lingual point of articulation, only lingual

Last night, I thought of something interesting. Being in the half of the
population that can roll his tongue, I already experienced to blow air
trough my rolled tongue, but tonight, I've realised for the first time that
it is a voiceless fricative!

Thus, I tried some things and been able to pronounce stops, nasals,
fricatives, affricates, and approximants with my rolled tongue, each in
voiced and voiceless versions. Considering that laterals would need the
tongue to be in a form similar to the small letter Omega and that I'm unable
to do such thing, I assume that they are impossible.

So because of the incapacity of a half of the population to pronounce them,
I guess no natlangs use such phonemes but did some conlangers use them? I'd
find them particulary fun to use for a weird conlang, the weirness being
both in the resulting sounds, the appearance of the person that would use it
to speak (having to stick out your rolled tongue to the person you are
talking to would be funny to watch!), and the fact that even with skills to
pronouce a lot of phoneme, half of the people will never be able to pronouce
this.


A kind of vowel could also use this, because it is a kind of rounding.
(Actually, I'm only able to use it with close and a little with close-mid
vowels since if I open more, the tongue is no more rolled and it is simply
the vowel with your tongue out.) You could have /i/, /y/, and the same
front-closed vowel with a rolled tongue.


Isn't that a weird idea?? What do you think?

- Max

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