Finicky Phonetics Part 1: Consonants

Phonetics is the study and classification of speech sounds. It’s also the first step in language creation! Which sounds does your language use and which are omitted vitally changes how your language sounds. Part 1 will cover consonants and Part 2 will be about vowels.

 Oh, and also, from now on I will be using IPA formatting. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) created by The International Phonetic Association (also called the IPA) is an alphabet that has one symbol represent each sound across all languages. Anything inside slashes will be written phonetically in IPA. ipachart.com is a good interactive tool to see what sounds all the IPA letters represent and how to pronounce them.

 Many new conlangers make “kitchen sink” languages where they add too many sounds and it becomes a jumbled mess; by contrast, I will try to make my language on the minimalistic side while not being too simplistic. Here’s the number of unique consonants in some of the most common languages as a reference:

  • Mandarin: 22 consonants
  • Spanish: 22 consonants
  • English: 25 consonants
  • Hindi: 37 consonants
  • Arabic: 28 consonants

Most consonants can be visualized in a chart, like the one below from Wikipedia. On the top is where the consonant is articulated in the mouth, left to right correlating to back to front. Bilabial means with two lips, labiodental means with one lip and the teeth, and the rest are articulated with the tongue. On the left is the manner of articulation, or how you articulate the consonant.

What are the different manners of articulation?

  • Plosives: when the airflow completely stops. Examples: p, b, t , d, k, g
  • Nasals: when air can only escape through the nose. Examples: m, n, ŋ
  • Trills: when something vibrates against something else. Example: /r/ (the spanish ‘rr’)
  • Taps/Flaps: like a trill, but you only touch once instead of several times. Example: /ɾ/ ( the spanish ‘r’)
  • Fricatives: When a narrow channel is made and air is forced through it. Examples: f, v, s, z, ʃ (sh), h
  • Approximants: when the sound changes but the airflow isn’t turbulent. Example: l
You probably still have a lot of questions about pulmonic questions. Here’s a little FAQ:

What’s the difference between /p/ and /b/? They’re in the same place on the IPA chart.

/p/ is also voiced, while /b/ is not. Before releasing /b/, you can feel your throat vibrate, but you can't before pronouncing /p/. Any two letters in the same box on the chart only differ in this way; the left consonant will be unvoiced while the right will be voiced.

English includes /ŋ/? What is that?

Ŋ is like n but further back in the mouth. Think about the word angle. Say it slowly and you’ll feel that you never really articulate the ‘n’ with the tip of your tongue like you’d usually do; instead, n is articulated further back in the mouth where you’d pronounce the g, becoming ŋ. It is common for  /n/ becomes /ŋ/ when between a vowel and a /g/ or a /k/.

What is the plosive ʔ?

ʔ is the glottal stop. In 'uh-oh' the way you stop the vowel sound is the glottal stop! English doesn't have it normally.

What consonants are not included on the list?

  • Ejectives: like plosives but angrier, your mouth ejecting the air more forcefully.
  • Implosives: like plosives, but almost as if you’re intaking air instead of exhaling.
  • Clicks: some Australian and African languages contain clicks as consonant sounds in everyday speech. It's really cool!

Okay, that's all well and good, but what consonants will Pablang have?

I want my language to resemble native languages, so I won't be choosing many unorthodox choices. Being able to speak my own language comfortably is also important to me, so I'm only including sounds that I can pronounce consistently. So here's what I decided upon:
  • Plosives: p, b, t, d, k, g, ʔ
  • Nasals: m, n, ŋ
  • Fricatives: f, v, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, x
  • Trills: r
  • Others: ɾ/l (interchangeable based on dialect)
This isn't final, but I do like it a lot. All of them share either a manner or place of articulation, which is common in natlangs. (You won't commonly find one click sound in a laguage or one bilabial consonant.) In total I have 19 consonants, which I think is a nice number that I don't see myself deviating from too much. See you for part two where we'll be talking vowels!

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