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The Spem conlang: the phonetic mapping

I mentioned in the Spem index that I believe our ideographic associations with sounds are not entirely arbitrary, and that I believe it valuable to use the sounds "appropriately". Here I'll list all the associations as I perceive them; it will likely be enlightening for me, others, or both.

Nasals and liquids

n

distance, isolation
simplicity, smallness
negation

m

closeness, the self
physicalness; the body
comfort, support
more

ŋ

balance, conflict
hostility

r

will, willpower
strength, vigor

l

softness, comfort
vibrance, clarity

Stops

k

deep, ancient
spiritual, sublime
right
strict, rigid, hard

t

intellect
strict, rigid, hard
thin, precise

p

nature, fertility
happiness

g

destruction, entropy
physical power

d

strong, hard

b

body
big
bad, ugly

Fricatives

v

struggle, pain, conflict

z

skill, speed

s

cunningness or slyness, deception

f

weakness

ʃ

Kind of a mix between `s` and `z`?

j

messy
power

θ

calm, logic
clear, straight, right

ð

physical
unimportant, implementation
messy

h

thin, simple, ethereal

semivowels

w

muddled

y

grammatical basics
metaphysics
good (in axiological senses; moral and aesthetic)

vowels

i

high, open
inspired

u

cold, dark, low, lonely, self
completed

e

avoid
start

o

through
end
side, middle

ɪ

thin, small
straight, right, proper

ɑ

vast, wide
open

a

forward, explicit
attack

ʌ

weak vowel. some properties of `u`.

ɵ

very weak vowel. But more forward.

A couple thoughts not on any particular phoneme:

In general, bilabial consonants are physical. This is because they make us most conscious of our mouth.

Weak vowels get concrete, often physical things. "Big" vowels (particularly `i` and `u`) get more abstract things.

For the most essential and common words, the above associations were less important to me than making them 1 syllable and giving them sounds I like.

Similarly, a lot of sounds have formed "happenstance associations" in Spem, that have less to do with me thinking they actually sound that way and more to do with that I needed a family of related words that I knew would all be used very often and I had a sound I'd been underusing. Example: all the question words starting with `k`. This is probably also how `m` got associated with "more/many".

question words

I don't like words ending in stops, partly because it clashes with that most Spem words start with a consonant.

I basically never end a word with `ɪ`, `a`, or `ɵ`. It sounds cringey to me. I also tend to avoid `e` at the end compared, but not as much as the others.

I don't like phonetic repetition. I'm pretty sure this one is universal.

While I tend to talk as if all this is a matter of correctness and I have completely pure intentions in naming words, there's also a big element of vertical judgement here. I find some sounds more beautiful than others and as such I'm heavily biased toward using them more. I'm not sure to what extent these judgements are just me, so I should list those too.

My favorite vowels are, ordered, something like: `i` > `u` > `e` > `ɪ`, `a`.

My favorite consonants: `y`, `k`, `n` > `v`, `z` > `r` > `l`.

My only really disliked consonants: `ð`, `b`. I am biased toward reserving these for words that are less common, physical objects, or things associated with something I don't like.

As a general pattern I prefer voiceless stops and voiced fricatives.

Patterns

Patterns maintained more for the sake of consistency. If you see me going against these patterns anywhere, call me out, cause I shouldn't.

When I have a transitive/reflexive verb pair, if either one ends in either, the transitive ends in `i` and the reflexive in `u`.

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