Re: Nonpulmonic conlang?

I've had a nonpulmonic conlang in the works since forever. Mostly because I
don't want to rush it. This was inspired by being irritated at the trope of
disembodied heads "talking" in various types of fiction, when they clearly
should have no bisnes doing so without functioning lungs.

All the basic sounds are clicks, and contrast two or three (undecided)
degrees of rounding:
* Bilabial
* Coronal central affricated - IPA dental click
* Coronal unaffricated - IPA alveolar click
* Coronal flap'd (no IPA symbol, but this is very distinct from any of the
others; perhaps the same as the "retroflex click" of some Khoisan languages?)
* "Reverse" (released at the back closure, also with a distinct sound. The
location of the front closure doesn't matter much, and so it assimilates to
the next one)

...Yes, careful analysis has revealed to me that the difference between the
"dental" and the "alveolar" clicks is one of release type, not POA. I can
articulate the contrast at any of dental, alveolar, or retroflex. There's
not much of a difference between lamino-postalveolar and palatal clicks either!

-Back on the phoneme inventory, then there are these two oddballs (both
still containing the rounding distinction) which function as vowels of sort:
* Trilled dental egressiv (an odd "snarling" sound, a continuant of sorts -
freely varies between central and lateral)
* Labiodental fricativ egressiv (exactly the clicked analog of [f])

The fricativ has to be labiodental - when you need to create the airflo by
pushing a dorsal closure forwards, you run of space much too quickly for
coronal fricativs to be usable. (They're still possible tho. A velaric [C],
at the extreme, can be hold only for a fraction of a second, but that may
still be of interest.)

And before you declare this a non-pronunciable kitchensink: I can pronounce
anything using this phonology extremely naturally, much more easily than
things like pharyngeals, ejectivs, [i\] etc. I came up with this *before*
any phonetic training to tell me what velaric sounds may be "possible" and
which "impossible", you see ;)

I've never dabbled with "official" beatboxing, but I keep thinking it would
be an interesting experience.

John Vertical

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