There are those whom may shriek at my phoneme choices. “Voicing Distinctions? Three Affricates? Palatals?? Velar Nasals‽” they cry. In the world there are a series of “Language Critics” who obsess over the simplicity of phonologies. This trend, likely spurred on by creators such as “Ian Misali”( a mane of which I can only assume to mean Mr. Miserly), centres around the fetishization of the simplicity exhibited by toki pona(bonus talking), which has a very small phonology. I have based my inventory on the segmental phonemes chart above. As for the less common sounds(determined as less common via a game of phoneme bingo), they were selected based on the coarticulation principle. If a sound can be described as a coarticulation of two more common sounds, It is viable to be used. The truth is any language, no matter how simple, Is filled to the brim with complexities. English has not one but two dental fricatives. Mandarin Chinese has five contour tones. Arabic has a distinction between it’s velar, uvular and pharyngeal fricatives, sporting multiple rhotics to boot. Even a language designed for international communication such as esperanto has a velar-glottal distinction. Many of these same critics would already shriek at the invocation of these languages, but, if you will notice, these are languages that have gone places. English has assumed the title of Global Lingua franca, Mandarin Chinese is spoken by almost 1 billion people, and arabic is spoken across much of the nonwestern world, to such an extent that it has also attached itself to an entire faith, Islam. The widest spoken languages are complex in character precisely because of their nuances. These nuances allow for the communication of complex ideas in a modestly efficient manner. My thesis statement is such: Some level of complexity is simply needed of you are intent on being able to communicate the complexity of the world’s 170 million square miles of land and 8 billion people. This is why it is especially frustrating when people uphold toki pona as some great IAL. It is terrible for communicating anything above a simple concept. It is a messily convoluted language hidden behind a 120 word trenchcoat, with this trenchcoat as it’s downfall. It is more intuitive to the mind to simply ascribe a new word to something than it is to solve a trigonometry problem to communicate that you have sixteen sheep in the mountain past the apple orchard. Thus I say if a language is to be useable enough to describe a world of concepts, it is simply a fact that you will need to teach some significant aspects of the language, including it’s phonology. Thus is my case.