Valian

Phonology

Vowels

Vowel phonemes of 17aug

	Front		Back
	Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
Close	i iː	y yː		u uː
Mid	e eː	ø øː	ɤ ɤː	o oː
Open	æ æː		ɑ ɑː

Word and sentence final short vowels are often pronounced slightly longer than their non-final counterparts (e.g. salma 'faith' [ˈsɑlmɑˑ]).

Consonants

Consonant of 17aug

	Labial	Alveolar		Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
		plain	palatalized
Nasal	m	n	(nʲ)			(ŋ)1
Plosive	p	t	(tʲ)			k
Fricative	v	s	(sʲ)			(x)2	h
Approximant		l	(lʲ)3		j
Trill		r

Notes:

1. [ŋ] only occurs as an allophone of [n] before [k].
2. [x] is a word-final allophone of [h] (e.g. rakah 'wound' [ˈrɑg̥ɑx]).
3. [lʲ] is encountered in free variation with [ʎ] in certain varieties of speech (e.g. Sanahta dialect leia 'while' [ʎeiɑˑ~lʲeiɑˑ]).

Consonants may be palatalised; this occurs for p, t, n, l, s before i, e.

Orthography

17aug writes its 18 vowels with 9 different characters, a e i o u ä ë ö ü, doubled to indicate the long version.

Grammar

Morphology

Nouns

Nouns in 17aug can be inflected for number, gender, and possession. Unlike the pronouns, they are not inflected for case ever. Instead, 17aug requires a rigid word order to mark objects and subjects.

Pronouns

Pronouns decline for three cases: nominative (nom), genitive-dative (gen-dat), and oblique(obl).