Appendix:Kezhwa pronunciation

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The Kezhwa language has 21 consonants and 5 vowels.

Standard Romanization

Letter	IPA	English example	Notes
a	a/ə	father or sofa	[a] when stressed, [ə] otherwise
b	b	bog
d	d	dog
dh	ð	this
e	e/ɛ	gate or get	[ɛ] in closed syllables, [e] otherwise
f	f	fog
g	g	good
i	i	beet
k	k	skill	Always unaspirated
l	l	left
m	m	man
n	n	no
o	o/ɔ	tote or law	[ɔ] in closed syllables, [o] otherwise
p	p	span	Always unaspirated
r	ɾ	battle
s	s	see
sh	ʃ	shade
t	t	stop	Always unaspirated
th	θ	thing
u	u	rude
v	v	voice
w	w	wet
y	j	yet
z	z	zoo
zh	ʒ	azure
‘	ʔ	uh-oh

Phonetics

Consonants

		Labial	Coronal	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m /m/	n /n/
Plosive	voiceless	p /p/	t /t/		k /k/	' /ʔ/
	voiced	b /b/	d /d/		g /g/
Fricative	voiceless	f /f/	th /θ/, s /s/	sh /ʃ/
	voiced	v /v/	dh /ð/, z /z/	zh /ʒ/
Approximant		w /w/	l /l/	y /j/
Tap			r /ɾ/

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i /i/		u /u/
Mid	e /e~ɛ/		o /o~ɔ/
Open		a /a~ə/

Stress

Kezhwa words are stressed on one of their last three syllabes, or, in other words, it cannot fall on a syllable before the last three. Most commonly, stress falls on the penultimate syllable, and in this case the stress is not marked in the romanization. If the stress falls on the final syllable or the antepenult, it is marked in the romanization with an acute accent over the vowel.

By default, a syllable of the root is stressed. Any syllable in the root may carry stress, and which syllable is stressed is unique to each root, i.e. lexical to some extent. The main stress does not move when suffixes are added to the root, unless it would end up falling before the antepenultimate syllable after suffixes are added. In that case, the stress is moved to the antepenult.

Phonotactics

Kezhwa's syllabes have a (C)(C)V(C) structure, the second consonant of a syllable-initial cluster must be an approximant. Kezhwa does not have diphthongs and does not allow vowel sequences within a word.