IPA chart

consonants:

vowels:

helkisan's final goal

i'm mainly making helkisan as a personal conlang with very loose natlang influences. i'm not treating naturality as gospel for helkisan, instead merely considering it for some language features. the main goal is for me to experiment with linguistic concepts that i find interesting and generally fun to work with.

regarding consonants

• /ɬ/ - I first met this sound in Láadan, another conlang i've researched before. I loved how unique it sounded and its harsh, scraping tone. i may take inspiration from Láadan and use this sound for words that have a negative connotation.
• /ʍ/ - this sounds like a "hw" and feels super elegant and flowy. i think quenya uses this consonant a lot in words such as hwesta ("breeze").
• /x/ - i think english is desperately lacking in a velar fricative. many other natlangs have it and i included it just because of its unique and very distinguishable sound.
• /r/ and /ɻ/ - i generally like /r/ and want most "r"s in Helkisan to be trilled. however I also found the retroflex, non-trilled /ɻ/ a fun sound to pronounce. it has a slightly deeper and more guttural sound than the normal English "r".

regarding vowels

• /ø/ - very distinguishable sound from /e/ and sounds like something you would produce in a moment of digust.
• /ɑ/ - i wanted to longer and more "backwards" vowel compared to "a" and I think /ɑ/ does the trick. I plan on using an a with a macron (ā) for its romanization. sounds kinda like a british-accented "a".
• /ɒ/ - felt like a replacement for /o/ and slightly more unique.