Vowel-Consonant Harmony

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LINKS:
VOWEL HARMONY: • How To Evolve Vowel Ha...
CONSONANT HARMONY: • Consonant Harmony
SCRIPT w/ SOURCES: docs.google.com/document/d/1_...
CORRECTIONS: docs.google.com/document/d/1m...
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SPECIAL THANKS PATRONS:
Dehzhas
Gabriel Robles
Mountain Barber
Michael Aliotta
Maggy Bort
Lichen
Johan Spaedtke
Oliver Read
Spencer Brownlee
Ben McFarlane
Alexander Roper
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Andrew P Chehayl
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World Anvil
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MUSIC:
Udo Grunewald
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 World Anvil
00:03 Intro
00:31 Nasal Vowel-Consonant Harmony
02:31 Emphasis Harmony
05:01 Retroflex Vowel-Consonant Harmony
06:13 Non-Local Vowel-Consonant Harmony
08:18 Summary
08:53 Outro & Sponsor (Thanks World Anvil)
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Thanks for watching everyone. It means a lot. :)

[@ppenmudera4687]

Interestingly, I seem to accidentally have made retroflex harmony in one of my conlangs. Coda /l/ was retroflex, and as I spoke the words, I found it difficult to rapidly switch back to plain consonants. Eventually I just made it a rule that dental and alveolar consonants become retroflex following this retroflex /l/, and now I know this has already been done in natlangs! (btw that coda /l/ later became a /j/-like sound, which did some other things, so now some suffixes become retroflex for seemingly no reason, which I think is pretty cool)

[@Copyright_Infringement]

Woah, I did the same thing; wild

[@TheZetaKai]

ANADEW

[@lubenicmackavic2780]

to be honest, of all the consonant places of articulation retroflex ones are the weirdes. While for all the other just basiccally move the tongue further back or forth (or use your lips) retroflex requiers you to curl your tongue backwards (which is pretty weird in my opinion) and hard to do if you are not used to it. Thus I do believe it is the most likely and reasonable of the ones shown because (as you said yourself) it is difficult to switch back and forth betwen plain and retroflex consonants.

[@monnaak]

Imagine being so good at conlanging so u accidentally create retroflex harmony lol

[@tonyhakston536]

I love it when there doesn’t seem to be any reason for something but there actually is if you work backwards through the etymology.

[@i_teleported_bread7404]

"The perfect trilogy doesn't exi-"

[@ancientswordrage]

I'm waiting for 'harmony not seen in human languages'...

[@lubenicmackavic2780]

@@ancientswordrage the sequel trilogy it is

[@ferasataya5350]

I speak Arabic (Levantine dialect of Damascus) and I never noticed our language does this! Thank you for such an awesome video!!!

[@ferasataya5350]

You don't sound like a native Arabic speaker from the way you typed that. When did you decide to learn Arabic and why did you pick the dialect of Southern Lebanon? أهلين و سهلين بكل الناس اللي بيحبو لغتنا العريقة الشريفة و قررو يتعلموها

[@liammurray2318]

@@ferasataya5350 I was curious about that too, I've never seen مو instead of مش or ما (though TBF I'm a native American English speaker learning Egyptian Arabic, not Levantine) Oddly enough, Google Translate picked it up just fine

[@ferasataya5350]

@@liammurray2318, the negating particle in the Levantine dialects of Syria and Lebanon is (مو). For example, in Egyptian one would say (مش كدا) for expressing "not like that." In Damascus, however, one would say (مو هيك). مش = مو كدا = هيك Edits: Spelling.

[@lubenicmackavic2780]

@@ferasataya5350 very interesting.

[@theoriginalblob4750]

@@ferasataya5350 y'know what more interesting is when you think about origins of these two words - كدا andهيك These are my one personal observations but i believe they both came from the standard word هكذا ("like this/that") But the Egyptian dialect took the last part كذا -» كدا While syrian and other levantine dialects took the first part هاك --» هيك With the corresponding phonetic changes for each.

[@nyarparablepsis872]

I'm an Assyriologist and have to say I learned more about emphatic and pharyngealised consonants from this video than from my university education. You rock, dude.

[@dentescare]

Just a little detail, most of panoan languages with -hua or -ahua in their exonyms or endonyms pronounced them as [wa] or [awa] respectively. therefore, capanahua is pronounced [kapa'nawa]

[@ellies_silly_zoo]

For a while I've been planning to do a thing with /l/ going to /ɹ/ and then later /ɻ/ in one branch of my language family tree, having that /ɻ/ merge with adjacent coronals into retroflex consonants, and then having retroflex vs (palato-)alveolar harmony, which interacts a bunch with the previously established tongue-root and backness harmony (palato-alveolar consonants like to be with +ATR & front vowels, retroflex consonants with -ATR & back vowels) It's not _technically_ vowel-consonant harmony, but instead two semi-separate systems of consonant harmony and vowel harmony which like to align with each other whenever they come into contact. I haven't yet decided in what direction it spreads, whether from vowels to consonants, from consonants to vowels, or just in a set direction (progressively or regressively). I'm glad to know what real vowel-consonant harmony systems look like, and honestly I might not be too far off from regular retroflex harmony with what I'm probably gonna do. Nothing's technically stopping me from fully merging the two harmonies into a proper vowel-consonant harmony...

[@the_linguist_ll]

Nivaclé has consonant vowel metathesis, might be neat to look into for any conlangers. Edit: Hell yeah, Tuyuca was mentioned. Already my favorite episode.

[@rickascii]

Minor correction: Snchitsu'umshtsn is a language historically spoken in the area around the city of Cour d'Alene

[@gayvideos3808]

Coeur d'Alene was the English name of the people and language before it was the name of the town

[@John_Weiss]

Is it one of the languages in the Salish Language Family? It certainly has the insane consonant clusters… _Edit:_ Just got to 6:47 in the video, and it looks like I guessed right. 😁

[@rickascii]

@@John_Weiss It is, yes.

[@lotofmalarkey434]

Presumably because no one wanted to spell Snchitsu’umshtsn

[@yesid17]

awesome video minor note: Spanish does not natively use the letter 'w' and since 'h' is usually silent, "hua" sounds like "wah" so Capanahua sounds like Kah-Pah-Nah-Wah also do you really pronounce Arabic the second syllable stressed?

[@caenieve]

Edgar isn’t the only person - I’m inclined to say it might be an Irish dialectal or general free variation thing?

[@frafraplanner9277]

Only British people pronounce it that way

[@caenieve]

@@frafraplanner9277 I’m British and I’ve never heard anyone else who was British say /əˈræbɪk/... - also Edgar is Irish

[@frafraplanner9277]

@@caenieve oh, so maybe it's only Irish then

[@bassamdahdouh9169]

it wild how many different languages you bring up as examples. big kudos

[@brrr6905]

that thumbnail looked absolutely menacing

[@TheZetaKai]

This is a great excuse, I mean reason, to use all of those "weird" sounds in the IPA that are hard to type on a standard keyboard, thus making you a better and more varied conlanger.

[@caenieve]

0:36 in, let it be known that I expect Guaraní to be mentioned in the next thirty seconds EDIT: okay apparently this is more common in South America than I thought, wow

[@OmegaTaishu]

Now this felt more hardcore than the usual. ... ...excellent :3

[@otherperson]

Awesome video! Any chance you'll do a video specifically on continental draining divides? Currently struggling to wrap my brain around this.

[@Zethlynn]

Oh cool I was just thinking about this subject, thanks for another video to help my conlangs

[@lubenicmackavic2780]

same

[@tranchedecake3897]

We talked about nasal harmony without mentionning Guarani 😕

[@WhoamICool2763]

your first 2022 video yay!

[@theletters9623]

I feel like I just walked into a lecture for a class that I have missed like half the semester for

[@yerdasellsavon9232]

Thesis: vowel harmony Antithesis: consonant harmony Synthesis: vowel consonant harmony

[@sullivanbell2397]

this is awesome!!! thanks it helped.

[@sullivanbell2397]

also, thank to whoever liked. this was probably the first like i've ever got on a comment, so thank you very much. it means a lot.

[@tompatterson1548]

You could do this with a romlang with their metaphony combining with I-umlaut and then palatalise more strongly with stuff like the whole ejecting a /i/ being a trigger for palatalisation. Acutatus => acutato /akutato/; acutati => æicyitzæitzi /ɛit͡ʃyit͡sɛit͡si/

[@notgate2624]

I am absolutely lost. Idk if these need more examples or if there's just an assumption that conlang pros are the only ones watching.

[@didack1419]

I'm not a conlanger but since no one has replied yet, I'll try to help you, what is confusing you? And if someone else who knows the topic decently deeply can help, that would be better.

[@liammurray2318]

Could you specify what's confusing you? If it matters, I'm a conlanger and I also speak one of the languages mentioned in the video (Egyptian Arabic).

[@professorariel]

Expected a video of solely guarani lol

[@JulioCesar-rj2xq]

fazer oq né

[@rfk2298]

Hi! I would love to see a video covering how to designate ocean biomes!!! It’s really hard to find sources on this and I’d love to feature some detailed ocean biomes in my world

[@LangThoughts]

Is the effect of vowel harmony on the allophones of a consonant a kind of consonant-vowel harmony? For example, in Mongolian, the phoneme /k/ (transcribed as since the language lacks /kʰ/, despite having an aspirated vs. non-aspirated distinction on most stops) is [q] in back vowel words, and [k] in "front" vowel words, (the rounded front vowels have shifted to back lax), thus the near-minimal pair /monkoɬ/ [moɴqoɬ] "Mongol; Mongolian" vs. /mɔnkɔ/ [mɔŋkɔ] "silver". It almost looks like the VH is triggering Dorsal Harmony.

[@bgtyhnmju7]

I almost understood some of that. Ah well. Thanks for the video/s

[@lilith6072]

is there a name for the thing Irish and Turkish (for example) do where consonants are influenced by adjacent vowel frontness? so Irish represents /k/ around back vowels and /c/ around front vowels. I really like this idea and would like to know if there's a name for it

[@sulien6835]

In Irish at least that's called a broad/slender distinction, which just means most consonants are either velarized or palatalized. Other languages like Russian and Mongolian just have a palatalized form against a non-palatalized (not necessarily velarized) form. IIRC in Irish the written front and back vowels are purely orthographic, serving to identify the consonant as palatalized or velarized but not actually causing the palatalization or velarization.

[@lilith6072]

@@sulien6835 I'm aware of palatalization, I was trying to ask about the phonological change of a consonant because of an adjacent vowel, hopefully the better wording helps

[@inari.28]

@@lilith6072 that change is called palatalisation too! it's a little confusing but in most contexts it's somewhat clear

[@wtc5198]

Hey, in the VH episode you said VH is usually progressive but that it also usually evolves by umlaut. Since umlaut is regressive, don't the two cancel each other out? Also, is game of tones 2 still coming out? Love your videos, one can always learn something new from you. Keep on worldbuilding!

[@ppenmudera4687]

I predict that after this video he will first do a follow up video, then a worldbuilding video (with FU), and then game of tones 2, as he typically switches between worldbuilding and conlanging videos

[@wtc5198]

@@ppenmudera4687 Yeah, I just expected the second game of tones to be the first next clonging video

[@ryuko4478]

Non-local Vowel-Consonant Harmony reminds me of a sound change Akkadian did, basically pharyngeals (/ħ ʕ/) dropped but in the words that had it /a/ and /aː/ fronted to /e/ and /eː/ even when the pharyngeals weren't next to them, so /ħimaːʀum/ becomes /imeːʀum/ "donkey"

[@nicolasglemot6760]

Could a kind of vowel harmony system that also affects corresponding glides be considered a consonant vowel harmony system? (That is to say, something like a vowel harmony system, but for instance /j/ and /w/ are treated as if they were /i/ and /u/)

[@caenieve]

I suppose so? It would also be possible to describe it just as vowel harmony, with the caveat of a broader definition of vowels that includes semivowels. What would they alternate with, out of interest?

[@marinalima9533]

GOOD MORNING, INTERWEB!!!

[@Mr.Nichan]

For some reason, I expected this video to be just about consonants triggering allophony in immediately adjacent vowels and vice versa.

[@kadenvanciel9335]

If you make a follow-up to this, I want to ask if other types of vowel-consonant harmony systems exist, like labializaion, glottalization, and velarization.

[@TwinSteel]

I love your videos - I just watched your video about making theoretical Earth rings, like Saturn has - what would Sun rings be like? For example, what if Mercury got inside it’s Roche limit with the Sun and made rings visible from Earth?

[@BeneathTheBrightSky]

I think you mean the asteroid belt?

[@daniel_rossy_explica]

Once again, this type of "FYI" videos (specially being conlang vids) fly completely over my head. I guess some could get ideas form it, but certainly, I do not.

[@JulioCesar-rj2xq]

I mainly just watch a thousand times until I get it and then start trying to apply most things to a test conlang. like now, I kinda liked emphasis and the last one, but I am not ready to start the spreadsheets. alongside, I have forgotten almost everything from the others harmonies, gotta rewatch that 😂

[@ppenmudera4687]

Yeah linguistics can be a very intense subject. I think exposure is the best method for learning these things if you're not doing a linguistics degree at uni or something. It also starts with a good foundation: if you aren't fluent in IPA for example, this video will indeed likely fly over your head. Watch the video a few times, take a break to let it sink in, watch the video another few times, take a break, etc., and eventually your brain will (probably) connect the dots

[@ezgi8022]

Hello Artifexian, Please can you make a video about How can we build a soil layer for our planet

[@andyhunjan]

I got an ad for Campfire for this video

[@user-ii9qn2fo4v]

This video is really cool, I just have to point out the quite confusing use of "right to left"/"left to right" harmony presented in the latin alphabet written left to right. It's emphasized even more when speaking about Arabic which is actually written right to left, so then my poor brain has to also switch sides in addition to trying to understanding these quite confusing explanations hah

[@vincentcleaver1925]

What are you up to? No new episodes lately

[@impishDullahan]

Huh, today I learned my most recent conlang project has retroflex harmony. I should get round to canonising that now...

[@therealcflat]

Pro tip: prestopped nasals a la Arrernte for: [apape] [ãmãmẽ] [ãᵐbape] [aᵖmãmẽ] [aᵖmãᵐbe]

[@R4T7]

Ok so am I the only one that stumbled upon this channel from the "best number system" video, then found the creating a language video, and am now trying to figure out how I've never seen the chart of all the phonetic sounds and am trying to find out how to pronounce each and every one of them?

[@ThatScarfiGuy]

Strange seeing a year old video being labeled as “old”

[@pierreabbat6157]

I asked some people a math riddle: "What has Amman on the inside and Jerusalem on the outside?" One of them is an Arabic speaker, and the way he said "Amman" (which begins with `ayn) sounded more like "Oman" to me.

[@SotraEngine4]

Norwegian dialects have some form of paletalisation, but it doesn't seem to spread much beyond the end of the word This is a thing in Trøndelag, Møre og Romsdal, Sogn og Fjordane

[@teli6350]

Oh yeah they, just like most other lects with palatals, don't spread at all. Also you forgot to mention us up in northern norway, and the northern halves of oppland and hedmark. The indre sogn dialects however, do not seem to even _traditionally_ have the palatalising sound change producing them [c ɟ ɲ ʎ].

[@cuddlestsq2730]

Yea, we have experienced palatalisation of consonants in certain conditions, that is geminate n and l at least, some from geminate t and d, some from nd and ld, some from rn as well. There's also some variation on whether or not it occurs in all syllables or only stressed syllables, I believe. My dialect has had palatalisation of geminate n and l, plus ld and rn, but not nd.

[@amfvideos6810]

Could you do a video on polysynthesis?

[@Damond_Warrior]

Hey, I hope you will update your star-building video or make an update video. It is very outdated and I am rather confused with it. I also put the mass from the first ep of Alien Biospheres into the luminosity equation and got a number way higher than .75 like .96.

[@junejulien8845]

Can you do a vid on consonantal roots?

[@John_Weiss]

3:12 I _cannot_ make these consonants. When I try, I sound like Golum. Specifically, like Golum talking with his throat full of phelgm.

[@WDCallahan]

Please, sir... What college class do I have to sign up for to start to understand these symbols and words that you use? I really want to follow along.

[@AllenGrimm1145]

A lot of it's actually covered in some of his earlier videos! You could also try looking up "International Phonetic Alphabet" and then poke around on Wikipedia for a bit.

[@AllenGrimm1145]

But for college classes it would be Linguistics, or probably more specifically Phonetics?

[@didack1419]

kzbin.info/aero/PLduA6tsl3gygfiWmGAhhHb4-HAqP6I63l This video concerns mainly the parts about phonetics.

[@longdogman]

Could you make a video on chain shifts?

[@donovantownshend8783]

yaaaaaaaaaaaay! new vid!

[@chermenstrualcramps]

Is that how "Arabic" is pronounced in Irish English? I've never heard that pronunciation of the word "Arabic" before...

[@JulienDavid2024]

I request you make an Oa Full Conlang PDF. I want to be able to speak it.

[@tanky123]

can you make a video making a language of NO SOUND like only with hand motions (I've been trying)

[@abocwsg2328]

Are you ok? You haven't posted in 4 months, I'm just worried (apologies for my insane anxiety)

[@critteronimo]

As another worried (and anxious) person I've been wondering this too. Is he ok... it's been a while since his last video. Edit: he's still posting videos to his Artifexian Podcast channel

[@Forestman000]

The last of the old style videos :(

[@Galopolyrim]

I know this has nothing to do with planets, but this is your most recent video, so it's most likely you'll see this. Is it possible to have a planet with the moon, both of which very similar to earth, but every month there is a solar AND lunar eclipse, but once every year (12 months), the solar and lunar eclipse happen on the SAME DAY.

[@zaneyates5704]

Regular consonants vs Emphatic consonants in Arabic is so hard 😫

[@shrexyavocado7828]

Would Irish's broad and slender sounds count as consonant harmony?

[@marcasdebarun6879]

I don't think so, the slender consonants came about because of palatalisation cause by adjacent (following?) front vowels. It also doesn't spread throughout a word, except when two consonants are adjacent, where they tend to be either both broad or both slender (but not always, 'r' for instance is broad in words like *ceird* "craft", while the 'd' is slender). But this would be regular assimilation, not systematic harmony.

[@shrexyavocado7828]

@@marcasdebarun6879 thanks!

[@tunistick8044]

I really thought that these emphatic sounds (either were vowels or consonants) are pronounced randomly or as a wrong way by egyptians, but it turned out that it's not and it's linguistic phenomenon. Btw i'm Tunisian, we don't have this feature however if you want to speak standard Arabic (maybe to prove how intellectual you are lol) you'd use emphasis in some words like: /jɪsˁtˁaˁːd/ or /ɪðˁːrˁɪˁbˁː/

[@gabrielswerke4079]

Please do a video about What If Earth was Hollow (The Hollow Earth Theory) like how you did video about Planet Donuts and Pizza World then Please do this kind of video again please?!

[@8Hshan]

Ok, I have one big question - how on earth does a vowel become retroflex?

[@seamusoblainn4603]

It's 'colored' by the secondary articulation, I'd say

[@TheMinecraftGamer500]

Great video! Slight tangent, but how would we classify / explain how in American English the letter T becomes a voiced D when there are vowels on both sides of it?

[@benman9242]

intervocalic lenition, i think it actually becomes an alveolar tap not a stop though.

[@liammurray2318]

In American English, both the coronal stops /t d/ become a tap [ɾ] intervocalically.

[@EnigmaticLucas]

It doesn't. It becomes [ɾ].

[@AllenGrimm1145]

..."Attack"?

[@TheMinecraftGamer500]

​@@AllenGrimm1145 As in "Otter", "Bet on", or "Butter". The word "Attack" is an exception to the rule, though I'm not sure why. Maybe it has something to do with the schwa vowel, but I don't actually know the reason.

[@jamestandy8594]

I pronounce "association" as [əˌsoʊʃiˈeɪʃən] instead of [əˌsoʊsiˈeɪʃən] like a lot of other people. I'm not sure if I have a double palatalization going on ([s] becomes [ʃ] in both syllables independently) but I think it could also be palatalization harmony.

[@cuddlestsq2730]

I reckon that's probably that the sequences (s)siV, ciV, and tiV are subject to palatalisation in English, but some don't always have palatalisation happen in the first 2 of those.

[@seamusoblainn4603]

How about click consonant manner, place, and mechanism harmony? 😜

[@JulioCesar-rj2xq]

that's hard 😂

[@unknowndisneyvillain7157]

Base-42

[@rhythmmandal3377]

Ahh.. some dialect in Bengali that do still retain retroflex's actually do retroflex harmony form my personal experience.

[@darkprince6953]

Why u don't have a language playlist

[@elquintoroble]

Hey! Sanskrit has no /ɻ/, I think you meant to write /ɽ/

[@dioni_progaming66]

"Vowel-Consonant Haarmony"

[@funwithmadness]

ah.... I still struggle with 'who' and 'whom'. This hurt my brain. :)

[@angelo877]

Maybe you can make a game for kids to learn Oa and It is inspired by endless alphabet. Also I made a conlang called cwnsynynt ‘lf’byt (Consonant Alphabet) the letters are: b c d f g h j k l m n p q r s t v x z ‘ - w & y. ‘, -, w and y are vowels though they are consonants.

[@angelo877]

hello?

[@sketch4363]

Am I the only one who thinks the thumbnail is weirdly dramatic

[@NathanTAK]

Why didn't KZbin tell me!?

[@the-human-being]

If I’m not mistaken Sanskrit r is actually believed to have been a tap rather than an approximant as represented in the video (5:40)

[@zufaligedaten]

10 views and 15 likes, makes sense.

[@DracarmenWinterspring]

4:24 - talking about "left to right" and "right to left" directions in the context of a Latin-based (left-to-right) transcript of a normally right-to-left language is a bit confusing, I think something like "start to end" and "end to start" would've made more sense 😅

[@abyssalboy8811]

Ooooh, so that's why my mom calls "sushi" -> "shushi" !

[@loganosmolinski4446]

Boop.

[@Ggdivhjkjl]

When talking about Arabic, you say progressive spreading is from left to right. Given how Arabic is written from right to left, does that mean that progressive spreading is where it spreads backwards through the word?

[@kasra72389]

Forget about þe writing system when he says “progressive” or “regressive.” Progressive just means any phoneme þat is pronounced after þe trigger. Regressive means any phoneme pronounced before þe trigger. Writing has noþing to do wiþ order þe sounds come in.

[@didack1419]

@@kasra72389 Are you having fun writing the voiced dental fricatives as thorns?

[@kasra72389]

@@didack1419 Very much so

[@didack1419]

@@kasra72389 I'm happy for ya þhen

[@liammurray2318]

"Progressive" here means "earlier in the phrase to later", and "regressive" means "later to earlier". It has little to do with the writing direction.

[@WizardOfDocs]

Your description of progressive harmony as left to right kinda breaks down with Arabic, which is written in the opposite direction from a phonetic transcription. Maybe call it beginning to end harmony?

[@liammurray2318]

Progressive and regressive harmony have little to do with the writing system. They're more concerned with whether the harming affects phones that come earlier in the phrase or later, chronologically.

[@WizardOfDocs]

@@liammurray2318 Which is why Edgar saying "left to right" and "right to left" is confusing and misleading.

[@tyunpeters3170]

I still hate the background music

[@kirtil5177]

The lack of it?

[@wtc5198]

First?

[@Ggdivhjkjl]

Why did you upload this at 3:30 am?

[@josephr1421]

timezones exist, this is like, the evening for him

[@marcasdebarun6879]

@@josephr1421 Can confirm, it's only half 8 in the evening here in Ireland (so around half 7 when he uploaded).

[@nafismubashir2479]

Man in sanskrit has trill r not retroflex r

[@Bibibosh]

This video made no sense. Sorry.

[@mollof7893]

I had an idea simular to retroflex harmony. It basicaly works like this; Talan > [talan] ʈalan > [ʈaɭaɳ] Calan > [caʎaɲ] Not sure if this is naturalistic at all. It can probably evolve somehow. For example Turkish and Azerbadjani has two types of vowel harmony at the same time.

[@ppenmudera4687]

So 'calan' is like palatalisation harmony? Not sure if that exists, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did, as it would essentially be the same as retroflex harmony but instead of curled back the tongue is raised

[@Theo-oh3jk]

This is odd. Retroflex consonants typically resist palatalization. There seems to be no reason for the change.

[@dana6593]

This is awesome!!! I am suprised that you haven't researched Promo-SM!!!