Diphthongs for Jovian

Hi everybody.  Here's an update on Jovian phonology.  I wonder
whether it a) is understandable and b) makes sense.  Feedback is
always welcome!

As you might know, Jovian likes to contract Latin words with
antepenultimate stress into shorter words with penultimate stress:

frigida -> fridha /fri:D@/

The vowel from the dropped syllable can survive by diphthongizing the
stressed vowel:

abilis -> aevel /"ajv@l/

For some less obvious "vowel additions", I've composed the following
chart.  The rows are the stressed vowels, and the columns are the
dropped ones.

  |  a    e    i    o    u
--+------------------------
a |  a    ae   ae   au   au
e |  ie   e    ei   e    e
i |  ie   ie   i    y    y
o |  o    oe   oe   o    ou
u |  uo   ue   ue   uo   u

I'm a bit uncomfortable with the e+o -> e and e+u -> e
transformations.  It seems that an eo or eu diphthong would be in
order there, but I can't think of any phonetic value for those
diphthongs that would fit the language's fluidity and my personal
taste.  =P   I've also considered changing it to e+o -> y, e+u -> y.

Keep in mind that the diphthongs are simplified into single short
vowel sounds in closed syllables!  For the exact pronunciations,
see the Jovian grammar sketch at my site:

       http://catharsis.netpeople.ch/langmaking/jovian.htm

This results in things like:

machina -> maenca /"meNk@/
femina -> feima /"fejm@/
granula -> graundla /"grondl@/
pegasus -> piexu /"pi@S/
orion -> oeron /"AjrAn/
fibula -> fybla /"fy:bl@/

Comments, anyone?


-- Christian Thalmann