An image with multiple ways of saying "hello" and "welcome" in a variety of conlangs

Image of a mouse among sunflowers and a large bag for collecting sunflower seeds; information about the day's prompt appears on the sunflowers and bag
Conlang Year, Day 32 prompt

Goal: Test your sound changes as a package

Note: Sound changes affect language in an orderly fashion.

Tip: Solidifying the order now will save you from headaches later.

Work focus: Learn/Brainstorm/Try


Yesterday I mentioned that you should select an order for your sound changes because, when sound changes apply to languages, they apply in a particular order. The ordering matters because changing the ordering of the rules can give you different results. For example, let’s say you have these three proto-forms in your language:

  • *dinpa
  • *esge
  • *lohzu

And you have these four sound changes, in this order.

  1. High vowels lower to mid vowels before a nasal coda (i.e. [i] and [u] lower to [e] and [o], respectively).
  2. When two consonants occur in a row, the second consonant matches the voicing of the first.
  3. Glottal consonants are deleted.
  4. An alveolar stop followed by a high vowel palatalizes and becomes an affricate (i.e. [ti] and [di] become [tʃ] and [dʒ]).

Applying these four changes to the three forms above, you get the following results.

Proto-formVowel loweringCC assimilationGlottal deletionPalatalization
*dinpadenpadenbadenbadenba
*esgeesgeeskeeskeeske
*lohzulohzulohsulosulosu
Table showing results of first ordering of sound changes

The palatalization rule doesn’t apply to these examples because the high vowel in *dinpa lowers before the palatalization rule takes effect.

Those are the results based on the particular ordering listed above. Without changing the proto-forms or the sound changes, watch what happens if you shift the ordering of the rules. For this demonstration, I’m going to reverse the order of the rules above, so they are now in this order:

  1. An alveolar stop followed by a high vowel palatalizes and becomes an affricate (i.e. [ti] and [di] become [tʃ] and [dʒ]). 
  2. Glottal consonants are deleted.
  3. When two consonants occur in a row, the second consonant matches the voicing of the first.
  4. High vowels lower to mid vowels before a nasal coda (i.e. [i] and [u] lower to [e] and [o], respectively).

Applying these four changes to the three forms above, you get the following results.

Proto-formPalatalizationGlottal deletionCC assimilationVowel lowering
*dinpadʒinpadʒinpadʒinbadʒenba
*esgeesgeesgeeskeeske
*lohzulohzulozulozulozu
Table showing results of second ordering of sound changes

Notice that the results differ for two of the proto-forms when you compare the first set to the second one (the results for *esge remain the same) because the order of application has shifted. The palatalization rule now applies to *dinpa before the vowel lowers, and the glottal fricative [h] is deleted in *lohzu before consonants assimilate in voice, so the [z] keeps its voicing in lozu.

These are just a few roots with a small set of sound changes. Imagine how different the forms might be with more data and more changes!

And so, now that you have chosen sound changes and an order for them, run all your proto-forms through the changes in the order you selected. If you realize the forms aren’t quite working out the way you had hoped, you can try shifting the order of application to see if you like the results better, or you can tweak the rules as they are written to get a desired effect.

I suggest you keep track of the changes as they apply in tables like I have here or in ordered notes so you can see how the forms are being affected at each stage. Further, I urge you to keep those notes so you can refer to them later so you can remember why you chose one ordering over another.