Phonology

Consonants

	Labial	Coronal	Dorsal
Plosive	p	t	k
Nasal	m	n	ng

Vowels

Monophthongs

	Front	Central	Back
Closed	i	ǝ~ɯ	u
Mid		ǝ~ɯ
Open		a

Diphthongs

Stage #1:

The diphthongs simply represent every possible combination of two vowels.

	i+	+i	Ø	+u	u+
Closed	iu			ui
Mid	iǝ	ǝi	ǝ	ǝu	uǝ
Open	ia	ai	a	au	ua

Stage #2:

The diphthongs form new phonemic monophthongs.

	i+	+i	Ø	+u	u+
Closed	ɯ			ɯ
Mid	ɛ	e		o	ɔ
Open	ɛ	æ	a	ɒ	ɔ

Stage #3 (combined with original monophthongs):

The new monophthongs collapse, with the fronted and rounded groups collapsing on /e/ and /o/. The language's vowel space now represents the skewed vowel space found in nature rather than the idealistic trapezoid.

	Front	Central	Back
Closed	i	ɯ
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Dialects: For modern dialectal purposes, up to 8 vowels are sometimes rendered, but these 8-vowel systems are not produced by the same sound changes.

	Front	Central	Back
Closed	i~í	ɯ~ɯ́
Mid	é~ì	ǝ	ó~ɯ̀
Open	è~e~ä	a	ò~o~å

For example, sometimes ä and å are formed from *ia and *ua, other times from *ai and *au, and sometimes both.

CV-Clusters

Stages	CV Pairs
Initial	p	pi	pu	t	ti	tu	k	ki	ku	m	mi	mu	n	ni	nu	ŋ	ŋi	ŋu	Ø	Øi	Øu
Final	p-, h-	hy-	f-*	t	ch-	ts-	k-	ky-	k-	m-	my-	m-	n-	ny-	n-	Ø-	Øy-	Øw-	Ø-, -r-*	Øy-, s-	Øw-, h-

Ø- -> r- only happens phrase medially (in certain cases), and is thought to be the epenthetic addition of -r-, probably from an earlier **-t-, -n-, or -nt-.
Note that *pu -> fu is not a case of intermediate *hu being affected by rounding but rather the affect of *φ being preserved by closure.

This results in modern clusters like:

tua -> tso
chiu -> chu
puai -> fe

... but kia -> ke (expected: kye — the fronting of /e/ provides the patalalisation automatically).

User:Ceige/SEA Inspired 2

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