Re: Revising my consonant inventory

Nick Scholten wrote:

> Anyway, on to my real issue. I'm stuck on what to do with this. I feel that
> it's too regular, and frequently when I'm trying to make up words [h] and
> [j] and voiced stops keep showing up. Also, I think the phoneme inventory is
> too small, and is so regular it forces me to use sounds I don't like much
> anyway. The changes I would like to make:
/j/ certainly is a very frequent sound in languages. I've been resisting
adding /j/ to Minza, but with little success; I may as well just add it
(although I might have it realized as [j\]).

[h] could perhaps be an allophone of /x/, or even something like [p\]
and [h] as allophones of /h/ (as in Japanese). There are certainly
languages with /h/ and /x/ as distinct phonemes (e.g., German, Arabic),
but I think those tend to be languages with larger consonant inventories
in general (although that's just a vague guess on my part; I haven't
specifically looked for this).

> adding: /h/ /j/ /w/ /?/ /5/ or /L\/ or both as allophones. Adding a
> voiced/ejective/aspiration distinction in stops or a combination of those.
> Palatalization. Maybe /X/ and /S/ or /s`/. I'm not sure if I want a rhotic,
> maybe /r/ is a good idea but I'm unable to pronounce it.
>
> losing: the voice distinction in fricatives, and losing bilabial maybe
> replacing it with labiodental, maybe /x G/ also. /K\/, maybe /p/ also.
There's certainly precedent for languages without a voice distinction in
fricatives.

> I know that the choices you make for a sound system are largely subjective,
> but I want it to be somewhat realistic. I have no idea whatsoever what
> consonant clusters are realistic, which is the main reason I'm asking these
> questions.
Between vowels you could have a syllable division between consonants, so
there could be clusters that aren't possible as either initials or
finals. Still, there are likely to be restrictions beyond just combining
any possible final with any possible initial (limitations on cluster
length, assimilation, etc.)

Generally there tend to be sounds in clusters that are more likely to be
adjacent to vowels and different sounds that are more likely to be on
syllable boundaries (e.g., final -nd is more likely than -dn). But
anything you can pronounce is probably realistic enough. Voiceless
fricatives, for instance, can go pretty much anywhere.