Hs!lɓuə scratchpad

[Ryan of Tinellb]

Phonology
Voiceless plosive: p q
Voiced plosive: b d ɟ
Implosive: ɓ
Nasal: n
Approximant: l ʎ ɾ ɹ ɥ ʍ
Fricative: s z x
Click: ! ʇ ʞ
Vowels: ɯ u o ə ʌ ɔ ɐ

Grammar
Hs!lɓuə is generally head-initial, with OVS word order and postpositions. The prefix /pə-/ marks past tense for regular verbs. Plural nouns are prototypically marked with either /s-/ or /sə-/.

Lexicon
/unəɯ/ menu
/ʇɐɔ/ cat
/ɓop/ dog
/ɓuɐluoɔ/ conlang
/əʞoɾ/ joke

[Ryan of Tinellb]

I'm sure this has been done before.

When I was working in fast food, I saw the word unəɯ every day, so it got stuck in my head. The plethora of vowels makes reading most English words this way fairly easy.

[bbbosborne]

this is the greatest idea i have ever seen

[Zaarin]

I see what you're doing, but is it actually possible to have a language with clicks and not have a gazillion consonants?

[Vijay]

I see what you're doing, but is it actually possible to have a language with clicks and not have a gazillion consonants?

Damin?

[Zaarin]

I see what you're doing, but is it actually possible to have a language with clicks and not have a gazillion consonants?

Damin?

Aye, but that's a ritual language; my general impression is that natural languages with clicks have consonant inventories to make the Caucasus and PNW look tame by comparison.

[Frislander]

I see what you're doing, but is it actually possible to have a language with clicks and not have a gazillion consonants?

Damin?

Aye, but that's a ritual language; my general impression is that natural languages with clicks have consonant inventories to make the Caucasus and PNW look tame by comparison.

The problem is though, because Clicks are so geographically restricted we not only have a small sample size but there are areal effects to consider. So it would be possible for a click languages to not have a ridiculous number of consonants (Khoekhoe only has 31, which I think is the smallest count of any such language), but all the languages that have them or have acquired them probably acquired their large inventories from contact as well (compare Nguni Bantu and Proto-Bantu, or even many other extant Bantu branches and you can see the difference - the Nguni languages have clearly acquired a lot of other contrasts such as glottalisation and breathy stops from Khoisan as well as the clicks).

[Zaarin]

Damin?

Aye, but that's a ritual language; my general impression is that natural languages with clicks have consonant inventories to make the Caucasus and PNW look tame by comparison.

The problem is though, because Clicks are so geographically restricted we not only have a small sample size but there are areal effects to consider. So it would be possible for a click languages to not have a ridiculous number of consonants (Khoekhoe only has 31, which I think is the smallest count of any such language), but all the languages that have them or have acquired them probably acquired their large inventories from contact as well (compare Nguni Bantu and Proto-Bantu, or even many other extant Bantu branches and you can see the difference - the Nguni languages have clearly acquired a lot of other contrasts such as glottalisation and breathy stops from Khoisan as well as the clicks).

Fair, and one might compare ejectives, which frequently turn up in languages with large inventories but also appear in languages with small inventories.

[Ryan of Tinellb]

I've been Janko'd. So here, I guess. Here are the numbers from one to ten:

1: /əuo/
2: /oʍʇ/
3: /əəɹɥʇ/
4: /ɹnoɟ/
5: /əʌ!ɟ/
6: /x!s/
7: /uəʌəs/
8: /ʇɥɓ!ə/
9: /əu!u/
10: /uəʇ/

[bbbosborne]

7: /uəʌəs/

lol how do you even pronounce this

[Zaarin]

3: /əəɹɥʇ/
...
8: /ʇɥɓ!ə/

Wat. :p

[Xwtek]

It seems that there is no language that has syllable-final clicks, let alone clicks in a word without vowel.