Guaru

Guaru [ˈŋuaɾu] (also Gualu, Nguaru, Ngualu) is a constructed language spoken by the inhabitants of Oru, part of an enormous space habitat in an uncertain location, which is putatively a conservation ark and research station developed by an unknown extra-terrestrial civilisation in order to conserve and study terrestrial life. The language itself was developed by a historical figure known only as Orimu, who appears to have been a human involved with the setting up of Oru several hundred years ago. The education system of Oru prescribes a strict adherence to the original structure of the language as detailed in Orimu's original documents, more or less preserving the original orthography and grammar, although sound changes have apparently taken place, most notably the universal change of [p] to [h].

Guaru appears to be unrelated to any other known language. It is a right-branching, analytic language with a very simple phonology, with a small inventory of eight consonants and five vowels and consisting only of open syllables.

Phonology

Consonants

Single Consonants

	Bilabial	Dental	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	/m/ [m] <m>	/n/ [n̪] <n>	/ŋ/ [ŋ] <g>
Plosive		/t/ [t̪]~[d̪] <t>	/k/ [k]~[g] <k>	/ʔ/ [ʔ] <(x)>
Fricative				/h/ [h] <h>
Tap / Lateral		/l/ [ɾ]~[l] <r>

The allophones listed are all in more or less free variation and chiefly subject to individual variation, with voiced allophones of /t/ and /d/ being used more often by men.

The phoneme /ʔ/ is usually elided word initially in casual speech. In both commonly used romanisations, it is not written at the beginning of a word. Any word that begins with a vowel can optionally begin with a glottal stop. A glottal stop within a word, however, is always pronounced and is thus indicated in the romanisation.

Similarly, the glottal fricative is optionally elided from the beginning of particles. It is, however, always written.

All consonants may be doubled and are then pronounced as geminate or "strong". This only occurs at the beginning of words in the genitive case.

Doubled Consonants

	Bilabial	Dental	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	/mm/ [mː]~[mb] <mm>	/nn/ [n̪ː]~[n̪d̪] <nn>	/ŋŋ/ [ŋː]~[ŋg] <gg>
Plosive		/tt/ [t̪ː]~[t̪ʼ] <tt>	/kk/ [kː]~[kʼ] <kk>	/ʔʔ/ [ʔː] <x>
Fricative				/hh/ [ɸ(ː)] <hh>
Tap / Lateral		/ll/ [r]~[lː]~[ʈʼ] <rr>

As with the single consonants, the allophones are essentially in free variation.

A geminate glottal stop is written in the romanisation (using the Schaeffer system as here, with <x> although the Tanner system uses <ʻ>), distinguishing it from the word initial single glottal stop which is omitted from romanisations.