Br'ga
Location & Origin
Br'ga is spoken on an island about midway between Sri Lanka and Madagascar. The language has phonetic and grammatical features found in both African and Indic languages, though it appears to be an isolate. There are, however, very many loan words from various trade languages — some estimates place the portion of borrowed lexicon at between ⅓ and ½ of the attested roots. However, in everyday speech, this group of roots makes up well over ¾ of the common lexicon. Borrowings come from English, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Sanskrit, Hindi, Pali, Arabic, and Swahili at the very least, with many "second generation" loans of words that were loaned into those languages from around the world.
Phonology
Consonants
| Labial | Dental | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain Stops | b p | d t | ḍ ṭ | j c | g k | ģ ķ | ħ |
| Aspirated Stops | ph | th | ṭh | ch | kh | ķh | |
| Implosive Stops | bb | dd | ḍḍ | jj | gg | ģģ | |
| Trills | br | dr | gr | ||||
| Taps | vr | r | |||||
| Clicks | q nq lq | ||||||
| Affricates | ts tlh | ṭṣ | cç | kx | |||
| Fricatives | s lh | ṣ | ç | x | ḥ h | ||
| Liquids | w | wr | ṛ | y | |||
| Nasals | m | n | ṇ | ñ | ň |
Vowels
| Written | IPA |
|---|---|
| a | ɑ |
| e | e |
| ê | ɛ |
| i | ɪ |
| u | ʊ |
| ü | ʏ |
| ' | ə |
Phonotactics
Syllable sequence in root words is strictly CV. Word structure is (V)?(CV)+(C)? Single-phoneme particles / glue-words may be any vowel, click, affricate, or fricative.