previous one. Vowel reproduction appears when there is a rather large amount of consonants in one place of the sentence. This means that you can find a row of consonants in the word or a consonant conjunction in the end of one word and in the beginning of the next one. In any case, you should concern here about whether it is comfortable for you to pronounce these combinations of sounds.

In the beginning of the word we add a vowel Ï and there are no other cases. Very simple.

Examples:

gra (game) [ɦra]} – ïgra [i`ɦra]

In the middle or in the end of the word we add a vowel O. This case is used with prepositions and prefixes («K» – «Ko», «S» – «So» etc).

Examples:

k domu (to home) [k `domu] – ko dvoru [ko `dvoru]

Alternation

Alternation is a very important feature of Slavic languages. All of them provide some cases, when one letter changes to another one (s) and controversially. The cause is the fact that some sound combinations are difficult to be spoken or not comfortable for that. For example, Slavs can say «napisati» (to write), but «napišut» (they (will) write). The variant «napisut» is not comfortable to pronounce and, moreover, it is not understandable. What are you speaking – «to write» with hardened T or «they write» with depalatalized S. So you can see, that these rules are often experimental and cannot be explained in a common way.

Alternation can be found mostly in conjugation or declension of the word, because the process is in changing uncomfortable forms to better ones while changing the base and endings of the word.

In this paragraph we will speak about different examples of vowel and consonant palatalization. Let us begin with the consonants.

Alternation S//Š