Image of two mice holding a banner with the Day 30 prompt text around them
Conlang Year, Day 30 prompt

Goal: Explore stress-sensitive sound changes

Note: Sound changes do not have to affect every syllable equally.

Tip: Unstressed syllables are more prone to reduction and deletion sound changes.

Work focus: Learn/Brainstorm/Try


Today is the last day reserved for exploring types of sound changes before you are tasked with selecting, ordering, and testing the sound changes to make sure they produce results you are happy with. Today’s focus is on stress-sensitive sound changes—not every syllable needs to be affected equally by a given sound change.

For instance, you may choose to delete vowels from unstressed syllables to create interesting consonant clusters in your language. In doing so, you need to decide what consonant clusters are licit (i.e. allowable) in your language to avoid creating clusters that are impossible, or nearly impossible, to produce for your speakers. You may also decide to only delete certain types of vowels in unstressed syllables, such as deleting mid-vowels where possible. Forms like [tǝ.ˈla] and [mop.ˈsi] would become [tla] and [mpsi] in such instances (assuming the language allows these particular clusters).

If you are reducing diphthongs, you could opt to only reduce them in unstressed syllables. For instance, [ai] could become [e] in unstressed syllables but remain [ai] in stressed syllables.

In fact, you could even decide to have vowels break, turning into diphthongs in stressed syllables, such as [o] becoming [uo] and [e] becoming [ie] in stressed syllables.

Of course, consonants can also be affected by these kinds of sound changes. You may decide that coda consonants are deleted, but only from unstressed syllables, for example.

These kinds of explorations are especially helpful if you realize you like a particular sound change but don’t want it to apply in all situations. Only having the changes apply to stressed or unstressed syllables can help to create more variety across the forms.

Remember that if a prompt or series of prompts doesn’t apply to your language or current conlanging situation, you can always use these days to work on other aspects of the language. If nothing else comes to mind, you can always use any extra days you have to create more vocabulary. Expanding the lexicon is always a good way to be prepared for more language creation down the road.