Phonology
Phonemic Inventory
The initial idea was for Lugso’s gimmick to be “only fricatives”, but the wisdom of moderation won the day - it’s now just mostly fricatives.
Great pains have been taken to preserve the feel and sense of the “big names” like Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, and so on - the conceit is as follows: Lovecraft heard these names spoken by real cultists in Lugso, and transcribed them into English as we know them. Lugso thus represents the original language from which the famous monikers were derived. It is my hope that phonetically, this has been done convincingly.
| Consonants | bilabial | labiodental | dental | postalvoelar | alvoelar | alvoelar-lateral | velar | uvular | glottal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| fricative | ɸβ | fv | θð | ʃʒ | sz | xɣ | χ | ||
| approximant | j | ɻ | ɮ | ||||||
| nasal | n | ||||||||
| stop | ʔ |
| Vowels | front | central | back |
|---|---|---|---|
| high | i | u | |
| mid | ʌ/ə |
ʌ/ə is the same phoneme, but ʌ is stressed and ə is unstressed.
Importing names from English - rules for special sounds
As a general rule, the English sound, if it is a fricative, remains a fricative. If the English sound is a stop, it becomes a fricative at the same location. There are several exceptions to this, however.
| English sound (ipa) | Lugso sound (ipa) | Lugso letter (latin) |
|---|---|---|
| m | β | b |
| d | ð | d |
| t | θ | t* |
| θ (“th”) | θx | tk |
| tʃ (“ch”) | θʃ | t5 |
| dʒ (“zh”, as in garage) | zʒ | z3 |
| l | ɮ | l |
| r | ɻ | r |
| k | x | k |
| g | ɣ | g |
| h | χ | h |
| u | u | u |
| i | i | i |
| a/o | ʌ | o |
* “t” is a dental stop, so its conversion should be s, but s already exists in Lugso, so t becomes θ. Same with d and z - instead, d becomes ð.
Phonotactics
In general: pronounce exactly as written, even if impossible. There are 2 exceptions:
- Separate duplicate phonemes with glottal stops.
- Separate adjacent vowels with glottal stops (even between words).
Brief pauses between words are encouraged.
I’ve added a dot below the last letter of each morpheme (aka unit of meaning), to assist you in visually scanning them as you learn and read. These dots are ornamental and serve no other purpose.
Morphology
(c)(c)(c)v(c)(c): Each syllable has a vowel, up to 3 onset consonants, and up to 2 coda consonants. Words will occasionally possess strings of 5 consonants, and may possess any number of syllables. Good luck!
Stress is always placed on the first syllable of each word. Duplicate phonemes are stressed as semi-syllables. Fortunately, most core words are only one or two syllables, although suffixes often increase that count.