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Jan. 1, 2011 I have invented a language called Nuu, which is the latest version of a long series of languages that I have invented since 1950. Of course, I do this more in the spirit of pursuing a hobby than in hopes of having anyone start using it. Nuu is far more sophisticated than any natural or artificial language I have seen, but there may be equal or better ones somewhere. Who knows? I have quite a few innovations in mathematics, physics, biology and anatomy, but I can deal with all the mundane subjects too: buildings, machines, geography, people, clothes, food, emotions, anything and everything, A very important feature of my language is the production of a large number of letters, which allows me to treat a great variety of subjects succinctly. To this end, I have adopted sounds from several naturaI languages, generalizing and multiplying them. My alphabet consists of 328 letters, including 40 consonants and 288 vowels. The consonants aren’t so numerous that they present much of a problem. I have taken over retroflex consonants from Hindi, uvular consonants from Arabic, and voiceless liquids and nasals from Celtic languages. My vowels are the real backbone of my phonetic system. Let me preface my remarks on vowels by contradicting Oxford English Dictionary, the International Phonetic Alphabet and Wikipedia on a couple of points. These authorities maintain that the o of dote and the a of date are diphthongs masquerading as monophthongs. They represent them with spellings like ou and ei, as if the vowels had glides. I don’t know about England, but in the US they are pure, simple vowels, with no glides. Another annoying contention of OED, IPA and Wiki is that the a of father, which equals the o of lot, is a back vowel. But American pronunciation makes it a front vowel, articulated just below the a of hat. A back a is possible, but it’s not American. Back a would be articulated just below the aw of law. Another misconception that these authorities nurse is that o, u and aw are rounded vowels. They are not. In the US, they are completely unrounded. Spanish o and u are rounded, and other rounded vowels occur in German, Turkish, Finnish and other languages, usually umlauted. That said, let me get on to my basic 12 vowels, 11 of which occur in American English, in the following words: beet, bit, bet, bait, bat, bot, boot, put, boat, but, bought. Please don’t say that the vowels of bait and boat are not monophthongs, since I have already argued that point. The twelfth vowel is back a, which may occur in German and Russian, but I‘m no authority on that. In Nuu, a rounded counterpart is provided for each of these 12 unrounded vowels, bringing the total to 24. Each of these 24 vowels can also be nasalized. French and Polish nasalize only select vowels, but in Hindi, all 10 vowels are nasalizable. I have followed Hindi in this, thus producing 48 oral and nasal vowels, all told. Chinese has four tones: level, rising, falling-rising, falling. Vowels can also be toneless in Chinese. I have adopted all these tonicities, adding a rising-falling tone. So I have six articulations for each of the 48 oral and nasal vowels, which gives me 288 vowels. The toneless vowels in Nuu are not used word-finally. Only tonic vowels may end words. So I have 240 vowels in which words may terminate. Thus, with 40 consonants, I can produce 9600 words of the form CV (consonant + vowel), whereas English’s paltry phonetic system allows only about 100 words CV. At my website, I have a much more thorough discussion of Nuu’s vowels, with the actual vowels displayed. http://www.mecnita.com/NuuVowels.htm ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written five books: ELEMENTS OF GRAMMAR and A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction); A TALE OF UNG, THE ENNUNMENT and GVAGMA (fiction). I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Visit my website here. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com
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