Hello.
I had an idea to make English, but each phoneme is swapped for an opposite. This is easy to do for vowels - for example, /i/ and /u/ are opposites, because one is front and the other is back. I tried to figure out a similar system for consonants and have been stuck ever since. So, how would you calculate an opposite for /m/, or /h/, or /r/? I’m sure there must be a way to do it, but for the life of me I can’t figure it out.
Phonemes have multiple oppositions. For example you could argue the “opposite” of /ɪ/ is /ʊ/ (backness), or /æ/ (height), or even /i:/ (tenseness).
You’ll probably need to choose a few of those arbitrarily; no opposition applies to all phonemes. Or even to all [vowels|consonants].
For example, based on your exceptions I’m guessing you’re opposing consonants by voice, right? /b/ vs. /p/, /s/ vs. /z/, etc. For /m n ɹ/ you’d need /m̥ n̥ ɹ̥/, except English doesn’t use anything similar to those. And the voiced “opposite” of /h/ would be the whole vowel system, since [h] is basically an unvoiced vowel of indeterminate height and backness.
In some cases this might be solved by a merry-go-round, though: /m/→/n/→/ŋ/→/m/ (labial→apical→velar). For example if you’re cyphering the word “manning” /'mæn.ɪŋ/ you’d end with /'nɒŋ.ʊm/. You could also use this with non-nasals.
You’ll also need to distort a few things. For example, that /ʊ/ I used above? Well… for plenty Brits it’s a central [ʊ̈]. For /i:/ vs. /u:/ it gets even messier because some analyse them as diphthongs instead, underlyingly /ɪj/ and /ʉw/.
The schwa could be another issue because it depends heavily on stress. You could analyse it as being a reduced form of another vowel, invert that vowel, and then reduce it; often the result will be also a schwa, but at least it’s consistent.
You seem to get what I’m saying about the vowels… except for another detail I didn’t mention. I was thinking of altering the vowels to sound like baby-talk, sort of. An example that doesn’t fit the specifics but illustrates my point would be the word “hello” sounding something like /i’lø:/. But more oppositional or at least more creative in which phoneme replaces which.
As for consonants, I mean which consonant phoneme would be furtherst from /m/, or /r/, or whatever. Like, the opposite of bilabial, maybe.
That simplifies things, because it gives you some room to “force” certain pairs. You could for example shoehorn the short vowels qualities into cardinal /i e æ/ vs. /u o ɒ/, or a similar system, so the opposition becomes apparent.
Which English dialect or standard are you using as a basis?
Points of articulation (like “bilabial”) don’t work through binary opposition. You typically have a set of 3~5 points, where each contrasts with all the others, on the same level; for example /m/ is as “opposite” to /n/ as it is to /ŋ/. You could do it based on the furthest in the mouth, then you’d get binary vs. velar… and the alveolars are left unchanged. (And you probably want to change the alveolars, they’re really common.)
Yeah that’s the kinda thing I was thinking of re: vowels. I don’t know exactly what I want from the vowels, but it’s something like that.
Well, it’s a goofy baby-talk cipher, so I’m inclined to be pretty flexible with this.
I thought of that… I just think it would get too messy if I tried to be precise with this method. Maybe I just need another method.
Here’s my take. Just as a bunch of ideas, perhaps it’s helpful.
All sets were reorganised into a “pseudo-dialect” with seven vowels, no length. It shouldn’t correspond to any RL dialect, but still be close enough to be English. Almost all phonemes were paired, but:
Personally I’d go with the merry-go-round. Because it’s somewhat easy to force English into three sets of consonants, through the following changes /θ ð h/ → /f v Ø/ (all three associated with baby talk). Then you get the following:
labial: /m p b f v/ apical: /n t d s z/ dorsal: /ŋ k g ʃ ʒ/The only ones left behind are /t͡ʃ d͡ʒ l r j w/. I think /j w/ can be paired together (as if they were vowels), /l r/ (they often occur in similar environments), and then /t͡ʃ d͡ʒ/ can be analysed as sequences, so after “opposed” they end as /ps bz/, /kf gv/ or something like this, you get the idea.