User:Chrysophylax/Valian

Phonetics and phonology

Spelling

Valian is written with the Latin script and has a very shallow orthography.

The following letters are used: a b d e g h i k l m n r o p r s t v y ä ë ü.

Notes

• All vowel graphemes can be doubled to represent the long version of the vowel.
• The consonants ⟨b d g⟩ represent the semi-voiced allophones ([b̥ d̥ g̥]) of the phonemes /p t k/ and occur only between vowels.

Consonants

Valian consonants

	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], e.g. taankos [ˈtɑːŋg̥os̺].
2. [x] is a word-final allophone of [h] (e.g. aagah 'wound' [ˈɑːg̥ɑx]).

There is only one series of plosives in Valian. The archiphonemes ||p t k|| have various realisations depending on the phonological context in which they surface. Usually unaspirated, they may become aspirated at the end of sentences and in pausa, e.g.,non-final päht [pæht] (‘stone’) → sentence-final [pæhtʰ]). The plosives are furthermore lightly voiced between vowels and after /n/ /m/ /l/, e.g., sede [ˈsʲed̥ʲeˑ] (‘path’).

Vowels

Valian vowel phonemes

	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

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