Crane Speaker Dialect
[Minhastid]
Pronunciation[/'min.hɑst/]
Created by
Native to....
Native speakers.... (....)
Minhastic Languages
  • Crane Speaker Dialect
Official status
Official language in
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Introduction

This is a tribute to Minhast, by Chris Borillo: a Minhastid of sorts.


Phonology and Orthography

Phonemic Inventory

The following chart contains the consonants in the Crane Speaker dialect phonology. A variation on the Minhast Latinized alphabet is used throughout this article (see Orthography below).


Crane Speaker Dialect Consonantal Inventory
Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal Laryngeal Pharyngeal
Nasal m n ŋ
Plosive p b t d k g
Fricative f s z ʃ ʒ χ ʔ h ħ
Affricates t͡ʃ d͡ʒ
Approximants w j
Trill r
Lateral Approximant l


Minhast Vowel Inventory

  Front Near- front Central Near- back Back
Close
 
u
ɪ
ɛ
a
  Near-close
Close-mid
Mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open




Vowel length is distinctive. Devoiced vowels occur as allophones frequently, based on regular phonotactic rules:

Short Long Devoiced
a ā [ạ]
e ē [ẹ]
i ī [ị]
u ū [ụ]

Syllabic Structure and Phonemic Interactions

As it is the case in Minhast, words are subject to complex morphophonemic changes resulting from interactions with other morphemes occurring in the word. The verb is particularly complex in the various sound changes that may occur as a result of noun incorporation as well as the agglutinative processes involved in conjugation and other inflectional processes. These phonemic changes can be broken down according to the following classifications:

  • Assimilation
  • Metathesis
  • Syncope
  • Epenthesis
  • Voicing/Devoicing
  • Aspiration

These complex morphophonemic interactions operate according to the general phonological principals outlined below:

  1. No syllable can have a consonant cluster of more than two consonants. Syncope can be applied only if a biconsonantal cluster is formed, and the vowel is not a part of a heavy syllable (i.e. the vowel is long, or it occurs in a VCC sequence).
  2. No Minhast word can have an initial consonant cluster. After any initial consonant cluster results from one or more of the possible morphophonemic alternations described below, an epenthetic is automatically appended to the head of the word to form the permissible iCC- pattern.
  3. An epenthetic vowel is always inserted between two syllables if combining the syllables results in a triconsonantal cluster. The default epenthetic vowel is -i-, but the other 3 vowels may also be used, depending on multiple factors (e.g. vowel harmony, an underlying quiescent initial vowel as part of the attached morpheme, etc.)
  4. Minhast has a strong tendency to form intermedial clusters, either or , providing that Rules #1-#3 are observed. If necessary, an epenthetic vowel may be added before or after the syllable to create these syllabic patterns, e.g. e.g. kanut-maris-kar- >> -kant-(u)-maris-kar
  5. The tendency to form intermedial consonant clusters creates complex assimilation interactions that nevertheless are predictable and almost always regular. These interactions are illustrated in Table X below:

    Minhastid Phonotactics Table

    Initial Consonant Final Consonant
    f p b k x g t d s š z l r m n h w y
    f ff pf ff fk fx fk ft ft fs fs fl fr fm fn fw fy
    p pfV, ppC pp pf pk px pk pt pt ps pʼš ps pl pr pm pn pf pw
    b pʼš
    k kʼš
    x
    g ŋk
    t
    d ʤ d͡ɟ
    s ʂ͡ʝ
    š
    z
    l /lf/ /lp/ /lb/ lkV, kkC /lx/ [ɮ] /lg/ /lt/ [lɖ] /ld/ [ɖɖ] /ls/ /lʃ/ [ɬɬ] /lz/ [t͡ɮ] /ll/ /lr/ [r] /lm/ /ln/ [lɳ] /lh/ [ɮː] /lw/ /ly/ [ʎː]
    r
    m
    n ŋk ɲ, ɲɲ
    h

    Orthography

    This Minhastid uses two writing systems. One of them is a variant of the "Ammerkast" Latin script for Minhast, itself a an adaptation of the Americanist phonetic notation, with the exception of the grapheme <ħ>, which was adopted from IPA. Note the glottal stop <'> is usually not written unless there is a hiatus between two vowels.

    "Ammerkast" variant
    a, á, e, é, i, í, u, ú, ('), b, p, f, d, t, g, k, x, n, m, l, r, z, s, ś, h, ħ, w, y


    Another system is an indigenous script, adapted from the Uchinaaguchi kana system.