Phonology of a Whistle-Lang

Steg Belsky:

> Whistle-Lang has both voiceless and voiced phonemes.  It is based on
> a three-tiered tone system of High, Middle, and Low.  All phonemes
> (whistlemes?) should take around the same amount of time to
> pronounce/produce; therefore the flat tones can be 'long' by being
> repeated.
> j = L
> i = M
> f = H
> p = LM
> d = MH
> q = ML
> b = HM
> y = MLM
> u = HMH
> n = LML
> h = MHM
> m = HL
> w = LH
> The voiced equivalents of all these whistles are written with a
> preceding
> |z|, hence |zh| is a voiced MHM whistle, and |i| is a voiceless M
> whistle.  Or, you could have the voiced whistles be the orthographic
> default, and mark the voiceless ones with |s|; or maybe it would be
> better to mark all of the for voicingness with |s| and |z|... I'm
> not sure yet.
Interesting!  Do you intend for the voicings to be static, or have tone
and follow the shapes of the whistles?

If voice-tone and whistle-tone were independent, you could have
more phonemes, or voice-tone could mark grammar, etc. (this lang
might require a _lot_ of practice!).

-LowTone