Re: The beautifulest phonology

The beautifulest phonology, huh? OK - since beauty is subjective here's a
short-ish list of things I find appealing:
  1) ejectives (stops, affricates - both common enough, plus fricatives - eg
Tlingit)
  2) clicks
  3) lateral fricatives
  4) trills (Nias has three: [(m)B\, r, (n)r`] which are bilabial, alveolar,
and retroflexed (?) post-alveolar, the first and last optionally
prenasalized; I personally like both voiced and voiceless trills, though no
living language that I am aware of has bilabial, coronal & uvular voiced &
voiceless trills...)
  5) postvelars/uvulars/pharyngeals
So far the languages that I have actually heard that I found aesthetically
pleasing include Tlingit, Navajo, Xhosa, and a very limited bit of Yupik and
|Gui (Khoisan).

The vowel system of Nuosu Yi (Tibeto-Burman; Sichuan, China) is one of the
more interesting and attractive that I've seen:

6 vowels [i, E_q, 1, A_q, o, O_q], plus syllabic [z=, z=_q, v=, v=_q] (using
X-Sampa, _q denotes retracted tongue root: these vowels are usually
described in the literature as 'tense-voiced'. [z=, z=_q] are the 'apical'
vowels, occurring only with coronals as homorganic syllabic voiced
sibilants, as well as syllabic alveolars after labial stops and fricatives,
assimilating to laterals ([l=, l=_q]). The 'labial fricative' vowels [v=,
v=_q] deserve special mention, since they are truly different, occurring
with secondary lip rounding and protrusion after sibilants, and with
secondary labial trilling after labial stops and optinally after alveolar
stops, alveolopalatal affricates, and velar stops!

Aside from my own conlang, in which I hope to combine as many of these
features as possible (it's currently undergoing major revision), the most
appealing phonologies I've seen to date are And Rosta's Livagian and Herman
Miller's Nikta (the original version, since he had mentioned thinking about
redoing it) and Neyasai.

Bfowol

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