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Chlouvānem: Difference between revisions
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In today's standard Chlouvānem, the letters '''o''' and '''å''' are homophones, being both pronounced /ɔ/: their distribution reflects their origin in Proto-Lahob (PLB), with '''o''' deriving from PLB *aw and *ow, and '''å''' from either *a umlauted by a (lost) *o in a following syllable, or, most commonly, from the sequences *o(ː)wa, *o(ː)fa, *o(ː)wo, or *o(ː)fo. | In today's standard Chlouvānem, the letters '''o''' and '''å''' are homophones, being both pronounced /ɔ/: their distribution reflects their origin in Proto-Lahob (PLB), with '''o''' deriving from PLB *aw and *ow, and '''å''' from either *a umlauted by a (lost) *o in a following syllable, or, most commonly, from the sequences *o(ː)wa, *o(ː)fa, *o(ː)wo, or *o(ː)fo. | ||
Most Chlouvānem sources, however, classify '''å''' as a ''diphthong'': Classical Era sources nearly accurately describe it as /ao̯/, later monophthongized to /ʌ/ or /ɒ/ and merged with /ɔ/ - in fact, most daughter languages have the same reflex for both '''o''' and '''å'''. A few grammarians think that '''å''' was originally the long version of '''o''', but this hypothesis is disputed as '''å''' does not pattern with the other long vowels (e.g. '''o''' does not lengthen into it because of synchronic lengthening; also it is grouped with diphthongs in the alphabetic order instead of coming just after '''o''', as other long vowels do). Some kind of distinction in the pronunciations of Classical Chlouvānem must have been preserved until early modern times, as both are found in adapting foreign words - usually '''å''' transcribes more open vowels than '''o''' - cf. the two [[Holenagic]] loanwords '' | Most Chlouvānem sources, however, classify '''å''' as a ''diphthong'': Classical Era sources nearly accurately describe it as /ao̯/, later monophthongized to /ʌ/ or /ɒ/ and merged with /ɔ/ - in fact, most daughter languages have the same reflex for both '''o''' and '''å'''. A few grammarians think that '''å''' was originally the long version of '''o''', but this hypothesis is disputed as '''å''' does not pattern with the other long vowels (e.g. '''o''' does not lengthen into it because of synchronic lengthening; also it is grouped with diphthongs in the alphabetic order instead of coming just after '''o''', as other long vowels do). Some kind of distinction in the pronunciations of Classical Chlouvānem must have been preserved until early modern times, as both are found in adapting foreign words - usually '''å''' transcribes more open vowels than '''o''' - cf. the two [[Holenagic]] loanwords ''Hålinaica'' (Holenagica) - with '''å''' for [ɔ] - and ''loyun'' (ṅoifṅ, a vodka-like Holenagic spirit) - with '''o''' for [o]. | ||
A spelling-based pronunciation distinction (with '''å''' being [ɔ] and '''o''' being [o(ː)]) has been recently spreading among young speakers in the large metropolitan areas of the Jade Coast. | A spelling-based pronunciation distinction (with '''å''' being [ɔ] and '''o''' being [o(ː)]) has been recently spreading among young speakers in the large metropolitan areas of the Jade Coast. | ||