Uínlitska

Phonology & Orthography

Vowels

	ɑ	(a)	ɛ	i	ʊ	(ʏ)	ə
Plain	a	æ	e	i	o	œ	ø
Nasalized	ã	æ̃	ẽ	ĩ	õ	œ̃	ø̃
Long	á	ǽ	é	í	ó	œ́	ǿ

The phonemes /a/ and /ʏ/ (and their variants) are only found in loanwords.

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Labiovelar	Interdental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stop	p b		ku gu		t d			k g	ck cg	c
Nas	hm m				hn n		hnj nj	hgn gn
Aff						tj dj	kj gj
Fric		ff f	xxu xu	þþ þ	ss s	ssj sj		xx x		h ch
Tap					hr r
Trill					rr
Liquid			hu u		hl l		hj j		hŕ ŕ

Initial fricatives are voiceless, but are written with the otherwise-voiced (usually single-letter) form.

Older texts may be found using the punctum delens (a dot above or below a letter) to mark voiceless forms of consonants other than stops or fricatives.

Syllable Structure

All words consist of alternating consonants and vowels (in other words, all syllables are open, except the final syllable in a word, which may be closed). There are two exceptions:

• A voiced homorganic nasal may occur before a stop intervocalically. In the case of the velar nasal, when it does so, it is written simply <n>.

• Two (but no more than two) vowels may occur in sequence with no (apparent) consonant separating them

There are complex sandhi rules to prevent grammatically-caused, otherwise-illegal vowel and consonant clusters.

Examples

Valid word shapes include:

• a

• ack

• apa

• ti

• toeb

• dinka