User:Ceige/Kēyu

Phonology (NOTE: LOTS NICKED DIRECTLY FROM KAIDU PAGE, SEE THAT FOR PROPER ATTRIBUTION!!!)

Consonants

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Uvular
Plosive	/p/ p	/t/ t		/tɕ/ ch	/k/ k	/q/ q
Prenasal Plosive	/m/ m	/n/ n		/nj/ ny	/ng/ ng	/ng/ ng
Nasal	/m~w/ m	/n~l/ n		/j/ y
Fricative	[ɸ] w h(w) w	s z s z		[ɕ (d)ʑ] [ç j] s(y) j/zy h(y) g(y)	χ -ATR h
Approximant	β̞ ~w w	l~r~ð̞ l~r	ɻ r		-ATR

Orthography in bold.

Consonant Allophony

Several of the velar and alveolar consonants also have palatalized allophones when preceding the diphthongs of /ia/ /io/ and /iu/. The alveolar fricatives become alveo-palatal fricatives, while the velar stops and fricatives and alveolar nasal become pure palatal. /f/ is also [ɸ] at the end of syllables. /m/ also lightly palatalizes before the aforementioned diphthongs.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Near-back	Back
Close	i	[ɨ]		u
Near-close	[ɪ]		[ʊ]
Mid	e			o
Open-mid	[ɛ]			[ɔ]
Near-open		[ɐ]
Open		a

Diphthongs

There are six phonemic diphthongs in Kaidu, each getting it's own letter in the native script.

	Rising	Falling
/a/	/ai/ > /e: ~ æ:/	/ia/ > /ja/
/o/	/oi/ > /ö ~ œ/	/io/ > /jo/
/u/	/ui/ > /(w)ï ~ ui/	/iu/ > /ju/

Rising diphthongs all are realized with the second element as nonsyllabic: [aɪ̯], [oɪ̯], [uɪ̯]. Falling diphthongs work similarly, the second element is also usually nonsyllabic, but the realization of the /i/ in the diphthong depends on the preceding consonant. In most cases, it will be [ɨ], but in a few others it is different. /t/ and /f/ have the /i/ be [j] and the second element is syllabic. With /ð̞/ the first element remains as [i] and the second element is nonsyllabic.

Phonotactics

In Kaidu syllables are (C)V(C). C can be any consonant in either position, including prenasalized stops in initial positions. When a prenasal stop is syllable final, it becomes a homorganic cluster of nasal+stop. Certain consonants become palatal versions when before the diphthongs ia, io and iu. When compounding causes two like consonants to meet (except for prenasalized consonants), the first of the two is deleted. This is reflected both in Latin and Kaikak. A further exception to this is verbal endings, which can cause double r, m, and w, which is not deduplicated. Any medial cluster is allowed.

Stress

Kaidu stresses the last syllable of the root, previous to any verbal inflections.

Mutations

When compounding, the marginal consonants of the morphemes involved undergo mutation. The final consonant of an initial element, the initial of a final element, or both of a medial element, changes in a specific sequence for certain consonants. The consonants that mutate and what they mutate into are described in the following table:

Before	After
p	f
f	v
v	β̞
β̞	p
t	s
s	z
z	ð̞
ð̞	t
k	χ
χ	ɣ
ɣ	ɰ
ɰ	k