Tech
| Tech | |
| Spoken in: | various countries |
| Timeline/Universe: | Danny Wier's future history |
| Total speakers: | unknown |
| Genealogical classification: | Nostratic
|
| Basic word order: | |
| Morphological type: | |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | |
| Created by: | |
| Danny Wier | 1997- |
Tech is a conlang by Danny Wier, spoken by a kind of Elves in a near-future world and based on the Nostratic hypothesis. The language is only known from various posts to the CONLANG mailing list, according to which it is a very complex language with a large phoneme inventory; it has been compared to Ithkuil and characterized as a kitchen sink conlang.
Phonology
Consonants
Tech is famed for its rich consonant inventory. One version Danny Wier posted on February 23, 2000 included as many as 327 consonants, involving secondary articulations such as palatalization and labialization. Later, Danny systematized the consonant inventory and arrived at a more moderate (though still rich) inventory of phonemes, with most of the "phonemes" of earlier incarnations being merely allophones of these phonemes.
| Bilabial | Alveolar or dental | Alveolo- palatal |
Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| central | lateral | ||||||||||
| Plosive | ejective | */p̕/[1] | */t̕/ | */k̕/ | */q̕/ | */ʔ/ | |||||
| voiceless | */p/ | */t/ | */k/ | */q/ | |||||||
| voiced | */b/ | */d/ | */ɡ/ | */ɢ/ | |||||||
| Affricate | ejective | */ts̕/ | */tɬ̕/ | */tɕ̕/¹ | */tʃ̕/ | ||||||
| voiceless | */ts/ | */tɬ/ | */tɕ/¹ | */tʃ/ | |||||||
| voiced | */dz/ | */dɮ/¹ | */dʑ/¹ | */dʒ/ | |||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | */s/ | */ɬ/ | */ɕ/¹ | */ʃ/ | */χ/ | */ħ/ | */h/ | |||
| voiced | */ʁ/ | */ʕ/ | |||||||||
| Nasal | */m/ | */n/ | */nʲ/ | */ŋ/ | |||||||
| Trill | */r/ | */rʲ/¹ | |||||||||
| Approximant | */l/ | */lʲ/ | */j/ | */w/ | |||||||
Vowels
Like the consonant inventory, the vowel inventory of Tech has for long been in flux, with (again) very large inventories having been considered by the author.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | ə | o |
| Open | a |
- ↑ These phonemes do not occur in some or most reconstructions of Proto-Nostratic. They are omitted or put in brackets in the "Sound correspondences" table below, except for */p/.
