> This basic pattern (consonant + vowel + maybe limited option for final consonant) is very common; it's the most common arrangement among the worlds languages.

> This basic pattern (consonant + vowel + maybe limited option for final consonant) is very common; it's the most common arrangement among the worlds languages. Far more common than languages like English which allow monstrosities like "strengths" (which is 6 consonants and one vowel). It's a fun spectrum! Italian is often given as an example of this, but Italian does allow more complex consonant clusters at the beginning of a syllable than Hawaiian or Japanese (e.g. gra-do, glo-bo, pneu-ma-ti-co). You see echoes of the Italian proclivity towards final vowels in English-language stereotypes of Italian accents, where a schwa (an 'uh' sound) is added after word final consonants ("I want-uh" etc.). Czech, on the other end of the spectrum, happily allows for things like zmrz-li-na and - famously - strč prst skrz krk (yes, that spelling is phonetic - the rs are syllabic). Interestingly though, Czech evolved out of late Proto-Slavic, and PS had a rule that no syllable end with a consonant (the law of open syllables). This made late Proto-Slavic look more like modern Italian. So, e.g. prst in Czech was prĭ-stŭ in Old Church Slavonic, and krk was krŭ-kŭ.