Appendix:Kezhwa pronunciation
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, stress cannot fall on a syllable before the antepenultimate syllable. Most commonly, stress falls on the penultimate syllable, and in this case the stress is not marked in the romanization. This is especially true for native and/or grammatical terms. If the stress falls on the final syllable or the antepenult, it is marked in the romanization with an acute accent over the vowel. Especially in borrowed terms and (borrowed) compounds, stress may fall on a syllable other than the penult.
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 stays on the root when suffixes are added to it, unless it would end up falling before the antepenultimate syllable after suffixes are added. In that case, the stress is moved to the antepenult.
Clitics cannot take stress, and are written with a hyphen in the romanization. As such, they do not need to be taken into account when considering whether to indicate stress in the romanization by placing an acute accent.
Phonotactics
Kezhwa's syllabes have a (C)(A)V(C) structure, where the second consonant of a syllable-initial cluster must be an approximant (A). Kezhwa does not have diphthongs and does not allow vowel sequences within a word. Furthermore, geminates are not allowed, with all geminates in borrowings being reduced to single consonants.