Br'ga

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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 kx
Fricatives s lh ç x ḥ h
Liquids w wr y
Nasals m n 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.