A Question about Consonants

[Mr. Z]

I have been reading Zompist's online Language Construction Kit. I have already worked on several conlangs, but I never really understood phonology and phonetics, or whatever the official name is. So I decided to go deeper into the phonology section of the LCK. I am particularly interested in the section about "inventing consonants", but I don't understand how is that possible. I can decide to make a consonant that is this and that and those, but how can I pronounce it? It is quite difficult to me to realize how the consonant sounds when I never heard it and I have no idea what it sounds like, except theoretical understanding.

I hope this belongs in this forum. If not, sorry.

[Torco]

this should probably be in C&C, but its a small mistake, as this is about phonology.

lets invent a consonant your native lang doesnt have... bear with me, okay? now, put your lips together and close them real tight... push with your tounge real hard against the lips but dont let the tounge slip through your lips. now make a strong sucking force so as to make like a vacuum in your mouth. finally, violently release the pressure by opening up your lips, this should make a sound which you never ever make while talking normally in your native language. this is a consonant we just invented.

Or, you can try the other way around... take the first consonant in the word church. now put the tip of your tounge in your palate so that the underside of your tounge tounches the grooved, non-smooth part behind your teeth. now without changing the position of the tounce, pronounce the first syllable in church, whatever it is in your dialect. if you did this right you should have produced a retroflex voiceless affricate, which is present in a few neat languages like mapuche and my dialect of spanish.

way to go, now you discovered the first skill of a conlanger... its called playing with your own mouth xD

[Bob Johnson]

It is quite difficult to me to realize how the consonant sounds when I never heard it and I have no idea what it sounds like, except theoretical understanding.

There are recordings on most of the wikipedia IPA pages: Voiceless retroflex affricate (Don't just try to mimic the sound, though.)

There are also recordings of various languages on the internet. Google is great!

[Mr. Z]

Thanks. I tried making some new sounds earlier and partly succeeded, but I wanted to make sure... well, I am not sure what I wanted to make sure. Thanks, anyway.

[Matt]

You should pick up a copy of Catford's A Practical Introduction to Phonetics. It walks you through pronouncing basically all the consonants and vowels attested in the world's languages. And you'll also gain an understanding of how to define a specific consonant or vowel (so that if you do end up inventing a new consonant, you could describe it for us and we'd know what you were talking about).

[Rory]

Here is an IPA chart with sounds.