And who needs vowels?

Having recently learned a little Russian and stumbling across some Czech
in, of all places, a little puzzle game, and having heard of Georgian on
this list on a few occasions, I started to wonder where one may end up
should vowels remain in such poverty and consonants continue to
proliferate. And so, I dreamed of a conlang where all vowels have been
elided and substituted with sonorant consonants, and some words consist
of nothing but stops. For example:

plb [pl=b] (I suspect this one may happen to be an actual Czech word)
bg [bg]
pg [pg] (yes there is an audible difference between /bg/ and /pg/)
pglbz ["pgl=bz=]
mnvpl [mnf="pl=]
bxtm ["bx=tm=]
strvtz [strv="tz=]
'b [?b=] (perhaps an implosive [b]? There is no audible release)
pstng [ps"tN=]

The difference between /bg/ and /pg/ is that /bg/ has a short prevoicing
before the release of the lips, whereas /pg/ doesn't. The [g] is not
audibly released.

Now, [l=] alone isn't all *that* interesting. The interesting part is
that it is (relatively) easy to pronounce two different kinds of [l=],
one high (palatised?), and one low (velarized? maybe retroflex?).
Similarly, palatised and non-palatised [x] may well be two different
phonemes. (Which, in retrospective con-history, came from consonants
preceding [i] and [M], which have elided.)

Of course, to make the prospective language more mellifluous (*cough*),
it seemed good to me that it should be tonal.

Due to the availability of more consonant letters, unpronounced vowels,
and general connection with vowel-scarce languages, and also my own
infatuation, perhaps the Cyrillic alphabet would be most suitable to
write this conlang. So the above words would be rendered something like:

Пльб (I'm using the "soft sign" ь to indicate stress, which would
	generally be in the vicinity of the proposed elided vowels)
Бгь
Пгь
Пгльбз
Мнвпль
Бхьтм
Стрвць
ъб	(using the hard sign here to indicate glottal stop, or in
	general, a velarised/back/low consonant)
Пстггь (using doubled г for [N]; perhaps it will be substituted with a
	less eye-soring digraph or maybe even a vowel letter; but sadly,
	most standard fonts don't have the nasal Cyrillic yuses for
	ready usage.)

The palatised/velarised [l=] sounds would be, respectively, ль and лъ.
Similarly, the two kinds of [x=] would be written хь and хъ.

[l] would, of course, interact with dentals to produce [K] and [K\], so
if one were to transcribe a foreign name, say Brazil, into this
language, one would get:

Брзль [brz="K\=]

Also, some consonants seem to lend themselves well to rounded/unrounded
distinctions, such as [x]. So бохь might be pronounced [bx_w=], for
instance. (The written vowel is, of course, not pronounced, and has in
retrospective con-history become a labialization sign.)

One can make a most peculiar sound trying to pronounce оль [l_w=]. I'm
not sure whether to include this in the prospective conlang yet...

Finally, my favorite word in this conlang has to be Бжь [bZ=]. Perhaps
it should mean "to be hit". ;-)


T

--
If the comments and the code disagree, it's likely that *both* are
wrong. -- Christopher

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