Too far in to make major changes?

ea-luna is just about 4 years old now. It's a pretty large
language (particularly by my standards). It continues to grow and
change, mostly becoming more complex. Is this any time to go
changing the phonology?

I was thinking about adding tones. That would really increase my
number of possible syllables dramatically, but I don't know if I
want to do that at this stage in the game. *Most* ea-luna words
at this stage are one or 2 syllables, with  fairly lengthy
compounds made up of those. Tones would be another way to make
one word more distinguishable from another, since a lot of words
do really sound quite a lot alike. One might recall that the -le
plural marker became "archaic" when I realized that "dile"
("testicles") looked just like "dile" ("toilet")... I didn't want
to go back and revise all the possibly confusing -le words, so I
dropped the plural except in certain words where there would be
no confusion ("lale" -- "we") or where it was already an integral
part of a word ("nutiuatabale" -- lit, "snow and lakes"... Which
really could be either Michigan or Minnesota, but it means the
former.) This is just an example of a problem I could "fix" by
adding tones as a distinguishing feature...

On the other hand, the reason that ea-luna looks and sounds the
way it does is that I really did want a limited number of sounds
to work with, and when I have read longer passages of ea-luna
aloud to myself, or recorded them and played them back, I really
like the sound of it now.

I just don't know if I want to get into a major revision at this
stage, especially while it is already undergoing some shifting
and refining of the grammar.

Any opinions? Should I just start YANC? (Yet Another New Conlang)

--

Mia (tuozin@dmv.com)