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)]~[p(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.

Vowels

Guaru has a simple five-vowel system similar to Spanish, Hebrew, Japanese and Hawaiian.

Single vowels

	front	central	back
close	i		u
open mid	e		o
low		a

The true values of these vowels can vary a bit, with the mid vowels /e o/ generally being pronounced fairly open, towards /ɛ ɔ/.

Each vowel constitutes a mora or time unit of speech. Vowels may appear together in "couplets" (bimoraic pairs) as illustrated in the following table.

Vowel couplets

	-i	-e	-a	-o	-u
i-	ii	ie	ia	io	iu
e-	ee		ea	eo
a-	ae		aa	ao
o-	oe		oa	oo
u-	ui	ue	ua	uo	uu

The sequences of identical vowels /ii ee aa oo uu/ are pronounced as long vowels [iː ɛː aː ɔː uː].

The sequences /*ei *ai *oi *eu *au *ou/ do not occur as couplets. These may appear, however, where a couplet sits adjacent to another vowel or couplet, as in /eio/ which consists of single /e/ followed by /io/, or /ioua/ consisting of the couplets /io/ and /ua/.

Sequences of three or more vowels are only allowed where there is a high vowel /i/ or /u/ beginning a valid couplet. For example, /uoua/, /oio/, /iie/ /aeii/, /uaiouu/ are permitted; /*aeoa/, /*uoa/ and /*eeo/ are not. In addition, no more than two instances of any one vowel may occur together, meaning that /iiio/ and /uuuu/ are not permitted, even though they each consist of valid couplets. Illegal vowel combinations, where they come together, are broken up by the glottal stop /ʔ/ and where they occur across word boundaries, this triggers the underlying initial glottal stop to appear in all but excessively casual speech.