Tech

Tech
Spoken in:	various countries
Timeline/Universe:	Danny Wier's future history
Total speakers:	unknown
Genealogical classification:	Nostratic Tech
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.

According to a post from July 9, 2001, the consonant phonemes of Old Tech are:

		Bilabial	Alveolar or dental		Post- alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
			central	lateral
Plosive	ejective	pʼ	tʼ			ʈʼ		kʼ	qʼ		ʔ
	voiceless	p	t			ʈ		k	q
	voiced	b	d			ɖ		ɡ	ɢ
Affricate	ejective		tsʼ	tɬʼ	tʃʼ
	voiceless		ts	tɬ	tʃ
	voiced		dz	dɮ	dʒ
Fricative	voiceless		s	ɬ	ʃ	ʂ				ħ	h
	voiced									ʕ
Nasal		m	n			ɳ	ɲ	ŋ
Trill			r			ɽ
Approximant		w		l		ɭ	j

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. According to the aforementioned post from July 9, 2001:

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e	ə	o
Open		a

External links

• oh no, not Tech phonology again from February 23, 2000
• Semi-official Tech presentation: I. Phonology from July 9, 2001