Consonant Harmony

A brief look at consonant harmony.
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LINKS:
SCRIPT w/ SOURCES: docs.google.com/document/d/1d...
CORRECTIONS: docs.google.com/document/d/1m...
WORLD ANVIL (affliate): worldanvil.pxf.io/a7WDY
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SPECIAL THANKS PATRONS:
Maggy Bort
Lichen
Johan Spaedtke
Oliver Read
Spencer Brownlee
Ben McFarlane
Alexander Roper
JJ Albrecht
A3ulez
Andrew P Chehayl
John Hooyer
Lady Beckerton
Usedwashbucket
Patrick Kruse
Slorany
Sean M
P'undrak
Ripta Pasay
World Anvil
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MUSIC:
Udo Grunewald
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Intro & Defintion
00:32 Sibilant Coronal Harmony
04:27 Other Consonant Harmony Patterns
06:50 The Missing Harmonies
07:32 Addendum
07:53 Outro
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Thanks for watching everyone. It means a lot. :)

[@duo496]

I actively watch this guy like I know what he's talking about

[@hmwat1623]

You’d think Duo would know a lot about languages ;P

[@duo496]

@@hmwat1623 I'm just the messenger, true knowledge comes from the language gods such as Artifexian and Bibliardion

[@stickynotemetagaming]

@@duo496 yeah thats true, I can learn a language on Duo lingo, and I can learn about languages on Artifexian and bibliaridion

[@adamkirsch1904]

Omg? Duo? Commenting on an Artifexian video?!?! The ULTIMATE CROSSOVER EPISODE!

[@violet_broregarde]

Are you having difficulty understanding what consonant harmony is? Basically, it's when all the consonants in the word have something in common. For instance, you can probably tell that the consonants in sue, zoo, and shoe are a lot "softer" than the consonants in chew and Jew. In the sibilant coronal harmony system he describes, words can either contain all "soft" consonants or all "hard" consonants.

[@MrMageofHeart]

Majorly Unbounded Coronal Shibilant Harmony: a Sean Connery shtory

[@t.e9147]

While I was in Nigeria, a good amount of people pronounced "Jesus" as /ʒiʒɔs/ or more rarely /ʒiʒɔʃ/. I would use the former, and it was really only upon immigrating to Canada that I realized what I was doing.

[@xmvziron]

5:52 Edgar finally pronounced the alveolar trill correctly!!!

[@caenieve]

AAAAAA

[@petern.j.4121]

I Wouldnt say correctly, but it Is progress indeed!

[@yarlodek5842]

Close. More like a slightly trilly tap.

[@Ida-xe8pg]

2 continuous taps/ [ r̆ ]

[@Win090949]

OHMYGOD

[@ryledra6372]

It's interesting that this would also point to ways of creating a "child-speak" version of your conlang, if you wanted to write something in your language and wanted to make a character /cutsie/

[@caenieve]

I read /cutsie/ as /broad transcription IPA/... "ťootsieh"

[@Ezullof]

The issue with "child-speak" is that they are always part of the idiolects that can appear in any language. That is, there's no ONE child speak, there are common tendencies but still as many child speaks as there are children, and the differences between them and the "main" speak will be largely insignificant (including a lot of allophones, and a lot of inconsistencies). In other words, designing a child speak is similar to designing the way of speaking of a specific character, and not really a proper, consistent speak. It adds realism, but I believe it's a completely different exercise from designing a language, that follows very different rules.

[@chelsea2235]

reduplication helps. think how a child would learn the language - which consonants would they likely fuck up on - and change those in the child speak (it's helpful -if they're human- to know how the human mouth develops and how sounds are made to judge accordingly.) but also if they're older trying to sound cute than more juvenile word choice and societal seen cute things incorporated into their language also helps

[@that_orange_hat]

@@caenieve kyootsee-eh

[@gwho]

or maybe if languages kept things more consistent, we could have nice things without being called childish.

[@cerberaodollam]

"that's when things are the most tongue-twister-like" Ook, so that's why my agglutinative language has a ton of those.

[@ryuko4478]

When you said that consonant harmony is rare outside of Africa and the Americas I immediately jumped wanting to point out that in fact it is very common for Arabic and Aramaic dialects to have something called emphasis harmony, it's a secondary articulation harmony where the secondary articulation is pharyngealization or uvularization or velarization (emphatic being a term specific to Semitic languages), I'm glad you did quickly mention secondary articulation harmony though, I myself speak a dialect of Arabic that has this feature, so while Modern Standard Arabic has /dˤifdaʕ/ "frog" and /bajdˤ/ "eggs" I have /dˤafdˤaʕ/ and /bˤeːdˤ/ this made spelling words hard for me as /dˤ/ and /d/ are written with completely different letters in Arabic.

[@valentinmitterbauer4196]

Speaking a (phonetically) rather plain language i have major troubles understanding anything said in the video or anything therelike, just like with tonal languages. I even have problems with the "pitching" english does. Yet even i know the trouble of a dialect speaker learning standartised spelling. Often it's just voicing, mixing up d with t and g with k and so on because as kid i couldn't really differ them, in my dialect they are basically the same.

[@ryuko4478]

@@valentinmitterbauer4196 What language do you speak?

[@Ezullof]

@@valentinmitterbauer4196 Your language only feel plain to you because you're used to it. You wouldn't believe the features scholars find in your own language, or how strange it seems for someone speaking a very different language.

[@valentinmitterbauer4196]

@@ryuko4478 I speak a heavy dialect of austro- bavarian.

[@ryuko4478]

@@valentinmitterbauer4196 I know Austro-Bavarian speakers, it's not really a "plain language"

[@tsonga100]

Too early. Feeling protoindoeuropean

[@Regaus]

Guess we're in Proto-Germanic by now, people are starting to appear

[@gal749]

Protoafroasiatic: *allow me to introduce myself*

[@benuwuowo]

@@Regaus im kinda old norse right now lol

[@minewarz]

I'm an hour later, are we at middle English yet?

[@editname6868]

@@minewarz it’s a centillion years later, everyone speaks the same language it’s like English but every word is contracted help and the only consonant is b

[@benuwuowo]

love how i didnt understood a single thing he said 🥰🥰🥰

[@JuniperHatesTwitterlikeHandles]

Uvular harmony and certain secondary articulation harmonies sound like very cool ways to get vowel alternations.

[@Regaus]

Ah yes, something that looked confusing explained in an understandable way!

[@adamcetinkent]

Understandable?!

[@tritium1998]

Not sure if sarcasm.

[@snow5064]

it was easy to understand though, as a conlanging newbie i understood it pretty easily

[@wordart_guian]

proto-indo-european had some sort of harmony within roots, between p t k and bh dh gh

[@hirosmirnov8287]

0:02 That’s a hole in the space time continuum! Or maybe just a hiccup? With such geniuses, you never know

[@spaghettification8658]

5:53 Was that a rolled r I heard? You've finally cracked the code, eh?

[@obviativ123]

Thank the FSM 😊

[@1DMapler18]

I just finished learning about vowel and consonant harmony in my phonology class so this is a nice treat! (and I actually understood most of it!)

[@Shindashi]

Ahem: she shellzh* shea shellzh* by the shea shore

[@xeuxixiliak8417]

Edgar, can secondary articulation make a sound not participate in harmony? For example, /taːk/ -> /kaːk/ but /tʰaːk/ wouldn't become /kʰaːk/?

[@Pablo360able]

That actually makes a lot of sense - in particular, because aspiration is often a “strong” sound and thus more resilient to change than its tenuis counterpart.

[@xXJ4FARGAMERXx]

We have a word in iraqi, /tla:θɛ/ in msa it's /θla:θʌ/ which means "three" but for some reason my little brother (age 5) pronounces it /kla:sɛ/, i know that he changes /θ/ to /s/ because teeth, but why does he also change the /t/ to /k/? Like shouldn't he be saying /tla:sɛ/ instead?

[@xeuxixiliak8417]

@@xXJ4FARGAMERXx I remember reading a paper on a similar phenomenon that happens for English children, I'll see if I can find it.

[@Saturinus]

@@xXJ4FARGAMERXx For some reason many people have a problem with /t/ followed by /l/. A well known example in Swedish is the word egentligen (actually) where some replace the /t/ by /k/. And, I don't know if it's related, but in the UK non-Welsh speakers often replace Welsh /ɬ/ with /kl/.

[@xXJ4FARGAMERXx]

@@Saturinus maybe it has something to do with the *proximity* of /t/ and /l/, so they use a consonant that's farther away from /l/, so that they can quickly move the tounge back into /l/, instead of having to do the very precise movement from /t/ to /l/

[@batuhan_a_kocak]

How can we differentiate assimilation and harmony? Are they even different?

[@a___ab___b9896]

Liking it so it gets to the FU.

[@ryuko4478]

they are different, harmony is a type of assimilation, but not all assimilation is harmony, specifically harmony is assimilation that is so common that it has become a grammatical rule in the language

[@rokujadotorupata4408]

@@ryuko4478 so a synchronic assimilation?

[@ryuko4478]

@@rokujadotorupata4408 yes

[@Theo-oh3jk]

Different kinds of harmony are caused by assimilation. But not all assimilation results in various kinds of harmony. For example, a case where */adsoʃ/ > */atsoʃ/ is a different process than the case of */adsoʃ/ > */atʃoʃ/.

[@DominoPivot]

Cool! I actually have voiced harmony rules in my very WIP conlang. I just thought it made the language easier to pronounce and helps give it a strong identity.

[@themushroom2130]

so ta+bara -> da+bara? i like it

[@Zuzentasun]

Hello from Hungary! I'm TeamVowelHarmony!

[@astrangemann262]

I included laryngeal (specifically voicing) harmony in a conlang a year before this video was made, thinking I was being original. Crazy to think that is actually a thing that natlangs use.

[@Sovairu]

It's ANADEW all the way down.

[@gwho]

absolutley beautiful content

[@lubenicmackavic2780]

Thank you. As I saw the video title I was like "so... I have to make a major change for my conlang" but as I watched the video and found it is more than optional I was calm again. I actually find it pretty cool and included the voiced-unvoiced harmony in one of my conlangs (just because I love the difference betwen voicend and unvoiced consonants). I also included some exceptinios since not all consonants have their voice or unvoiced counterpart included in the language. For example the language has b but not p.

[@JamalAhmadMalik]

I love these videos.

[@GrunnenEnSeyst]

Thanks for the amazing content!!

[@yourcurtainsareugly]

Now how do I tell my roommate that our particular language does not exhibit the vocal harmony that allows "sushi" to be pronounced as "shushi"?

[@therealrabidgeek]

I absolutely love your channel. I had recently discovered it and have been binge watching. As a roll player who is making their own game world I have a question about the world that I'm currently creating. My world is a tide locked, habitable moon that orbits a super Terran planet and I'm curious how that would effect things like tidal flows, ocean currents and the like. I'm not sure if you're interested in theoretical world's like the one I'm building but I figured I would go ahead and ask. Thanks for all your content. Cheers!

[@qwertyTRiG]

Shall have to listen again when I'm not in work and can concentrate.

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Very informative!

[@uukyspuuky3121]

Love how he calls every part of the mouth with its scientific name but then just says "food hole". If it's not for making speech sounds ma boi ain't interested.

[@swfreak258]

I feel like dental vs alveolar fricatives would be an interesting consonant harmony to have

[@adainhoodges6643]

About two minutes into this video I just started cracking up because of how little I understand what he's saying.

[@soton4010]

so one of my early conlangs has bidirectional sonorant vs voiced obstruent dominace harmony. this is the patter. (note irregular patterns pop up is old more fusional affixes) m > b n > g (d irregular) l > d w > b (g irregular) it develope when voiced obstruents did. example ŋᶢati-mpe → ᵑɡatʃiᵐbe → ɡaʒiβa at the time in the proto sonorant had a tendency to post-stop, how ever after watched this video im thinkinɡ on limitinɡ its ranɡ so its not univeraal on the word

[@Ida-xe8pg]

This guy's pronunciation of /t d/s as [θ̠ ð̠] really got me

[@smergthedargon8974]

An idea I had is lateralization harmony, where alveolar and velar fricatives can only be central or lateral in a word, never co-ocurring.

[@user-tl8rk6pb6k]

Last time I was this early, my speets didn't have this harmony Oh wait... it has tsandzed already

[@corro202]

Great video.

[@haru-bun]

wooooo conlanging video!!

[@christophed8936]

You really need to write a Conlang book!

[@navisnau3140]

Thank you really much, Artifexian. I appreciate your efforts. I want to know how to do **consonant harmony** because I’m participating in a conlanging competition and one of the constraints is having at least one consonant harmony system. I chose in my case to do a sibilants harmony (the only harmony I knew at the moment) but now I feel encouraged to also add another idea (*a dorsal harmony* with uvular and velar stops & voiceless fricative) because I was introduced to other type doc consonant harmonies and how they work? I really appreciate it.

[@rubbedibubb5017]

Oo this is cool!

[@joeplavin]

It honestly fucking annoys me that you don’t gave more subscribers, the editing is too good

[@gwho]

it took me a while to understand what you meant by root. i thought you were talking about the root of the tongue, basically closer toward the throat (e.g. palatal is more "root" than alveolar).

[@spoon2023]

A godsend 🙏

[@MegaMinerd]

Interestingly, I just decided on using a form of consonant harmony in my conlang 2 days ago. To facilitate easier pronunciation, if a word ending in a plosive or a fricative is followed by a word that begins with a plosive or a fricative, the voicing of that first consonant assimilates to that of the other. However, the spelling does not change. Furthermore, if a nasal is adjacent to a plosive or a fricative in this manner, it assimilates the place of articulation, if the resulting nasal exists in the phonology. Edit: after watching more of the video, I think this might be closer to prosody than consonant harmony.

[@rommelrivera6131]

Sandhi maybe?

[@gordonbarnes7005]

My conlang has both sibilant coronal harmony and vowel harmony based on height. So the Manmade class suffix could manifest as either -tse, -tsi, -che, or -chi, depending on the vowels and sibilants in the stem.

[@asloii_1749]

Omg you did an alveolar trill!

[@kevinstrout630]

I came here from the worldbuilding videos and have absolutely no idea what is going on

[@xeuxixiliak8417]

Consonant harmony hell yeah

[@gwho]

Whenever i write a consonant inventory of a language, i always order the manner of speech along a gradient of most restricted to less restricted (or vice versa), the same way i order things from front of the mouth to back of the mouth (or vice versa). Things being in a direction along a defined spectrum should just be the way things should be sorted whenever such a dimension can be identified.

[@omeletton7117]

Can you naturalisticaly have more harmonies in your conlang, or is it limited to just one harmony. (Because i know that Natlangs can have multiple vowel harmony systems, so it seems logical that they can have more constoant harmony systems)

[@ryuko4478]

yes you can have more than one consonant harmony.

[@daniel_rossy_explica]

Since the next few videos will be about conlanguing, that means that there will be no more "WRSL...T" videos?

[@patrickhodson8715]

Is there any way there could be three groups? Like maybe plain vs labialized vs palatalized? Does that exist in natural languages?

[@Ty4ons]

Seems like it only occurs with very similar consonant sounds that often merge.

[@avaevathornton9851]

How does English's treatment of nasal-plosives sequences (e.g. how the nasals in impossible, intolerable, and, in many dialects, incredible take their place of articulation from the following plosive, despite all being realisations of the in- prefix) relate to consonant harmony? This kind of sounds like an example of major place harmony?

[@LangThoughts]

Given that there are languages like Polish and Mandarin, which have a contrast between alveolar-postalveolar-retroflex sibilants, is it possible that a language with such a contrast could develop a sibilant-coronal harmony system that contrasts all three?

[@kevinkarlsson3403]

2:04 I just realized that I actually TALK with CONSONANT HARMONY! When I speak Swedish, when a suffix has a retroflex sound, the sound at the end of the root agrees with it. E.g "Bananer" [banɑːnɛr] (bananas), "Bananerna" [banɑːɳɛɳa] "the bananas" I don't think other Swedish speakers do this, but it made me think: Can consonant harmony occur randomly in languages outside of the Americas and Africa?

[@ryuko4478]

yes, consonant harmony is more common than what Artifexian implies

[@wtc5198]

Something I was wondering for a while, do Navajo speakers carry the sibilant harmony on into their English dialect(s)?

[@rommelrivera6131]

Maybe major place harmony could occur via co-articulation harmony, then the co-articulated sounds shift to a different PoA, and after a little bit of analogy, boom, (pseudo) major place harmony

[@gabrielrangel956]

It's when you move from a dominant consonant to a tonic consonant

[@nolane.916]

Would consonant voicing harmony be possible? i.e. /p k s/ harmonizing with /b g z/

[@samrichardson5971]

Why should right to left be the most common directionality? Shouldn’t stem to affix be the most common regardless of which direction that is? Or is this the direction for stem internal stuff; if so also why?

[@kadenvanciel9335]

Lichen's your new patron?!

[@LIA-52]

*Goes on making a conlang where those child language Harmonies are adult language Harmonies*

[@Asodym]

Artifexian: You can't do coronal-dorsal harmony Me: How bout I do anyway?

[@Mr.Nichan]

0:42 For I second I was like, "Huh? Why is /vs/ a phoneme considered here? Is that common in these languages?"

[@najmaht.a.1314]

Why am I getting voice synthesizer flashbacks

[@xeuxixiliak8417]

Does harmony always have to be written in the orthography if it's a new process?

[@Sovairu]

Well, no. I would expect that a native orthography would not reflect this sound change, if the orthography had been codified before the harmony developed in speech. However, if there are any sort of spelling reforms later on, then I would expect them to start reflecting the sound changes in the writing. Also, it is likely for a Romanization or other outside orthography to also reflect the consonant harmony in writing.

[@__donez__]

@@Sovairu Yeah, there was a comment on this video by someone who speaks a dialect of Arabic, and they said that they pronounce certain words with consonant harmony (pharyngealized vs not pharyngealized) but that distinction isn't reflected in the writing system even though the sounds have separate letters.

[@WatermelonEnthusiast9]

Whens the consonant-vowel harmony video?

[@swagmund_freud6669]

I think if there are instances of children's language exhibiting a system, I could see it sticking and being naturalistic. Idk maybe if mosta their parents all died in a war or something, it would likely make the language be more like the language when they were children.

[@tamarpeer261]

One of the “buildings” in Hebrew has something like that, wherein the verb “to get old” which is supposed to be “le-hit-za-ken” it becomes “le-hiz-ta-ken” and then “le-hiz-da-ken”, and similarly with “Le-hit-sa-er” becomes “le-hits-ta-er”

[@pierreabbat6157]

I think that's metathesis with assimilation, not harmony. In consonant harmony, a consonant affects another consonant which is separated by a vowel. Here the /t/ of the prefix "hit-" and the /z/ of the root /z-q-n/ are adjacent. I know להזדקן, but what's the other word?

[@heitorb7765]

Is nasal spread (as in some South American languages) considered a kind of harmony ? What about another video about disharmony ?

[@Ezullof]

Nasal spread is also called nasal vowel-consonant harmony, so yes. Maybe he'll talk about it in the next videos though, since it's one of the biggest examples of vowel-consonant harmony.

[@jvnka]

'She shellsh shea-shellsh by the sheashore'

[@i_teleported_bread7404]

Didn't Oqolaawak have this?

[@timefortjer6705]

yes, Oqolaawak has sibilant harmony

[@asloii_1749]

Is there a kind of harmony system where a word must have sibilants or non sibilant fricatives? Say you have a prefix "she-", if the word you are attaching this to is "nas", then it would just be "shenas", but if the word you are attaching it to is "nax", then the prefix would become "çe-" or "xe-", resulting in "çenax" or "xenax".

[@sunburnedshirts3724]

i have a feeling that labial harmony might be possible if a language like big nambas develops it

[@helloworld0911]

Good fo know Sean Connery was also a pioneer in linguistics

[@conlangshowcasing2690]

Say, is Edgar considering applying consonant harmony to Oa? Also, I wonder how his language can be evolved? The downside of that is that it might violate the minimalistic priorities of Oa.

[@Omni315]

I need more examples Edgar! My ipa knowledge isn't good enough to keep up with all these examples!

[@ryuko4478]

you kinda need IPA if you wanna take phonology (or conlangs or natlangs) seriously

[@Omni315]

@@ryuko4478 I don't want to get rid of the ipa, I just want some out loud examples to help me out a bit.

[@ryuko4478]

@@Omni315 the point of IPA is to be able to understand it without audio, Edgar himself can't do most of those sounds authentically, and the papers he used as a source are text only, he doesn't have much of a choice. Extra audio would be appreciated but I wouldn't expect it if it's not English, Irish, German, or Oa.

[@3u-n3ma_r1-c0]

why do some languages gravitate to certain changes?

[@fekkezaum]

Why are you saying left to right instead of beginning to end? (considering there are languages written right to left of course) Is it for simplicity or is it a standard term in linguistics? Please excuse my ignorance!

[@OddBunsen]

I like your map, but have you considered using a map like the dymaxion or waterman butterfly? I think it’d help visualize how languages are related by land and coastline.

[@Ezullof]

Those kinds of map would only be useful when talking about languages that require them (so mostly languages from across the Bering straits). Otherwise it's just pedantic to use them, I think.

[@A-Forty3707]

i somehow read that as cosmonaut harmony

[@latomoecarlshrec-coleg313]

I noticed that when you say a word with -t sound, you may pronounce it like -sh. Like 'root' to roosh or rootch. Is that a lost feature of consonant harmony?

[@Stoneworks]

Nice

[@eaxp9307]

I'm try to translate all of these harmony to chinese, but I can't find any official vocabulary to corresponding them

[@grimtheghastly8878]

Consonant harmony + vowel harmony?

[@kacperxt371]

when I hear ts affricate I think about the letter c

[@tanoshiofm3852]

I once decided to create a language for my book, but I don't think it's necessary for a book.

[@caseyandtoryshalloween1236]

My type has 4 categories Moon,Sun,Alkaline and Flat. These onsonants can't mix.

[@NikolajLepka]

Didn't you already cover vowel harmony?

[@ryuko4478]

did he?

[@NikolajLepka]

@@ryuko4478 I could have sworn I've watched a video about it from this channel....

[@ryuko4478]

@@NikolajLepka are you mixing him up with Biblaridion? He hasn't done a video on vowel harmony but he has made languages with vowel harmony including videos of him making a language with vowel harmony. there is also David J. Peterson who did make a video on vowel harmony.

[@NikolajLepka]

@@ryuko4478 I'm not subscribed to either

[@Ezullof]

@@NikolajLepka Maybe he already talked about it, since it's not a rare feature to use in conlangs (since Tolkien did it, many imitators did too).

[@nia5032]

c̈ön̈s̈ön̈än̈ẗ

[@theviper1999uk]

I'm almost early enough for the altaic language family to be considered legit

[@kori228]

lol at Middle Chinese bilabial dissimilation

[@PCGameNerd917]

Vowel harmony when?

[@i_teleported_bread7404]

Okay, but hear me out; Consonant Harmony based on *manner of articulation*

[@MisterHunterWolf]

Plosive-Fricative Harmony ftw!

[@i_teleported_bread7404]

@@MisterHunterWolf root word +sa saf ==> safsa tak ==> saxsa

[@camelcaseco]

Any reason why you use left-to-right and right-to-left? not all writing systems use that... probably would be easier to define direction relative to affixes and roots

[@__donez__]

It's because the IPA is typically used to transcribe languages when talking about phonology, and IPA is always written left to right.

[@camelcaseco]

@@__donez__ potentially, though i think more specific language could have been used. if the ipa is the standard for linguistics then thats a problem

[@keith6706]

@@camelcaseco The whole point of the IPA is to have a standard that anyone can look at and know what sounds in what order are being described. The fact that the majority of people on the planet have a first or second language that's written left-to-right would make it the default in any case.

[@__donez__]

@@camelcaseco Why is that a problem?

[@camelcaseco]

@@__donez__ the IPA is highly eurocentric, as well as why not just use clearer terminology? if things like "from the root to the affix" were used instead, it would make it understandable easily and instantly by everyone not just those with a native language that is left to right

[@atlascove1810]

ok what if both

[@wug6175]

It is an honour to be the fourth comment in this lovely video

[@caenieve]

There is a comment. Now there are four of them. There are four _____.

[@wug6175]

@@caenieve cumment

[@caenieve]

@@wug6175 why would you do this

[@wug6175]

@@caenieve /biˈkɘz ɘ kʰan/

[@GanoGaming]

I really like your videos, but jeez, I dont understand a word. Language, especially conlanging is not my speciality. xD