Cryšk
Introduction
Cryšk /a'riska/ is a personal conlang I started in 2024. It is spoken by the Ariska people, who live in north America. My goal with cryšk was originally to have an isolating language which uses many paraphrastic constructions. And I believe that it meets this goal.
Phonology
Cryšk's phonology is very small, with 14 consonants and 3 vowels in total.
Orthography
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Dorcal | Labio-Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | (ŋ) | |||
| Stop | voiceless | (p) | t | k | kʷ | ʔ |
| voiced | r | g | gʷ | |||
| Continuant | w | s | j | h | ||
- /p/ is only used in idiophonic roots or in loanwords
- /s/ is pronounced as [ʃ] in coda position
- /n/ is pronounced as [ŋ] before dorsals and /ʔ/, and as [m] before /h/
- /h/ is pronounced as [x] in coda position, and if /i/ is before it, or /j/ is after it, it is pronounced as [ç] in coda position
Vowels
| front | back | |
|---|---|---|
| close | i | u |
| open | a | |
Prosody
Stress
There are no minimal pairs for words with stress, but with that being said, the stress can not be predicted in many words. Where a word is stressed depends on the dialect, thus the reason stress is not phonemic while also not predictable is due to cross-dialectal interaction. A stressed syllable usually follows these traits:
- The syllable has a higher pitch than the others
- The syllable is lengthened in someway, whether that be the nucleus vowel, or by geminating a word-medial onset.
Intonation
Intonation in Cryšk is similar to English, In questions or while expressing doubt, the end of the sentence slowly increases in pitch. Another feature of Intonation is a slight drop in pitch after some relative clauses, usually ones more than one word long. This is done so that it is easier to parse the underlying syntax, As it is hard to tell otherwise.