4 ms·
It very much depends on the auxlang. Most of them do try to make things easy, but auxlang creators tend to be a little more linguistically naïve than other arti
by talideon 10y ago
It very much depends on the auxlang. Most of them do try to make things easy, but auxlang creators tend to be a little more linguistically naïve than other artificial language creators, so they end up using themselves as the benchmark. Esperanto is a notorious example of this, where you have initial consonant clusters like 'sc' /st͡s/ and internal consonant clusters like 'tĉ' /tt͡ʃ/. Zamenhof essentially took a simplified version of the Polish consonant inventory and applied it Esperanto.
There are plenty of studies of consonant and vowel frequencies in human languages. We know, for instance, that [p] [t] [k] are found in virtually all languages, that most languages have at least one liquid, one nasal consonant (which can be realised as [n], [m] or [ŋ] depending the position of the consonant that follows it is). Most languages also have [ʔ], but you never notice it as most only allow it initially and exclude it when spelling: if you were to choose any word in English beginning with a vowel in isolation, you will almost certainly start it with a glottal stop.
As far as vowels go, the classical five-vowel system is very prevalent: some approximation of it is used in lots of languages, and there are very few languages that use simpler systems, though Modern Standard Arabic, with its three-vowel system ([a], [i], [u]) is a widely-spoken counterexample. If you wanted to include more consonant clusters, you could add schwa as a epithetic vowel: in our hypothetical language, the word _plum_ could be phonemically /plum/, but phonetically [pəlum] for speakers who have difficulty with that initial consonant cluster.
Still, knowing what sounds people can pronounce is only half the battle: a good IAL would also have well designed _phonotactics_. That's a bit of a rabbit hole though!