Phonology

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• Inventory
  • Consonants
  • Vowels
• Allophones
• Phonotactics
  • Phonotactic Repair
• Romanisation

Inventory

Consonants

Non-Syllabic

Syllabic

Note that these are not just features of fast speech, nor allophones, but phonemic contrasts!

Vowels

1. /ɛ/ is the short form of /eː/.
2. /o/ is the short form of /ɔː/.

Allophones

These are not only features of fast speech; they are standard/common pronunciations.
Voiced consonants can be devoiced, but voiceless consonants cannot be voiced.

1. Velar and uvular fricatives become labialised when following rounded vowels.
   • This can cause ambiguity on whether a /x/ sound is underlyingly /x/ or /xʷ/.
   • Example: krōsukht is pronounced as [krɔː.sʊxʷt], with the underlying /x/ surfaced as [xʷ] due to the preceding /ʊ/.
2. /r/ becomes voiceless when following voiceless consonants.
   • Example: krīf is pronounced as [kr̥iːɸ], with the underlying /r/ surfaced as [r̥] due to the voiceless /k/ preceding it.
3. Alveolar stops become retroflex stops (without changing voicing) when following or preceding a retroflex fricative.
   • Example: lazhd is pronounced as [laʐɖ], with the underlying /d/ surfaced as [ɖ] due to the preceding /ʐ/.
4. Voiceless stops are aspirated when at the end of syllables.
   • Example: jaq is pronounced as [jaqʰ], with the underlying /q/ aspirated due to it being at the end of the syllable.
5. /ʝ/ becomes [ç] when following a voiceless consonant.
   • Example: ʕikjhūs is pronounced as [ʕɪ.cçuːs], with the underlying /ʝ/ surfaced as [ç] due to the voiceless /k/ preceeding it.
6. Alveolar and velar stops become palatal when followed by /ʝ/.
   • Example: ʕikjhūs is pronounced as [ʕɪ.cçuːs], with the underlying /k/ surfaced as [c] due to the /ʝ/ following it.
7. /n/ becomes [ɲ] when following or preceeding a palatal consonant.
   • Example: ānjəz is pronounced as [aː.ɲəz], with the underlying /n/ surfaced as [ɲ] due to the palatal /j/ following it.

Phonotactics

Syllable structure: (C)(C)V(C)(C)

The syllable onset may be:

• Nothing
• Any single (non-syllabic) consonant
• Any combination of a non-glottal stop and fricative (in any order) with differing places and equal voicing besides /kxʷ/
• Any non-glottal stop or fricative followed by /r/
• /t͡s/ followed by any fricative that is not alveolar, retroflex, or palatal, or any trill
• /q͡χ/ followed by any biliabial, dental, or alveolar fricative or trill
• Any dental affricate followed by any equally voiced fricative that is not dental or retroflex
• Any consonant besides /ʔ/, /r/, and /ʝ/ followed by /j/
• Any consonant besides /ʔ/, /r/, and /j/ followed by /ʝ/
• Any non-dental fricative, nasal, or stop followed by /ɬ/
• Any fricative, nasal, or stop followed by /l/

The syllable nucleus may be any vowel (including syllabic consonants).

The syllable coda may be:

• Nothing
• Any single (non-syllabic) consonant besides /j/
• Any combination of two differing stops with equal voicing besides /k/ + /kʷ/ and /k/ + /q/
• Any combination of a stop and fricative (in any order) with equal voicing besides /k/ + /χ/
• Any nasal consonant followed by any stop, fricative, or palatal consonant
• Any lateral consonant followed by any stop, fricative, or nasal besides /ŋ/, and excluding /ɬ/ + a dental consonant
• ...

Phonotactic Repair

When adding a suffix/prefix to something, it may cause two vowels to be next to each other. This is phonotactically invalid, so a vowel separator is inserted in between the suffix/prefix and what it is being added to. This also applies with syllabic consonants.
What sound this vowel separator is depends on the preceding vowel:

• If the preceding vowel is /iː/, /yː/, /eː/, /øː/, /əː/, /n̩ː/, /mː/, /l̩ː/, or the short forms of any of those, it will use the soft vowel separator (SVS), kh [x].
• If the preceding vowel is /uː/, /ɔː/, /aː/, or the short forms of any of those, it will use the hard vowel separator (HVS), ' [ʔ].

Doubled consonants as a result of morphology are merged into one.

Romanisation

The romanisation does not account for allophones; it is 1-to-1 of underlying sounds.
Note: There are sounds here that you do not see in the Inventory. This is because the romanisation has every contrast in every dialect; for more information, see Dialects.