Appendix:Sondiv pronunciation

Sondiv Language Navigation: Home, Phonology, Grammar, Vocabulary, Orthography, Dialogue

The Sondiv language has 17 consonants and 8 vowels.

Standard Romanization

Letter	IPA	Example	Notes
a	a	father	It has both a front and back pronunciation.
an	ɐ̃	-	A nasal version of a regular a, but centralized.
b	b	bog
d	d	dog
e	e	bait
en	ɛ̃	prince (French)	A nasal vowel.
f	f	food	Only appears as an allophone of /v/ in native words.
g	g	good
h	h	ham
i	i	beet
j	ʒ	azure	Spelled with a j because the show takes place in New Orleans and the language is reminiscent of French.
k	k	skill
l	l	left
m	m	man
n	n	no
o	o	coat
on	ɔ̃	on (French)	A nasal vowel.
p	p	span
r	ɾ	battle
s	s	see
t	t	stop
u	u	rude
v	v	voice
w	w	wet
y	j	yawn
z	z	zoo

Phonetics

Sondiv has an average-sized phoneme inventory, but is notable for having nasal vowels.

Consonants

		Labial	Coronal	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m [m]	n [n]
Plosive	voiceless	p [p]	t [t]	(ch [tʃ])	k [k]
	voiced	b [b]	d [d]	(j [dʒ])	g [g]
Fricative	voiceless	(f [f])	(th [θ]), s [s]	(sh [ʃ])		h [h]
	voiced	v [v]	z [z]	zh [ʒ]
Lateral			l [l]
Approximant		w [w]	r [ɾ]	y [j]

/f/ is only found in loanwords, or as an allophone of /v/ before voiceless consonants in native words. /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /θ/ and /ʃ/ are only found in loanwords.

Vowels

Sondiv has 8 phonetically distinct vowels:

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i [i]		u [u]
Mid	e [e], en [ɛ̃]		o [o], on [ɔ̃]
Open	a [a]	an [ɐ̃]

Stress

Stress always falls on a word's last syllable in Sondiv, the last syllable of a phrase usually gets the strongest stress.

Phonotactics

Sondiv's syllables generally follow a (C)V(C) structure, but some words end with underlying 2-consonant clusters whose second consonant is only pronounced if a word beginning with a vowel immediately follows and is a part of the same constituent, otherwise they are silent. Similarly, a Sondiv word may end with /h/, which is only pronounced if a word beginning with a vowel immediately follows, otherwise it stays silent.

Many Sondiv stems start with consonant clusters, but since stems do not appear without a prefix, these clusters can never appear word-initially.

The question particle yen is pronounced /jen/ before a word beginning with a vowel if both are emphasized, but if only yen is emphasized, it is always pronounced /jɛ̃/.

The same consonant can appear twice in a row, and the vowel sequences /ie iɛ̃ ui ue uɛ̃ ei eɛ̃ oi oe oɛ̃ ai ae aɛ̃/ can also occur, there are no diphthongs, however. In consonant clusters, the first consonant agrees in voicing with the second.

Syllables may not end with a nasal consonant, since all syllable-final nasals were deleted after the vowels before them became nasalized. Words may not end with /z/, as /z/ merged with /s/ word-finally, but a final /z/ can resurface in case of suffixation. /h/ does not appear after consonants, /j/ does not appear before /i/ and turns into /ʒ/ when this happens, and /w/ does not appear before /u/ and turns to /v/ when this happens.