Jan24 –  A Constructed Language

Jan24 Phonology and Orthography

Legend: Definitions, Terms, <Text>, [IPA], -Tags-, and "Glosses".

Letters and Sounds

The tables show the relevent phonetic symbols (in IPA) with the corresponding orthographic (romanization) symbols. The 34 letters used are:
a ā b c č d e ē f g h i ī k l m n ň ŋ o ō p r s š t u ū w x y z ž ' — j q v aren't used.

Vowel Qualities

There are 5 short vowels, 5 long vowels, and 4 diphthongs. The diphthongs are: eu [ɛu], ai [ai], au [au], and oi [ɔi].

Vowel Qualities

	Front								Central		Back
High	i i:	i ī	-						-		-				u u:	u ū
High-mid	-		e:	ē	-				-		-		o:	ō	-
Low-mid	-				ɛ	e	-		-		ɔ	o	-
Low	-						a a:	a ā	-		-

Consonant Qualities

There are 26 consonants written with 24 letters.

Consonant Qualities

		Labial				Coronal						Dorsal								Guttural
Nasal	voiced	m	m	-		-		n	n	-		ɲ	ň	ŋ	ŋ	-				-
Stop	voiceless	p	p	-		-		t	t	-		-		k	k	-				ʔ	'
	voiced	b	b	-		-		d	d	-		-		g	g	-				-
Affricate	voiceless	-				t͡ɬ	tl	t͡s	c	t͡ʃ	č	-								-
	voiced	-				-		d͡z	z	d͡ʒ	ž	-								-
Fricative	voiceless	f	f	-		ɬ	hl	s	s	ʃ	š	-						χ	x	h	h
Rhotic	voiced	-				-						-						ʀ	r	-
Vocoid	voiced	w	w	-		-		l	l	-		j	y	-						-

• R is coronal after a dorsal consonant.

Phonotactics

The possible syllable types are C(C)V(V)(C).

• Any single consonant phoneme may be an onset.
• Onset clusters include pl, bl, fl, kl, gl, xl, pr, br, fr, tr, dr, sr, kr, gr, xr, py, by, fy, tw, dw, sw, kw, gw, xw.
• Codas exclude b, d, g, z, ž, r, w, and y.
• Nasal codas are limited mainly to before homorganic onsets (but may be final).

Prosody

Morphophonology

Whenever morphemes are combined, the end of the 1st interacts with the start if the 2nd with one or both possibly being changed.

• In some instances, p, t, k, c, and č become b, d, g, z, and ž between vowels; this may also happen between a vowel and a liquid or glide or after a nasal or l.
• The combinations ph, th, kh become f, s, x.

Note: possibly retain geminate orthography for non-leniting plosives.

page started: 2015.Jan.27 Tue
current date: 2015.Feb.08 Sun
content and form originated by qiihoskeh

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