Metin

General information

Metin is a language spoken by about 57 trillion people in the Metii'nz'ou'ku and the surrounding areas, like Koryouz'ou'ku and Ishnnai'zou'ku. Metin is a Lingua Franca rather than a native language, it was spoken in its true form about 50 millenia ago at the founding of Metii'nz'ou'ku, since then, it has split into many daughter languages, which use old Metin as a language of common communication.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labio-dental	Dental	Alveolar-lateral	Retroflex	Palatal	Palatal-lateral	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	m~n			n'	N	ñ	ñ'
Plosive	p, b, bh		t, d, dh	t', d', dh'	T, D, Dh	c, j, jh	c',j', jh'	k, g, gh
Fricative	f, v~w		s, z		S, Z	sy, zy	sy', zy'	x	q	h
Affricate			ts, dz	ts', dz'	TS, DZ
Approximant	v~w				r	y	y'
Lateral fric.				s', z'
Lateral app.			l	l'

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i,i', I	ï, r, zy'	u, u', U, zw'
Near-close
Close-mid	e, ei', E		o, ou', O
Mid		ë
Open-mid
Near-open	á, ai'		à, au', A
Open		a

I'd imagine that you are thoroughly confused by the phonology, especially because it didn't use IPA (I couldn't find IPA for half of them anyway.)

The consonants marked with apostrophes are lateral sounds (I'm not sure if that's what they are really called but I'm sticking with it.)

To pronounce them, put the tip of your tongue at the base of your bottom teeth. Then, bend the rest of your tongue upwards until the center of your tongue is pressed against the base of the top teeth. Then, make a plosive, nasal, fricative, or lateral with your tongue in this position. You should sound like you have a lisp.

The consonants marked with CAPS are retroflex sounds. Pronounce them with the tip of the tongue touching the very top of the mouth. 'r' is also a retroflex sound, but there is no 'R' to contrast it with, so it is left in lower case.

Plosive consonants make a three-way distinction, voiceless, voiced, and voiced aspirant.

They may also be labialized or palatalized (marked by a following y or w, respectively). Retroflex sounds may not be palatalized, and dental and alveolar-lateral sounds become palatal and palatal-lateral sounds on palatalization, respectively. The palatal plosives are more affricate in character than plosive, but they arise from plosives, and will be considered as such. A consonant may be only palatalized before a labial or neutral vowel (back or mid vowels), but not before another palatal vowel (front vowels). Thus, pyà and pya are permitted combiniations, but not pyá or pye.

The inverse applies to labial consonants, which may only stand before non labial vowels, thus pwi and pwï are permitted, but not pwu.

Fricatives and affricates are subject to the same rules, except that they may not be aspirated. v~w is considered an approximant, although it surfaces as the voiced bilabial fricative v before labial vowels, it cannot hold secondary articulation.

Nasals cannot carry any secondary articulations. Nasals are also only distinguished from eachother in the onset of a syllable, at the end of a syllable, they become the archiphoneme m*, which agrees with the following consonant in place and manner of articulation. If followed by a vowel, m* becomes, m before normal vowels, N before retroflex vowels, and n' before lateral vowels.

Approximants can also carry no secondary articulations. There is also an archiphoneme for syllable final approximants, that is l*. l* becomes l' before lateral vowels and consonants, r before retroflex vowels and consoants, and l before anything else.

Vowels

Vowels are divided into three groups, normal, retroflex and lateral.

A normal vowel has the tongue held straight during production. They cannot occur after a lateral or retroflex consonant.They are divided int three groups. The first group is the fronted vowels, or palatals, which are are i, e and á. They cancel out the palatalization in a preceding consonant. The neutral mid vowels are ï, ë, and a. They can stand after labialized or palatalized consonants. The final groupis the back vowels, or labial vowels, u, o and à. They cancel out labialization in the preceding consonant. (note, consonants in the palatal column are inherently palatal, and can have palatal vowels after them, thus "ce" is permitted, even if "pye" is not.)

A retroflex has the tongue curled and pointed upwards during production. Retroflex vowels only distinguish openness, not frontness or backness. They are divided into two series, neutral and labial. The neutral vowels are r, I and E. The labial vowels are U, O, and A. (note: the "vowels" r and U are actually syllabic consonants, U being a labialized r.). Retroflex vowels can only stand after retroflex, velar, labial, uvular, and glottal consonants.

A lateral vowel is produced with the tip of the tongue at the base of the teeth and the rest of the tongue bent upwards. Like retroflex vowels, frontness and backness is not distinguished, only openness and labialness. They are also divided into neutral and labial series. The neutral series consists of zy', i', ei' and ai' (ei' and ai' are always dipthongized, and zy' is a syllabic consonant). The labial series consists of zw', u', ou' and au' (ou' and au' are always dipthongized, and zw' is a syllabic consonant.). The lateral vowels can only come after lateral, labial, velar, uvular, and glottal consonants.

Syllable structure.

The onset consists of any consonant in the Metin language, or one of the permitted onset clusters, which are

px, pl, pl', pr tx, tl, ts, dz, t'x, tl', dz', Tr, Tx, TS, DZ, kl, kl', and kr. An onset is not required in a syllable.

Any vowel or the syllabic consonants r, U, zy', and zw' can form the core. Some combinations of onset and core are not permitted, these were detailed above. All syllables must have a core

The coda may be any of the archiphonemes m*, t*, l*, h*, and q* or the plosives p and k. A coda is not required in a syllable. There is never more than one consonant in the coda.