Inlis: Phonology and Consequences

In case anyone wonders, there is an actual basis for the vowel groups: Dr. J. C. Wells's lexical sets. The purpose of the sets is to describe phonological differences between dialects. I decided to use them in an attempt to simplify the importation process, since US and British vowels differ considerably. Inlis doesn't follow either of these dialects exclusively. Rather, it's meant to be a pan-English dialect that's closer to creoles than to the rival dialects. Speakers should always sound somewhat foreign and exotic: this is one time neither Received Pronunciation nor General American is welcome.

It should be obvious that a and o are overloaded, especially a. In my dialect, the seven mappings of o are just three distinct vowels--or technically just two. Such phenomena are common.

Still, a is overloaded, and I've tried to reduce the load, so far unsuccessfully. The current mappings seem to be the best.

Probably the most controversial items will be the mappings to o of the LOT, CLOTH, PALM, and THOUGHT sets. From a (Western) US perspective, it would make more sense to map these to a, further overloading that overworked vowel. But I chose o because

1. the sounds are commonly associated with that letter both in the main English dialects and in creoles

2. it's easier to map all of these to a single vowel, and a is already overloaded, while apart from these, o would be somewhat underloaded.

This does lead to some oddities. For example, if I imported wander and wonder directly, wander would become wonda and wonder wanda.

The big weakness is that the mappings make the English tendency toward homonyms even worse, but since I'm trying to rein in synonyms anyway, I can avoid a lot of the problem.

Next time I'll explain a bit about the grammar and importation mechanism.

Inlis: Phonology and Mappings

Vowels and diphthongs

I generally use Spanish vowels as the model, but in general

a as in father

e as in bet (or as in bait without the closing y sound)

i as in machine

o as in go

u as oo in moon


ai as eye

au as ou in house

ei as ey in obey

oi as in noise

Note that ei exists only to force the distinction with e, as in leta (letter) and leita (later, after). This distinction is uncommon.


The i of ai and oi is usually written y before another vowel. Technically, faya (fire) is pronounced FA-ya, but it's normal to say FAI-ya instead. Likewise au before a vowel is written aw: pawa (power).


The accent is on the first syllable.

Consonant mappings

Consonant mappings are mostly obvious; the exceptions are

Th in thin ([T]): t

Th in then ([D]): d

L or r before another consonant: omitted. (But l may be retained in advanced vocabulary.)

Final vocalic l sound (candle, ankle, etc.) -> al: kandal, ankal

Final vocalic r sound (canker, anchor, etc.) -> a: kanka, anka

Optional generic final vowel to help with otherwise final consonants: e.

In general, Inlis restricts consonant clusters. A form such as ?sprinklin should be considered extreme and worth avoiding, though it's technically allowable. Normally, the maximum should be only two consonants per cluster.


(The normal workaround for sCl- and sCr- initial clusters is to insert an a after C: sparinklin. I've not yet decided whether to write that or not; I'm tempted to consider it optional.)

Vowel mappings

Consonant mappings are fairly simple; the vowel mappings are

a TRAP (bad, cab, ham) (I've considered e here, but a works better)

a STRUT (cub, rub, hum)

a BATH (staff, clasp, dance)

a NURSE (hurt, term, work)

a START (far, sharp, farm)

a lettER (beggar, martyr, visor)

a commA (China, sofa, about)


e DRESS (step, ebb, hem)

e(i) FACE (weight, rein, steak)


i KIT (ship, rip, dim)

i FLEECE (seed, key, seize)

i happY (silly, Tony, merry)


o LOT (stop, rob, swan)

o CLOTH (cough, long, gone)

o PALM (calm, bra, father)

o THOUGHT (taut, hawk, broad)

o GOAT (soap, soul, home)

o NORTH (war, storm, for)

o FORCE (floor, coarse, ore)


u CURE (poor, tour, fury)

u FOOT (full, look, could)

u GOOSE (who, group, few)

u intO (influence, situation, bivouac)


ai PRICE (ripe, tribe, aisle)

au MOUTH (pouch, noun, crowd)

oi CHOICE (boy, void, coin)

ia NEAR (beer, pier, fierce)

ea SQUARE (care, air, wear)


Note that "long u" ([ju]) becomes a mere oo sound ([u]) except initially: duti, nu, but yusin. This is because dialects differ on the non-initial pronunciation.


I'll try to justify these mappings next time.

Inlis: History

By way of background, Inlis derived from several realizations.

First, I realized that English wasn't being sufficiently leveraged. It's widely known--one of the only common denominators of the auxlang target demographic--yet this leads to nothing more than a few lexical items in most auxlangs.

Second, Lingua Franca Nova gave me a new paradigm for at-sight (or rather at-hearing) projects: it follows sound rather than writing, yet it is fairly intelligible.

Third, various English-based creoles are likewise intelligible at sight and at hearing (Bislama being my favorite), though they retain typical natlang quirks and limitations that undermine their usefulness. (In general, despite their much-touted ease, creoles are just a bit too random for auxlang use. Intelligent Design, friends! Don't leave home without it!)

Fourth, as I was fiddling with Interglossa, working on a translation of the Babel text, I realized that relexing Interglossa to to English--no, to Bislama--roots would yield an at-sight, at-hearing angloclone: an English-based auxlang.

Such an auxlang would recognize and reward the efforts of those who strive to learn at least spoken English, unlike most auxlangs which ignore or patronize such efforts. It would produce a neutral version of English, an exotic, non-native, global English--standardized, accessible, immediately extensible to nearly the full range of the original if necessary, but limited for beginners.

We'll look at the basic phonological mappings next time.

Inlis: The Rationale

I admit I'm surprised. I hadn't meant to dump Inlis in your collective lap and run off giggling maniacally, but that's roughly what I accomplished. So I was expecting the Spanish Inquisition when I checked in again. (I know: "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" So I'm a nobody. This is news?)

There should have been a comment explaining that regular English is bad enough without caricaturing it as a kind of creole.

Simply put, the rationale for Inlis derives from the following premises:

1. Most of the people in the auxlang target demographic know English.

2. They don't know it well enough to feel comfortable in it.

3. English as such is too complicated in sounds, vocabulary, and idioms for most learners to achieve effectively native fluency in it.

4. As with most natlangs, the gulf between native and non-native speakers will intimidate learners.

5. In only another generation or so, most people will speak Bad English. It will be bad either because they aren't native speakers; because they natively speak a non-prestige dialect developed almost from a pidgin (Hinglish, Ebonics, whatever); or because they grew up in North America, Britain, or Australia and are out to sabotage English from within.

6. On the other hand, some will speak Funny English, though that's subjective: Brits in the US, Americans in Britain, Australians pretty much anywhere. Funny English can be fun, even cool--useful traits for an auxlang.

Question: What if there were an artificial Funny English that would make us all sound not just like L2 English-speakers but fun/cool ones? Non-native English-speakers wouldn't sound any sillier than natives, and we could all have a good laugh, loosen up, and get on with life.

This is the goal of Inlis. It's meant to be easier and more predictable than English, intelligible to those who already know English to any extent (the investment in learning English isn't wasted), not the property of any group (native English-speakers won't have any real advantage), and about as extensible as English proper.

Next up, I'll explain the history of the project

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em

I should apologize for the last post. I won't, but I thought I should mention that I know I should. Conspiracy theories generally trigger my gag reflex, and "English is an International Conspiracy" is no exception.

But in any case, I'm about to quote myself, which demonstrates how authoritative this blog is: I don't quote just anyone, you know!

Our target demographic is relatively small, educated, and (incidentally) westernized.

Or more specifically, these people know at least some English. Shouldn't we use that?

Some auxlangs do--they have a fair amount of English vocabulary. But even then there's generally a negative attitude: Watch out, folks! It's English, so get out your hazmat suits!

Not a good sign.

More sincere efforts generally involve making English easier to learn by starting with a simplified version: Basic English, Globish, and various types of spelling reform.

But none of this addresses the fundamental problems of mastering English--the synonyms ("big" or "large"?), the idiomatic use of prepositions (not just an English issue), hard-to-pronounce words (e.g., "world"), and so on. They also further entrench the superiority of native speakers, with only the hope that their number will continue to grow and perhaps your children will be among them.

In the spirit of "If you can't beat 'em, get a bigger club," I'm proposing an alternative. I won't even explain what follows except to say that the consonants are essentially English and the vowels the usual five found in most auxlangs. Read it out and follow the sound, not the spelling. (I've updated this so many times I hope it's truly current, but at least it'll give you some idea of what I'm up to.)

1. Da total at bifo hav wan lanwij plas da seim wad.

2. Taim dat da pipal du bigin go istan, dem notis da flat-ples in da Shinar lan; plas dem go risaidin da ples.

3. Dem tok ta ichada "Kamon! Wi mek da brik plas du kukin dem in faya!" Dem du yusin da brik insted rok plas da tari insted brik glu.

4. Dem tok ta ichada, "Kamon! Wi mek da siti plas da tawa, wich hav da hed in skai! Wi mek big wi neim gol wi no leita get skata tru da total at!"

5. Yawe go daun gol si da siti plas da tawa, wich da pipal mek.

6. Yawe tok, "Si! Dem bi wan pipal, plas dem hav wan lanwij, plas dem bi ebal du da hia tin! Foloen dis, ziro tin, wich dem du trai, bi tumach no-isi!

7. "Kamon! Wi go daun plas wi mek konfusin dem lanwij gol dem no du andastan ichada!"

8. Yawe du skata dem tru da total at, plas dem no kipon mek da siti.

9. Foloen dis, da ples get neim Babel, bikos Yawe mek konfusin da lanwij av da total at, plas auta dea ples Yawe du skata da pipal tru da total at.

I'll try to explain all this next time.

English: Threat or Menace?

I had hoped to avoid the English Thread for a while--I've already partly written posts on worldlangs, literature, and so forth--but apparently it's keeping people up nights. English is everywhere, friends--upstairs, downstairs, and in milady's chamber. Probably in your undies, too. Go ahead and check; I won't watch.

Done? Good. Now take some deep breaths and consider some facts:

English is not the Antichrist. You aren't damned for speaking or learning it, though you may feel otherwise. It's just The Language right now, much as Latin was in the Middle Ages or French for a few centuries after that.

They weren't the Antichrist either.

It's not a good idea to try a frontal assault on English. There's an allegorical movie about the result of defying this principle, and you can watch several versions on YouTube. Stick with the original: it's honest. And remember that Godzilla is English, Bambi is Esperanto, and every other auxlang in the world is a flea or tick on Bambi's back. Get the picture?

The twin problems of English are its difficulty and its user base. "Difficulty" includes irregular forms and demented spelling. English was developed by people whose chief linguistic skill was illiteracy and whose chief talent was operating while intoxicated. The French and the Goidelic Celts, who had the same general characteristics, were no help at all, except in the drinking department.

"User base" refers to people who are currently advantaged by their knowledge, imperfect as it likely is, of English. They are not about to give up that advantage for the sake of the less fortunate.

But wait! There's more!

Unfortunately, several decades ago, a bunch of non-native speakers who hadn't quite learned English decided to pass on their questionable skills to the next generation, leading to native speakers of very odd forms of English: Chinglish, Hinglish, Don't-Touch-That-Thinglish--they all complicate matters further.

Depressed? Good: that's reality setting in. But there is also good news. Remember, a problem is just an opportunity that has turned bully and wants to beat you up. We'll look for the silver lining next time.