When I googled the difference between vowels and consonants, the explanation I saw was that in making consonant sounds, the air passage is obstructed. This does not seem to be an adequate explanation. Vowels and consonants sound different. Even if I used a computer to string together consonant sounds with no intervening vowels, it would sound strange.

And this brings up the question of what makes something a speech sound. For example, there are South African languages that use clicking sounds. When I hear these languages being spoken, the clicking sounds seem artificial, as something that should not be included in speech. Is this just a matter of what I am used to? Would it be possible to generate other sounds to incorporate into speech? Could I, for example, ring a bell of a certain frequency and use that sound as part of a word?