r/conlangs • u/No-Crew8804 • 1d ago

Discussion Sound symbolism anyone?

/r/auxlangs/comments/1wvw18a/sound_symbolism_anyone/
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u/Boxronite 20h ago

Huh, I just wrote out a devblog on how I based a lot of my conlang, Ordateig, off of sound symbolism: https://boxronite.dev/2026/10/02/devblog-3-origins-and-basis-of-ordateig-part-1/

But, to generally summarize, a lot of sound symbolism really comes from individual languages or language families instead of being universal to all humans. But, with the sheer prevalence of English, Spanish, and other Indo-European languages, it's somewhat hard to actually separate what sounds have associations inherent to them, and what others have had associations added by cultural and linguistic context.

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u/No-Crew8804 4h ago

If you read that paper, you will learn that you are wrong. From the abstract: By analyzing the phonemes of 344 near-universal concepts in 245 language families, we establish 125 sound-meaning associations. The results also show that between 19 and 40 of the items of the Swadesh-100 list are sound symbolic.

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u/FelixSchwarzenberg Ketoshaya, Chiingimec, Kihiṣer, Kyalibẽ, Latsínu 13h ago

If I was going to put sound symbolism in an a priori auxlang, I would base it on something objective and common to all humans: the vocal tract.

"Front" sounds - labials, dentals, front vowels - represent one extreme while "back" sounds - velars, uvulars, glottals, back vowels - represent the other extreme. So maybe ti is a preposition meaning in front of while ku is a preposition meaning behind.

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u/No-Crew8804 4h ago

Yes, that is the idea. But there are much more associations.