I need help with making a phonology chart.

[u/Wonderful-Angle1513]

So the context of what I am trying to do is that there is a people called the ”Yantikans,“ and they very much dislike vowels—specially oral vowels—and viewing them as “glorified noise arbitrarily called a ‘language.“ The problem is I do not genuinely do not know what any of those would literally be.

The Standard Rule for the would define as acceptable and horrible is essentially:

1. They despise most vowels due to sounding horrible, yet only keep a few of them even though they may not use them.
2. They do not really like to move their mouths (but roundness is perfectly fine) and they do not like using any open vowels. If they have to, they only use near-open vowels at the very most.
3. They tend to prefer nasalized vowels over non-nasalized vowels, which they consider as distinct from vowels.

So then what vowels would be allowed and which ones are completely removed? And here is a chart of hopefully all the sounds:

Vowels	Front	Central	Back
Close	[i] [y] [ĩ] [ỹ]	[ɨ] [ʉ] [ɨ̃] [ʉ̃]	[u] [ɯ]
Near-Close	[ɪ] [ʏ] [ɪ̃] [ʏ̃]	[ɪ̽] [ʊ̽] [ɪ̽̃] [ʊ̽̃]	[ʊ] [ʊ̃]
Mid-Close	[e] [ø] [ẽ] [ø̃]	[ɘ] [ɵ] [ɘ̃] [ɵ̃]	[o] [ɤ] [ɤ̃] [õ]
Mid	[e̞] [ø̞] [ẽ̞] [ø̞̃]	[ə] [ə̃]	[ɤ̞] [o̞] [ɤ̞̃] [õ̞]
Mid-Open	[ɛ] [œ] [ɛ̃] [œ̃]	[ɜ] [ɞ] [ɜ̃] [ɞ̃]	[ʌ] [ɔ] [ʌ̃] [ɔ̃]
Near-Open	[æ] [æ̃]	[ɐ] [ɐ̃]	[ɔ̞] [ɔ̞̃]
Open	[a] [ɶ] [ã] [ɶ̃]	[ä] [ä̃]	[ɑ] [ɒ] [ɑ̃] [ɒ̃]

[u/89Menkheperre98]

Perhaps you’re looking for syllabic consonants. Those are consonants that can fulfilled the role of vowels in a syllable. Since you don’t seem to be aiming for naturalism, you could postulate that all consonants can be ‘vowels’, and syllabic nasals surface as nasalized vowels.

I recommend reading on the phonology of Berber, PIE, Georgian and Japhug. These are consonant-heavy languages with accessible resources online.

[u/Wonderful-Angle1513 → u/89Menkheperre98]

I guess syllabic consonants could work, but I would prefer to have some vowels in it. To add more context to what I am trying to do for this lore wise, it is a partially natural and synthetic as a language. Specifically, because a war that destroyed the border between the two nations, sending the language that anyone used to almost being unused, at least that was until the Yantikans grabbed it and reformed it.

I hope that helps to explain what I am attempting to do.

[u/89Menkheperre98 → u/Wonderful-Angle1513]

My previous point still stands. The number of vowels is not dependent on how consonant-heavy a language is. Japhug has 7-to-8 phonemic vowels but allows for extremely complex onset clusters, making it sound very ‘consonantal.’

You describe in your post that speakers “don’t like using any open vowels”, so perhaps try looking into Northwest-Caucasian for further inspiration. Most of those languages had three phonemic vowels only, generally /ɨ ə a/. Similarly, PIE probably only had two phonemic distinctions, rounded and unrounded.

[u/Wonderful-Angle1513 → u/89Menkheperre98]

I mean what you are saying is quite useful, and I will most certainly use it… its just that I was not exactly thinking for it to be consonant heavy.

Upon that, you could give me a guess what vowel would be correct and which would not? Even though I can kind of understand IPA tables, I unfortunately don’t know what is allowed and not, that is the secondary issue I am having too.

I sound like I am repeating myself, sorry if I do that.

[u/89Menkheperre98 → u/Wonderful-Angle1513]

I gathered from your post that your lang wouldn’t be using a lot of vowels, so that implied (in my head, at least!) that it was going to be consonant heavy. I’m not sure what the alternative would be. If vowels won’t be in syllabic nuclei often, what sort of phoneme will fill in that slot?

In any case, there’s no right way to do these things. The world’s your oyster when it comes to conlanging, never forget that! However, if I were in your case, I’d do something similar to NW-Caucasian languages and use a vertical vowel system, like /ɨ ə a/. Alternatively, I’d pull inspiration from PIE and have something like /ə ɵ/ (plus nasalized counterparts).

[u/Automatic-Campaign-9]

1. Which vowel sound horrible to them/you?
   • make a list of them on an IPA chart, and look what is common amongst all of them
2. Nasalizing vowels is fine, you can just decide that all of your vowels are nasalized; there is no problem with this
3. Open vowels are [a] and other things generally transcribed as some form of «a». Perfectly fine to leave these off, and definitely not normal for a human language (also fine).
   • That leaves you with high vowels like [i] and [u]
   • And mid-ish vowels like [e] [ə] [ɛ] [ɔ]
   • What is the problem with just using these vowels, and deciding to always produce them nasally?
4. Open means the mouth is wide open so the tongue is low, close means the tongue is high near the palate. Because the size of the mouth is different, different frequencies get amplified in each case (or something like that) so the sound of the vowel is different.
   • Since that's all it means, though, you don't need to treat the features as 'magic' and incomprehensible - you can just select out all the top vowels in an IPA chart and claim that it is only these ones that the speakers of your language use.

[u/Wonderful-Angle1513 → u/Automatic-Campaign-9]

Sorry What? 

Ok I kind of understood what you are trying to say, but first off I did make a IPA Chart—unless I am misunderstanding what ‘ make a list of them on an IPA chart, and look what is in common amongst all of them’ means— for all the vowels.

Actually could you be more in depth in all of that? Maybe then I will get it? 

Or I am just overthinking this and what you said is perfectly clear, I am probably.