Uínlitska

Phonology & Orthography

Vowels

	open	open front	mid	close	rounded	front rounded	neutral
Plain	a	æ	e	i	o	œ	ø
Nasalized	ã	æ̃	ẽ	ĩ	õ	œ̃	ø̃
Long	á	ǽ	é	í	ó	œ́	ǿ

The letters <æ> & <œ> (and their variants) are only found in loanwords.

"Native" vowels

The five "native" vowels are very large targets, having basically the following goal points:

• open /ɑ/

• mid /ɛ/

• close /i/

• rounded /ʊ/

• neutral /ə/

The open and rounded vowels tend to be backed, while the mid and close vowels tend to be fronted. The neutral vowel is a mid-central schwa, but can be fairly flexibly pronounced to provide disharmony with the preceding vowel.

"Foreign" vowels

Additionally, two explicitly-fronted vowels may be found in loanwords

• front rounded (nominally /ʏ/)

• open front (nominally /a/)

They are each only explicitly written as separate letters if they contrast with a non-front alternative within the same word (for which the native / "normal" letter is used).

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Labiovelar	Interdental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stop	p b		ku gu		t d			k g	ck cg	c
Nas	hm m				hn n		hnj nj	hgn gn
Aff						tj dj	kj gj
Fric		ff f	xxu xu	þþ þ	ss s	ssj sj	zz z	xx x		h gh
Tap					hr r
Trill					rr
Liquid			hu u		hl l		hj j		hŕ ŕ

Initial fricatives are voiceless, but are written with the otherwise-voiced (usually single-letter) form.

Voiceless liquids and nasals only occur in native words in initial position (they may occur in any position in loanwords).

Older texts may be found using the punctum delens (a dot above or below a letter) to mark voiceless forms of consonants other than stops or fricatives.

Note: There is no voiceless <rr> and no voiced <c>

Syllable Structure

All words consist of alternating consonants and vowels (in other words, all syllables are open, except the final syllable in a word, which may be closed). There are two exceptions:

• A voiced homorganic nasal may occur before a stop intervocalically. In the case of the velar nasal, when it does so, it is written simply <n>.

• Two (but no more than two) vowels may occur in sequence with no (apparent) consonant separating them

There are complex sandhi rules to prevent grammatically-caused, otherwise-illegal vowel and consonant clusters.

Sandhi

TBD

Examples

Valid word shapes include:

• a

• ack

• apa

• ti

• toeb

• dinka