Behru cesik

Béhru cesik shúune viine yoone hok.

Setting

Behru cesik (a combination of Behru, an ethnonym, and cesik, meaning "way of speaking"), is the official language of the 7 billion denizens of the Behru empire, which expands across the Behru and Maidn river valleys (exluding the maritime regions ravaged by the sea of endless storms) and the fertile plains atop the plateau of the Jisok outcropping. The language represented in this article is that of the empire 4000 years after its founding, when Behru Cesik was first widely standardized.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular
Nasal	m hm	n hn			ñ hñ	ng hng
Plosive	p b	t d			c j	k g
Fricative	f v	s z			sh zh	x gh
Affricate
Approximant	w hw				hy		h
Trill
Flap or tap
Lateral fric.
Lateral app.			l lh	r hr
Lateral flap

Vowels

	Front	Near-front	Central	Near-back	Back
Close	i				u
Near-close	e	î		ü
Close-mid
Mid			ë		o
Open-mid
Near-open
Open	a

Phonotactics

All Behru free morphemes of native origin consist of a 2 syllable root with a maximum structure stop-fricative-approximant-vowel/syllabic l or r-consonant-vowel. Bound morphemes are permitted to have a reduced structure, so long as they start witha consonant should they be allowed to occur word initially. All syllables must start with a consonant. Alll free roots except particles and nouns in the agent case singular have a suffix of some sort indicating their grammatical role in the sentence.

Vowels

All roots that can exist unbound, along with several bound roots, hold a tone. This tone may be either a high ´tone like in lé, or a low tone le (low tone is unmarked). A high tone is only found in noun, verb, and particle roots, it is never found on the suffixes with the exception of several toneshift sandhi rules. In addition, a vowel may be of one of 3 "strengths". A weak vowel is reduced and centralized, and may carry have a high tone. A medium vowel is clearly pronounced but clipped in length. A strong vowel is held out in length. Some roots contain the sequence CV l/r C(V). The combination of a vowel and and l and r usually fuse in an unusual way.

Vowel strength
Weak	ë	ë	i	ü	l	r
Strong	a	o	e	u	ol, el*	ar, er*
Prolonged	aa	oo	ii	uu	ul, il*	or, ir*

roots containing l or r may strengthen according to two different series.

Sandhi

Sandhi in behru can be divided into two categories, tone sandhi and consonant sandhi. Vowel sandhi only occurs word internally, as all morphemes that can occur at the front of a word start with consonants.

Consonant sandhi

Rule 1: first consonant agrees with second consonant in voice if both are stops or fricatives
k,x,c,sh,t,s,p,f	when followed by g,gh,j,zh,d,z,b,v	become g,gh,j,zh,d,z,b,v

n assimilates in the point of articulation of the following consonants

n	when followed by k,g,x,gh ng	becomes ng
n	when followed by c,j,sh,zh,ñ	becomes ñ
n	when followed by p,b,f,v,m	becomes m

Rule 3: palatalization of dental consonants
t,d,s,z	when followed by y	combine with y to become c,j,sh,zh

Rule 4: y and w dissimilate before matching vowels
y	when followed by i	becomes zh
w	when followed by u	becomes v

Rule 5: combining palatal and dental sounds
s,sh,t	when followed by sh	combines with sh to become c
z,zh,d	when followed by zh	combines with zh to become j

Rule 6: h weakens unvoiced stops
k,c,t,p	when followed by h (only if h is in isolation)	combine with h to become x,sh,s,f

rule 7: h aspirates liquid and nasal consonants
y,r,l,w,ng,ñ,n,m	when followed by h	become hy,hr,hl,hw,hng,hñ,hn,hm

Rule 8: aspirated liquids and nasals devoice preceding stops and fricatives
g,gh,j,zh,d,z,b,v	when followed by h (only if h is in isolation)	become p,x,c,sh,t,s,p,f, and the h disappears

Rule 9: w and y become v and zh when not followed by vowels, and vice versa
w and y	when followed by another consonant and preceded by a consonant	become u and i

Rule 10: Progressive devoicing
k, p, t, c, s, sh, f, x	When in contact with any liquid nasal	Devoice said liquid or nasal, eg; k+n = khn, m+t=hmt

note: The effects of rule 10 are never written, as they can always be determined, samt will always be pronounced as |sahmt|, no rules can reverse this.

Rule 11: regressive devoicing
g, b, d	When followed by an aspirant liquid or nasal directly, or if followed seperated from the aspirant by a short vowel	become k, p, t, eg; g+hy=ky, bu+hm+ puhm, but daa+ hn doesn't equal taahn, because of the long vowel

Rule 12: intervocalic voicing
k, t, p, even if preceded by a nasal or fricative	Voice between two vowels. If a second consonant lies before, this consonant is also voiced. However, if a consonant lies after, this rule does not aplly	aka becomes aga, efto becomes evdo, ampi becomes ambi, but akya deos not become agya

Notes: the only rules which can change the voicing of c and j are rules 2 and 7.

Only the rules 1, 2, 6, 7, and 8 occur across word boundaries. Final consonants affected by rules 6 and 7 across word boundaries double. The h doesn't dissapear of rule 8 occurs across word boundaries.

Vowel Sandhi

Rule 1: vowels have consonants inserted after or become consonants themselves when followed by other vowels
o,u	when followed by e,i,a,o	become ow,w
o,u	when followed by u,ü	become ov,v
e,i	when followed by a,o,u,ü,e	become ey,y
e,i	when followed by i	become ezh,zh
a	when followed by any vowel	dissapears
aa	when followed by any vowel	becomes aah

Tone Sandhi

If a vowel with a tone is weakened

múk to mügii

The tone is shifted to the following syllable

mügíi

If a vowel with a tone is converted into a consonant

like hí+e hye

The tone is shifted to the following syllable hyé

Orthography

Behru romanized orthography matches the symbols given in the phonology section. Sandhi is indicated always in both written systems. The Behru native writing system is an alphabet, with symbols for vowels, consonants, vowel strength and tone arranged into syllabic blocks, written up to down, left to right. Pictures of these will be uploaded later.