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2014-03-02, 02:30 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
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2014-03-02, 04:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
I hear tell of a language with rhotic vowel harmony, which could be pretty fun to do
The Yurok language is well known among linguists for several unusual features. One is phonological: Yurok is among a very few languages of the world to have the rhotic vowel sound /ɚ/ among its phonemes (another such language is American English). In addition, Yurok has a rhotic vowel harmony process by which underlying non-high vowels /a/, /e/, and /o/ may become /ɚ/ in a word that has /ɚ/; for example, the root /nahks-/ 'three' becomes [nɚhks-] in the word [nɚhksɚʔɚjɬ] 'three (animals or birds)'.
we might as well start thinking on a vowel inventory? Sounds I like: ɚ ɛ e u
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2014-03-03, 01:00 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
With the rhotic harmony we could possibly have it where a sequence of two vowels or a diphthong could break it, but in a different way. A diphthong may just not assimilate and block further harmony, but a sequence of two vowels may harmonize the first vowel then turn it into an approximate and block the harmony for the rest of the word.
pa - tɚn - ate
patɚnɚtɚ
pa - tɚn - e - ate
patɚnɻate
pa - tɚn - ajte
patɚnajte
or perhaps the diphthong becomes rhotic
pa - tɚn - ajte
patɚnaɹteLast edited by Balyano; 2014-03-03 at 01:08 AM.
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2014-03-03, 03:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
The rhotic harmony seems like it could work. How would they interact (if at all) with rhotic consonants (i.e.'r's)? Perhaps a reset?
I still think it'd be interesting to have an alternative distinction between consonants besides voicing, for example aspiration or palatalisation (I also just remembered prenasalisation, which could be interesting...); these could perhaps interact with vowel harmony in their own ways.
In the presence of two independent vowel harmonies, I won't bother suggesting throwing consonant harmony into the mix...
N.b. the tilde is in the 'combining diacritical marks' section of unicode; Times New Roman/Arial/Courier New should have it and some other fonts may as well. They can be accessed through Character map if need be. The tilde beside the letter is still comprehensible though.
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2014-03-04, 05:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
This thread is doing what I wanted it to do: force me to look up a whole bunch of stuff to keep up with the discussion (my OE philology isn't that heavy on actual phonology).
The two sets of vowel harmony seem fun, but I wonder if we are going about this the wrong way. Should we build a language from intricate sound systems and add meaning later, or should we try to make a proper vocabulary and grammar and add flavor later? Because, correct me if I'm wrong, these proposed systems are flavor, not meaningful, right?
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2014-03-04, 09:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
I figure do some phonology so we know what to make the roots and affixes look like. Then some basic grammar to know what kinds of affixes and function words we will need. Then come up with a list of basic vocabulary that the language will need, roots and affixes and such. Then make words for the vocabulary list that fits the phonological rules we made. Then give it a tune up and make changes where necessary. So we probably shouldn't get too intricate at first. But we still haven't determined the phonology yet.
Then look for some gaps in vocabulary to fill, possibly take a subject like smithing, figure out a bunch of terminology that it needs, come up with words for those terms, possibly basing new roots off old ones to mimic the look of a natural language. For instance the root for anvil may look suspiciously like the root for boulder. The root for forge may look suspiciously like someone took the roots for fire and hole and stuck them together and deleted a sound or two. ect. Could even have multiple words derived from the same compound by simplifying it in different ways, simulating the compound being made and simplified at different times in the languages development or even that they were the same word developed two different directions by different dialects and were then borrowed between them.
example of the above idea lets pretend
doku = boulder
dokwa = anvil
tsil = fire
nefi = hole
tsilnej = forge looks like tsilnefi with the f deleted and the ei sequence turned into a diphthong
tsillef = brick oven formed from the same compound by instead assimilating the n to l making a geminate l, and deleting i
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2014-03-04, 10:52 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
Ok, that makes sense. So what we really need to do first off is determine what to work towards. Did we ever reach a conclusion about what sort of basic sound we wanted? I suggested, and at least one other person liked, the idea of a very airy language filled with vowels and soft consonants. Are there any other suggestions? Because that might be a good thing for the next vote.
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2014-03-05, 12:24 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
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2014-03-05, 06:06 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
That is an interesting idea. Anyone else have suggestions before we start discussing things?
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2014-03-05, 01:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
I'll be honest I don't know what constitutes ''breezy'' ''airy'' ''dark'' or ''light''. Is breezy and airy something with lots of fricatives? or just voiceless fricatives? Is dark voiced and nasalized sounds and light voiceless ones? Are these music terms that everyone knows but me? Also how do I get superscript on this thing?
For Ozy's idea, if I understand it correctly, perhaps the ancestor of the language had multiple degrees of stress, i'm aware of real languages with three degrees of stress so why not. The roots contain aspirated, tenius and prenasalized stops, and voiceless fricatives. When they are suffixed onto another root the difference in stress, or a difference in stress in an ancestral version of the language, causes the aspirated stops to become tenius, the tenius to become voiced, and the prenasalized to become nasals, and the fricatives to become voiced fricatives. Further suffixes are even less stressed and what would have been tenius becomes voiced, voiced to voiced fricatives, nasals to nasal vowels separated by approximants, and the voiced fricatives to approximants. And have the vowels under go reduction with the progression until they become schwas.
Not sure how to do superscript in here, tried pasting but it de-superscripted it, so just pretend that ''ph'' means aspirated p and ''mb'' means prenasalized b.
for instance with labials
primary stress > secondary stress > unstressed
f > v > w
ph > p > b
p > b > v
mb > m > Vnw (Vn here means nasalize the preceding vowel)
perhaps
tɬ > ɬ > l
ts > s > h
or
ts > s > z
lets pretend we have
kat- phe- ŋgep-
katpɪnɰəv (the n there is supposed to be superscripted)
te- te- te-
tedɪđəLast edited by Balyano; 2014-03-05 at 01:23 PM.
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2014-03-05, 02:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
Here's what comes to mind for me, at least, when I hear the terms light or dark.
Darkest:
- consonant clusters
- voiced sounds
- nasals and stops
- place of articulation in the back of the mouth
- consonantal nuclei (l, r , m, n)
Lightest:
- (C)V structure
- unvoiced sounds
- approximates
- articulated closer to the front of the mouth
I'd be curious how BWR's definitions compare, because 'light' and 'dark' aren't exactly clearly defined.
This converter is a pretty useful tool. If you don't know x-sampa, just remember that to superscript something, put an underscore before it.
I'm low on time now, so I can't say much on the bulk of your post, but it looked pretty cool and well thought out from what I saw. If we do decide consonant clusters are something central to a dark sound, those would probably make up the roots and the different stress levels would cause certain sounds to elide. Or something.Last edited by Ozy; 2014-03-05 at 02:08 PM.
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2014-03-06, 04:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
I was thinking lots of vowels and vowel clusters, avoiding too many consonants breaking things up, a low number of 'hard' consonants like stops, affricates, plosives, etc. Most consonants would be 'soft' like approximants.
The idea I had, hard as it is to realize (in the sense 'make real'), was something that sounded sort of like a gentle breeze that picks up and dies down.
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2014-03-06, 07:59 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
This was basically what I thought with breezy or airy^
Feel free to call me Born.
Dm-ing: Pawns of the Great Game
Player: Ka'lakxi in Cuzto halflings
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2014-03-09, 11:37 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
perhaps discussion or a vote on
lots of consonant clusters
vs
occasional consonant clusters
vs
few if any consonant clusters
also perhaps discussion on what types of cluster
Spoilertype example
CAVX - twas
CCVX - ktor
CCAVX - gvle
CCCVX - spta
SCVX - stum
CSVX - psel
CNVX - kni
CSCSCSCSACSCSSCSSCASCCCACCCCSSSAAVX - tfpskfdvrcxtsztfhklsbd☢jdgkqfsfrlep
etc.
C = any initial consonant
A = approximant or liquid
V = vowel or syllabic consonant
X = coda or lack there of
S = fricative
N = nasal
maybe a vote along the lines of
1: very breezy with lots of fricatives and approximants and few clusters
2: very choppy with lots of stops and clusters
3: something based on Ozy's idea with one style giving way to the other
4: something else entirely
what do you think we should vote on? What should the ballot look like?
are we counting the results of the last vote so that we have an language that is
atonal
vowels with length distinction
limited set of codas
medium number of vowels
clicks, but only with special purpose
or is this contested?
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2014-03-10, 06:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
We probably should work within the constraints of the last vote, or else there would be little point in voting about it.
1: very breezy with lots of fricatives and approximants and few clusters
2: very choppy with lots of stops and clusters
3: something based on Ozy's idea with one style giving way to the other
4: something else entirely
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2014-03-10, 10:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
Maybe instead of just voting for one of the ideas or another, we could do a ranked vote for this one? Since there's more than just two options, and since I'd be happy with a few of them, I think that could be a better way to decide.
I also think that we should be voting on:
-lots of consonant clusters
-occasional consonant clusters
-few if any consonant clusters
as well as a vote of:
-very breezy with lots of fricatives and approximants
-very choppy with lots of stops
-something based on Ozy's idea with one style giving way to the other
-something else entirely
(which is a slightly modified version of what you wanted). The reason for splitting them up like this is that we could still have some very consonanty clusters which still sound breezy (shwlsl), and no clusters but still be choppy (katakataka), and in general, I think that phonotactics and phonetic inventory aren't similar enought to combine into one vote.
Is that good logic? I'm also game for the vote to start whenever, to keep this party rolling.Last edited by Ozy; 2014-03-10 at 10:22 AM.
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2014-03-10, 04:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
Seems like a good idea.
Perhaps we could discuss the kinds of clusteers after we have decided how frequent they will be and how it sounds.
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2014-03-11, 04:15 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
Works for me. So, with the larger number being the preferred outcome:
-lots of consonant clusters 1
-occasional consonant clusters 2
-few if any consonant clusters 3
-very breezy with lots of fricatives and approximants 3
-very choppy with lots of stops 1
-something based on Ozy's idea with one style giving way to the other 2
-something else entirely 1
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2014-03-11, 08:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
-lots of consonant clusters 2
-occasional consonant clusters 3
-few if any consonant clusters 1
-very breezy with lots of fricatives and approximants 2
-very choppy with lots of stops 2
-something based on Ozy's idea with one style giving way to the other 2
-something else entirely 1
I ranked breeziness and choppiness the same because I like a mixture of the two. I would have given Ozy's idea a 3, but I fear that it could make orthography and/or learning difficult. It would obviously work for a real language and it's a cool idea that I like, but it might make the learning curve too steep.
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2014-03-11, 10:15 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
-lots of consonant clusters 2
-occasional consonant clusters 3
-few if any consonant clusters 1
-very breezy with lots of fricatives and approximants 2
-very choppy with lots of stops 1
-something based on Ozy's idea with one style giving way to the other 3
-something else entirely 2
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2014-03-12, 03:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
-lots of consonant clusters 1
-occasional consonant clusters 2
-few if any consonant clusters 1
-very breezy with lots of fricatives and approximants 2
-very choppy with lots of stops 1
-something based on Ozy's idea with one style giving way to the other 3
-something else entirely 2
Just out of interest (although it doesn't seem to be getting much in the way of votes), what would 'something esle entirely' entail?
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2014-03-12, 03:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
Could be a few different things. For instance an even mix of stops and fricatives so that the language has a mix of chop and flow that doesn't neatly break down as one becoming the other. Or perhaps a slightly complicated relationship between them with lenition and fortition brought on by different circumstances like stress, emphasis, nearby words, adjacent phonemes from affixes, etc. Sandhi effects could be another way to shift between chop and flow. And there are other options as well.
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2014-03-12, 03:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
Interesting, if potentially slightly complicated--perhaps a mild version of some kind of sandhi or lenition/fortition with an overall manner based on Ozy's idea would be interesting. Combining this with double vowel harmony and polysynthesis...
Last edited by nelk114; 2014-03-12 at 03:40 PM.
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2014-03-14, 06:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
haha that would indeed be something. we seem to have a mind for complicated but awesome things :)
what are y'all thinking with regards to the vote? should we wait a bit more or just call it done?
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2014-03-15, 07:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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2014-04-01, 07:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
Well, now that the forums are back up who out there is ready to conlang? And shall we call the last vote we were on finished and move on to the next discussion or should we see if anyone else is going to vote?
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2014-04-01, 04:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
Why don't we see just how many votes were made and for what so we can judge if the poll needs some more votes or not.
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2014-04-03, 03:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
You know how sometimes when you're going through old files you stumble across an old project that you never finished and forgot about? I just found the beginnings of a conlang on my old flashdrive.The vocabulary is less than a page and a quarter, and the grammar just has sentence structure, some tenses, and a few other things of the like. I was using it for a Pathfinder game and also have some sample sentences at the end of the two page document.
If anyone is interested I could upload part of it up here or in a PM.
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2014-04-04, 07:00 AM (ISO 8601)
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2014-04-09, 02:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)
Well, this seems to have lost a lot of steam, but I've vaguely been entertaining Ozy's idea. What I take as the most important thing for going towards more "breathy" is a movement from having consonant clusters to having fairly strict CV syllables. This is very roughly one idea for how to get it to work from a semi-naturalistic point of view [bias admission time: I'm big on fictional languages being largely realistic, and universal tendencies shouldn't be ignored without good reason.]
What I came up with was a verb-initial language. Verb-first languages bias rather heavily towards prefixing, and as this is a polysynthetic language, affixes are likely to abound. Polysynethsis likely means, at minimum, two agreement affixes. As an example
Code:ka- še- ko- li 2S- 1S- PRES- see I see you
SpoilerCode:INDCAUS- RECIP- COM- DCAUS- INST- BEN- OBJ- SUBJ- tense- root SUBJ OBJ INST RECIP COM OBJ- PP OBJ PTCP- tense- root tis- ar- šek- pja- k'us- ni- k'atš- vi- tsa- saskem tif šah nuq pape tsima k'atš- ri mahšim q'up- sek- talit INDCAUS 3S COM- 1P INST 1P 3S 3S PAST take dog bone mouth father brother 3S in tent PTCP- FUT- burn them [father] [brother]- we [mouth] us [bone] [dog] [tent] We made them have the dog, with [its] brother, take the bones to father in the tent with [its] mouth for us, for burning [i.e. ritual] Note that the root verb is TAKE in this sentence; the "made" and "have" in English are supplied by the direct and indirect causatives. Also note that the order of affixes on the verb is arbitrary, except for putting object/subject/tense right next to the root, as I don't have any offhand knowledge as to what's likely.
Tisaršekpjak'usnik'atšvitsasaskem tif šah nuq pape tsima k'atšri mahšim q'upsektalis
If you'll notice, there's no consonant clusters except across syllables, with the exception of pja. And in roots (in bold) there's a harder restriction - there's no clusters involving two stops. So how does this work? Well, say the root is stressed heavily - and then most of the morphemes before the root had their vowel deleted in the prehistory of the language. Compare:
Tisaršekpjak'usnik'atšvitsasaskem tif šah nuq pape tsima k'atšri mahšim q'upsektalis
Tsarškpik'snk'tšvitssaskem tif šah nuq pape tsima k'tšri mahšim qp'esktalit
And bam, the natural order of the sentence means that the huge conglomeration of prefixes has tons of consonant clusters, while once the verb is over, the nouns, adverbs, and adjectives are largely CV with a few limited CVC clusters. Prepositional phrases and participles, both taking limited verbal inflection, sprinkle in a bit of extra clustering later in the sentence, but nothing like the first verb.
Of course, such a long chain of prefixes isn't going to crop up all the time, and many sentences will be a lot shorter [for example, I see the dog's bone might be k'tšeškli šah tif] but I think it gets the point across as one method for making a sentence grow towards being more "windy." While it could be possible to do this with a different sentence order, I think verb-initial works best because of how it affects the rest of the sentence structure. For example, if it was verb-final, as Japanese (among many many others), you'd end up with all the nouns at the beginning of the sentence. As I presented it, that would mean everything gets more and more rough as the sentence goes on, and switching it up for clustery roots and sonorous affixes just seems far less likely to me than clustery affixes and sonorous roots (though I don't have any solid proof, just intuition).
On a COMPLETELY different note, a few things that are also likely to be perceptually "dark" would be r-colored/rhotic/retroflexed vowels (as has been mentioned as possible harmony), pharyngealization and retracted tongue root (r-colored vowels tend to involve this is well), low tones, creakiness on the vowel (BUT creakiness can often have a high tone), and low vowels (ah/aw vowels versus high ee/oo vowels). While "bright/light" would be advanced tongue root, high tones, breathy voice (which correlates with both of the previous), and high vowels (ee/oo). To draw a connection to what Ozy already said, voiced sounds correlate with low tone and voiceless sounds with high tone. To a lesser extent, rounded vowels are darker than unrounded vowels - i/ü, e/ö, or Turkish ı or Korean eu versus u.
Personally I don't think "back" consonants are necessarily dark: I'd say palatals like sh, ch are "brightest," then dentals/alveolars like t, s, z, th, then labials and velars like p k kh/x. Much darker than those are uvulars/pharyngeals/retroflex like q, French R, American L/R, and the Arabic Sounds™. The palatals have a tendency to pull vowels front and high the uvular/pharyngeal/retroflex pull vowels back and low, building off what Ozy said about front/back vowels and I said about high/low.
[Due to the ambiguity of "windy" and "sonorous" and "dark" and the other words we're using, I'll also throw out that sounds like English p t k I find much less sonorous, but brighter, than the likes of mb nd ng, which are more sonorous and darker, and don't find either more or less windy.]Proudly without a signature for 5 years. Wait... crap.