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.
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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.
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:/.
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?
As for consonants, I mean which consonant phoneme would be furtherst from /m/, or /r/, or whatever. Like, the opposite of bilabial, maybe.
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.)
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.
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.
Which English dialect or standard are you using as a basis?
Well, it’s a goofy baby-talk cipher, so I’m inclined to be pretty flexible with this.
You could do it based on the furthest in the mouth, then you’d get binary vs. velar… and the alveolars are left unchanged.
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.
Diaphonemes(F) Phonemes(F) Diaphonemes(B) Phonemes(B) æ(trap), ɑː/æ(bath) /æ/ ɑː(palm), ɒ(lot) /ɒ/ ɜ:r(nurse) /ær/ ɑ:r(start) /ɑr/ ɛ(dress) /e/ ɔː(thought), ɒ/ɔː(cloth) /o/ eɪ(face) /ej/ oʊ(goat) /ow/ N/A /ew/ ɔɪ(choice) /oj/ ɛər(square) /er/ ɔ:r(north) /or/ ɪ(kit), i(happy) /ɪ/ ʊ(foot) /ʊ/ ɪər(near) /ɪr/ ʊər(cure) /ʊr/ i:(fleece) /ɪj/ u:(goose) /ʊw/ ʌ(strut), ə(comma) /ɐ/ ʌ(strut), ə(comma) /ɐ/ aɪ(price) /ɐj/ aʊ(mouth) /ɐw/ ər(letter) /ɐr/ ər(letter) /ɐr/ 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:
- /oj/ got an artificial front counterpart, /ew/.
- when inverting any /Vr/ sequence, sub the /r/ with the consonant you choose as /r/'s “opposite”.
- /ɐ/ is its own opposite. It’s a “neutral” vowel.
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.
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.
There’s also central vowels, as well as close/mid/open (plus several degrees in between) vowels, so it’s not that straightforward for vowels either.
If /i/ is the opposite of /u/ due to front/backness, what happens to central vowels? If you also flip height, what happens to schwa?
You could “flip” consonants in a similar kind of way; place and manner of articulation are essentially two linear dimensions (with place being how far forward or back in the mouth the consonant is articulated, and manner being how much the airstream is interrupted - but this is approximate). In this scheme, /b/ would become /ʔ/. There would be some difficulty because not all consonants can be made or distinguished in practice.
Is this cipher supposed to be spoken or written? You will have difficulties either way: If spoken you will end up with sounds not in the English sound inventory, so they will be hard for speakers of English (or probably: of any single particular language) to say. Some pairs of sounds that are distinct in English will be mapped to allophones. If written you will end up with sounds where there is no standard way to denote them except with IPA, in which case you’ve really made an alphabetic substitution cipher where you:
- translate to IPA
- apply a transformation to the IPA characters
In this scheme it doesn’t actually matter that you’re “flipping” the sounds; the transformation could be anything and it would be encoded, decoded and cryptanalysed in the exact same way.
What do you mean by opposite?
For m i’d say the opposite is k. M is a labial consonant and k is a glottal consonant.
For h i’d say f or v.
For r i’d say there really isn’t an opposite since it’s made in the middle of the mouth.
I used to ipa table to choose the sounds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_consonant_chart_with_audio
