<p>If you're wed to the idea of using Vulgar to make English nonsense words, the best idea would likely be to manually set the dropoff rate using "equiprobable" and custom weights, as it's unlikely that any of the default options precisely match English text. If you can find out what the rate of occurrence of different English phonemes is, putting them in manually in this way would almost definitely be more accurate than relying on the defaults.</p>

<p>I don't have any resources that list explicit measures for the rates of occurrences of various English phonemes on hand, but they likely exist; I'll certainly edit some into this answer if I find any.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-20T11:41:28.513Z
2019-10-20T11:41:28.513Z
Sparksbet
<p>Note that by synthesising vocabulary using a tool like Vulgar Lang, you will not even approximate English even when using the same distributional laws for phonemes. You will get a lot of words that could be English, but are just unused, you get known words but with other meanings, and you don't get morphology or syntax at all.</p>

<p>Of course, "naturalistic ranking" is the best approximation, all other rankings lead to feelable statistical distortions given your conlang an engeneered touch.</p>

<p>As an alternative I suggest looking at the questions and answers under <a href="/questions/tagged/diachronics" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;diachronics&#39;" rel="tag">diachronics</a>: Start with real life English and apply systematic changes to the sounds and the grammar. For an example using projection of current trends into the future, you can look at <a href="http://jbr.me.uk/futurese.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Futurese</a>.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-18T08:56:02.857Z
2019-10-18T08:56:02.857Z
Sir Cornflakes
<p>In creating an ancestral lang for a hard-fantasy world that is based on the language of your home, you first have to understand that language.  And for an impatient worldbuilder like me, the Vulgar Language Generator seems the best place to go.  Click the "English" choice, and you automatically get the following consonant clusters:</p>

<p><strong>Word initial</strong>:  b bɹ d dj ʤ f fj fɹ h j k kj kw kɹ l m n nj p pl pɹ s sm sp st t tɹ ʧ v w ð g gɹ ɹ ʃ ʍ θ θɹ</p>

<p><strong>Mid-word</strong>:  b bl d f ft fɹ h k l ldɹ lm ls lw lɹ m mb ms mθ n nd ndɹ nl ns nt ntɹ nɹ p pl s st sʧ t ts tw ʧ v w z zn ð ŋgl g ɹ θ</p>

<p><strong>Word final</strong>:  b d dz ʤ f ft k ks kst kt l ld lf lp lt lvz m md mz n nd ndz nst nt nʧ nz p ps pt s skt st t ts ʧ v vd z ð ŋ ŋk ŋz g ɹ ʃ θ</p>

<p><strong>Vowels</strong>:  aɪ aʊ eɪ i iə iː oː u uː æ ɑː ɒ ɔ ɔɪ ɔː ə əʊ ɛ ɛː ɜː ɪ ɪə ʊə ʌ ʊ</p>

<p>And there are some things in English that came naturally before knowing about it, like affixes, sound-verb-object and adjective before noun.</p>

<p>However, there are some things about English that I know nothing about, like its dropoff rate.  Vulgar defined dropoff rate as follows:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Phonemes are ranked by frequency from left (most frequent) to right (least frequent). <strong>Medium</strong> makes the frequencies slightly more even than <strong>fast</strong>. When using <strong>equiprobable</strong>, phonemes can be custom weighted by writing <strong>=multiplier</strong>, eg: <strong>p=10</strong> makes p ten times more common than a phoneme without a weighting.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Vulgar gives us choices for our phonemes:  "fast", "medium" or "equiprobable" for dropoff rate and "naturalistic ranking", "natural with randomness", "alphabetical" or "previous" for how to arrange the phonemes.  Which of these choices matches English in real life?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-19T12:11:09.680Z
Can you please explain what the problem was with my edit? The question title should ask an actual question. This does not.
curiousdannii
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-21T13:51:40.903Z
Well, for one thing, titles are capitalized.
JohnWDailey
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-21T14:01:20.523Z
My edit started with "What"... is that not capitalised?
curiousdannii
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-21T15:25:43.720Z
The WHOLE title is not capitalized.  Titles NEED to be capitalized.
JohnWDailey
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-21T22:13:38.527Z
Oh, you mean title casing. Well that's not true, look at any other question here. It would also not be a valid reason to reject an edit (and if it really mattered to you you could always change it to title casing. Why haven't you done that now after Sparksbet's edit?)
curiousdannii
<phonology><tools><english>
What setting for the dropoff rate in a language generator will produce a natural English phoneme distribution?
# What setting for the dropoff rate in a language generator will produce a natural English phoneme distribution?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2019-10-18)

In creating an ancestral lang for a hard-fantasy world that is based on the language of your home, you first have to understand that language. And for an impatient worldbuilder like me, the Vulgar Language Generator seems the best place to go. Click the "English" choice, and you automatically get the following consonant clusters:

**Word initial**: b bɹ d dj ʤ f fj fɹ h j k kj kw kɹ l m n nj p pl pɹ s sm sp st t tɹ ʧ v w ð g gɹ ɹ ʃ ʍ θ θɹ

**Mid-word**: b bl d f ft fɹ h k l ldɹ lm ls lw lɹ m mb ms mθ n nd ndɹ nl ns nt ntɹ nɹ p pl s st sʧ t ts tw ʧ v w z zn ð ŋgl g ɹ θ

**Word final**: b d dz ʤ f ft k ks kst kt l ld lf lp lt lvz m md mz n nd ndz nst nt nʧ nz p ps pt s skt st t ts ʧ v vd z ð ŋ ŋk ŋz g ɹ ʃ θ

**Vowels**: aɪ aʊ eɪ i iə iː oː u uː æ ɑː ɒ ɔ ɔɪ ɔː ə əʊ ɛ ɛː ɜː ɪ ɪə ʊə ʌ ʊ

And there are some things in English that came naturally before knowing about it, like affixes, sound-verb-object and adjective before noun.

However, there are some things about English that I know nothing about, like its dropoff rate. Vulgar defined dropoff rate as follows:

> Phonemes are ranked by frequency from left (most frequent) to right (least frequent). **Medium** makes the frequencies slightly more even than **fast**. When using **equiprobable**, phonemes can be custom weighted by writing **=multiplier**, eg: **p=10** makes p ten times more common than a phoneme without a weighting.

Vulgar gives us choices for our phonemes: "fast", "medium" or "equiprobable" for dropoff rate and "naturalistic ranking", "natural with randomness", "alphabetical" or "previous" for how to arrange the phonemes. Which of these choices matches English in real life?

**Tags:** phonology, tools, english
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Can you please explain what the problem was with my edit? The question title should ask an actual question. This does not.  
> **username_0**: Well, for one thing, titles are capitalized.  
> **username_1**: My edit started with "What"... is that not capitalised?  
> **username_0**: The WHOLE title is not capitalized.  Titles NEED to be capitalized.  
> **username_1**: Oh, you mean title casing. Well that's not true, look at any other question here. It would also not be a valid reason to reject an edit (and if it really mattered to you you could always change it to title casing. Why haven't you done that now after Sparksbet's edit?)  

---

## 2 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2019-10-20. Score: 1

If you're wed to the idea of using Vulgar to make English nonsense words, the best idea would likely be to manually set the dropoff rate using "equiprobable" and custom weights, as it's unlikely that any of the default options precisely match English text. If you can find out what the rate of occurrence of different English phonemes is, putting them in manually in this way would almost definitely be more accurate than relying on the defaults.

I don't have any resources that list explicit measures for the rates of occurrences of various English phonemes on hand, but they likely exist; I'll certainly edit some into this answer if I find any.


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### Answer by username_3 on 2019-10-18. Score: 1

Note that by synthesising vocabulary using a tool like Vulgar Lang, you will not even approximate English even when using the same distributional laws for phonemes. You will get a lot of words that could be English, but are just unused, you get known words but with other meanings, and you don't get morphology or syntax at all.

Of course, "naturalistic ranking" is the best approximation, all other rankings lead to feelable statistical distortions given your conlang an engeneered touch.

As an alternative I suggest looking at the questions and answers under [diachronics](/questions/tagged/diachronics "show questions tagged 'diachronics'"): Start with real life English and apply systematic changes to the sounds and the grammar. For an example using projection of current trends into the future, you can look at [Futurese](http://jbr.me.uk/futurese.html).


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