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Re: [engelang] phonology

On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 12:21 PM, John Cowan <cowan@hidden.email> wrote:

I don't have a problem in Lojban either, because I realize /x/ as [X],
so [iXi] is a long way from /ihi/ realized as [iCi]. The bigger issue
is /uhu/, which comes out [uxu], dangerously close to [uXu]. However,
the former has no scrape, as with all my realizations of /h/.

That comes pretty close to the uvular rhotics of some Europeans.  In fact I think [X] is not so unusual for french /r/.


Looking at WALS also suggests that fricatives (other than [h]) appear less
often in the world's languagesr as one moves toward the back of the mouth,
and back voiced fricatives occur in far fewer languages than front ones.
This suggests that [G] be avoided.

I think that if [G] were added to Xorban, then rhotics would have to be alveolar, and probably they should anyway given /x/.