Allowable words question

[freosan]

So, I've hit a bit of a snag in my word creation and I'm curious. How did you decide what the restrictions were on phoneme positions in your language? I'm particularly interested if you allow consonant clusters: how did you decide which consonants were or were not permitted to occur together?

I've been trying just saying the words aloud a lot, but in some cases I'm not sure if I'm having trouble because English doesn't have the phonemes I'm using, or because it actually would be physically difficult to pronounce no matter what.

Also, does anyone else have syllabic consonants, and if so, under what circumstances do you let that happen?

Comments

[becka_sutton]

A little of column a and a little of column b.

Virtually all Malayo-Polynesian languages forbid consonant clusters. I think most of them are (C)V and Island is supposed to sound vaguely like that. I want a few more syllables than that so I thought about the consonantal mora n in Japanese (which isn't Malayo-Polynesian but hey) as in konbanwa it effectively is a nasal at the end of syllable (since it often mutates to an m sound as well). M and n still didn't give me the variety of syllables so I added the stops in because I felt like it.

I think the means that Island is a mora language. It's highly unlikely my Islanders are literate but if they are they'll have a syllabary with a symbol for each (C)V combination plus the nasals and stops.