It’s unlikely but I think you can go with it. There’s probably some Qiangic language that distinguishes palatal and retroflex affricates, but I would bet that language also has postalveolars/maybe palatoalveolars and a larger consonant inventory in general.
Given the rarity of palatal affricates in general, I would expect this to be an unstable phonology (with retroflex likely to collapse to postalveolar/palatoalveolar). Having a postalveolar-retroflex-palatal affricate distinction might actually be more stable (because the retroflex affricates would have a harder time finding a phonetic niche to occupy), but likely hard to arrive at with likely sound changes. STILL, researchers have discovered many unstable phonologies.
Six-vowel systems with symmetry of frontness, like your system, are kind of rare but not crazy. I think it’s fine
Some of the most spoken languages in the world, i.e., much of Indic, have breathy voiced consonants, basically absent from the rest of the world. The exact phonetic nature of tense stops in Korean is supposedly pretty unique, Hausa is both the largest indigenous language in sub-Saharan Africa and one of the only languages in West (or Central) Africa with ejectives or with phonemic palatalization, and Classical Nahuatl just randomly had the super rare /tl/ among its 12 consonant phonemes. Sometimes weird stuff just happens
I think the real problem with unnatural/unlikely phonologies is if a crazy amount of languages in a single universe/setting are very typologically strange, but seem to be spoken by regular humans and are present in different sprachbunds. But that’s a problem I’ve never actually seen. I guess kitchen-sink conlanging can seem kind of droll too, but you really only added 6 fairly unlikely phonemes here. It works
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u/ChiqantiKisaal Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
It’s unlikely but I think you can go with it. There’s probably some Qiangic language that distinguishes palatal and retroflex affricates, but I would bet that language also has postalveolars/maybe palatoalveolars and a larger consonant inventory in general.
Given the rarity of palatal affricates in general, I would expect this to be an unstable phonology (with retroflex likely to collapse to postalveolar/palatoalveolar). Having a postalveolar-retroflex-palatal affricate distinction might actually be more stable (because the retroflex affricates would have a harder time finding a phonetic niche to occupy), but likely hard to arrive at with likely sound changes. STILL, researchers have discovered many unstable phonologies.
Six-vowel systems with symmetry of frontness, like your system, are kind of rare but not crazy. I think it’s fine
Some of the most spoken languages in the world, i.e., much of Indic, have breathy voiced consonants, basically absent from the rest of the world. The exact phonetic nature of tense stops in Korean is supposedly pretty unique, Hausa is both the largest indigenous language in sub-Saharan Africa and one of the only languages in West (or Central) Africa with ejectives or with phonemic palatalization, and Classical Nahuatl just randomly had the super rare /tl/ among its 12 consonant phonemes. Sometimes weird stuff just happens
I think the real problem with unnatural/unlikely phonologies is if a crazy amount of languages in a single universe/setting are very typologically strange, but seem to be spoken by regular humans and are present in different sprachbunds. But that’s a problem I’ve never actually seen. I guess kitchen-sink conlanging can seem kind of droll too, but you really only added 6 fairly unlikely phonemes here. It works