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--- In engelang@yahoogroups.com, Risto Kupsala <risto@...> wrote: > > It depends on the source languages and what contrasts they feature. > Pandunia sources something like top 40 languages of the world by number > of speakers. In that group voicing contrast is definitely the most > frequent one of the contrasts that you listed. Pandunia contrasts voiced > unaspirated stops with voiceless aspirated stops in order to satisfy the > two most important contrasts. But, even in the Indo-European world, it's not always very easy to make this distinction. Hispanohablantes can't easily distinguish /v/ from /f/ (or /b/), /z/ from /s/, /Z/ from /S/... And, when you say "voiceless aspirated", do you mean "voiceless OR aspirated" or necessarily "voiceless AND aspirated"? I'm not aware of aspirated consonants in Romance languages*, for instance. * except /h/ itself. > the stressed syllable would always bear the high tone. Technically > Pandunia has that: the first syllable is stressed, which means that it > is both louder and it has higher pitch than the rest of the syllables. Again, is "both" necessary or people could choose? > I speak natively Finnish, which is a Uralic (Finno-Ugric) language. > Finnish doesn't have the voicing contrast, and it differs from the > Indo-European languages in many other ways, too, though it is their > neighbour. > (The next is the same in Finnish for a taste of the language) > Minun �idinkieli on suomi, joka on uralilainen (suomalaisugrilainen) > kieli. Suomessa ei ole soinnillisuusvaihtelua, ja se eroaa monella > muullakin tavalla indoeurooppalaisista kielist�, vaikka se onkin niiden > naapurissa. Does "kieli" mean "language"? Is it pronounced /ki'eli/? This word fits my conlang perfectly. I abandoned my conlang projects so many times, but I naturally resume them when I see natlangs' words and features that fit in them.