Appendix:Yanga Kayang pronunciation
Standard Romanization
| Yanga Kayang | Notes | |
|---|---|---|
| A, a | Pronounced like the "o" in "pot" in stressed positions. In unstressed positions, pronounced like the "a" in "sofa". | |
| Aa, aa | Pronounced like the "a" in "father", but held for two beats. (To approximate this difference, consider the "o" in "bot" and the "o" in "bod". Notice how the "o" in "bod" is noticeably longer than the "o" in "bot"? The same distinction exists between a and aa.) | |
| Ai, ai | Pronounced like the "i" in "nice". | |
| Aai, aai | Pronounced like the "i" in "bide". (Notice how the "i" in "bide" is noticeably longer than the "i" in "nice". The same distinction exists between ai and aai.) | |
| Ch, ch | This letter is no longer used in Irathient. Please see Ky below. | |
| G, g | Always pronounced like the "g" in "goat" (never like the "g" in "genius"). | |
| Gy, gy | Pronounced very close to the "j" in "joke", but with a slight difference. It'll be fine enough to pronounce it like English "j", but to give the effect of a slightly different alien accent, the place of articulation is identical to that of English "y". The result is a "j" sound that sounds a little more palatal (kind of like a very hard "y"). | |
| H, h | Pronounced like the "h" in "hop". This sound is always pronounced, even if it comes after another consonant, or at the end of a syllable. The only cases in which it is not pronounced is when it occurs in the digraphs kh, ky, sh and zh. | |
| I, i | Pronounced like the "i" in "machine" in stressed positions. In unstressed positions, pronounced like the "i" in "kit" or the "e" in "chicken". | |
| J, j | This letter is no longer used in Irathient. Please see Gy above. | |
| K, k | Pronounced like the "k" in "kite". | |
| Kh, kh | Pronounced like the "ch" in Scottish "loch". This is a sound that isn't native to English, but can be produced without too much difficulty, if one really puts some oomph into it. | |
| Ky, ky | Pronounced similar to the "ch" in "chalk", but further back. Sounds rather like "ky", pronounced quickly. | |
| L, l | Pronounced like the "l" in "milk". This is a different sound from the "l" in "lot" | it's "swallowed", and is made with the back of the tongue, as opposed to the front. |
| Ng, ng | Pronounced like the "ng" in "sing". This sound can occur at the beginning of a word. It takes some practice, but it's doable. Try slowing down your pronunciation of the word "singing", and see if you can separate it into "si" and "nging". Never pronounced like the "ng" in "anger" (for which, see ngg). | |
| Ngg, ngg | Pronounced like the "ng" in "anger" (building off of the previous, think of ng as a single consonant; to get a [g] sound afterwards there must be another g). | |
| Ny, ny | Pronounced like the "ni" in "onion" or the initial "N" in an East Coast pronunciation of "New York". | |
| Q, q | Pronounced like the "q" in Arabic "Iraq". This sound is similar to the "c" in "caught", but pronounced much farther back in the throat. It's produced by having the back of the tongue make contact with the uvula and producing a "k"- like sound. | |
| R, r | Pronounced like the "r" in French "rouge". This is quite a different sound from the English "r". It's pronounced with the back of the tongue trilling against the uvula. It's a throaty, guttural sound, but if one mimics a French accent, one will be able to get it without too much trouble. | |
| Sh, sh | Pronounced similar to the "sh" in "shack". In fact, it almost sounds a bit like "hy", pronounced quickly. The sound one makes when mimicking white noise (TV static) will be very close to this sound. The key difference is which part of the tongue is making the sound. In English "sh", the tongue tip flattens and is pressed against the front part of the hard palate. The sound we're after is pronounced with the blade of the tongue against the middle of the hard palate. | |
| Y, y | Pronounced like the "y" in "yoke". | |
| Zh, zh | Pronounced similar to the "z" in "azure". This is the voiced counterpart to sh above. The following analogy will help to illustrate how it's supposed to be pronounced: s : z : sh : zh. | |
| ' | This is referred to as a glottal stop, and is pronounced just like the catch in one's throat that occurs in between the "uh" and "oh" in English "uh-oh". This isn't a difficult sound to produce; it just requires a bit of practice to insert it into words. It will occur naturally in a string of vowels pronounced separately in English (e.g. if one were to say "A A A A A A A" [saying the actual name of the letter each time] over and over, a glottal stop will naturally occur before each instance of the vowel). If one simply stops pronouncing a word mid-vowel and starts again, it will naturally occur. (Note: It is important to remember that this apostrophe is not a stray mark, and not simply there for decoration. The apostrophe stands for a consonant which has the same status as g or k or any other consonant.) |
- Doubled Vowels: Doubled vowels are pronounced as long vowels (see aa, aai and ii above). Long vowels are held for twice as long as short vowels, and will sound noticeably longer than the short vowels.
- Doubled Consonants: Doubled consonants are pronounced just like their singleton counterparts, but are held for twice as long.
Phonetics
- The list of phonemes by romanized form is (in alphabetical order): a, aa, aai, ai, g, gy, h, i, ii, k, kh, ky, l, ng, ny, r, sh, y, zh, '.
Stress
- Words are stressed uniformly on the penultimate syllable, with secondary stresses occurring on every other syllable radiating outward from the stressed syllable. The only exceptions are words that end in either ng or r, which are stressed on the final syllable.
Phonotactics
- All content words will be at least two morae long. This means that a content word that is one syllable long must either end in a consonant or have a long vowel. Yanga Kayang only allows a small set of sounds to occur word-finally. A word may end in ng, k, kh or r. A word-internal syllable, though, may end in ng, k, g, kh, r, h, sh, zh, ky or gy.
- Adjacent consonants must agree in voicing (this means that clusters like kr or nkh are impossible). Voice assimilation is regressive, so the voicing of the second obstruent in a cluster will spread to the first (so a cluster like gyk will be pronounced like kyk). When a nasal is the first consonant of a cluster, it will spread voicing to the second consonant (so ngsh will become ngzh). When a q precedes a voiced sound, it will become g.
- Yanga Kayang is known for its longer words and lack of coronal and labial consonants (in addition to having only two vowel qualities). Its character is unmistakable.
- A word may end in g, but the g will devoice to a k. The g will reappear if a suffix is added.
- A word may not begin with a vowel. Words that begin orthographically with either a or i actually begin with a glottal stop, but since this will always be the case, the glottal stop will not be written.
- Several consonant clusters whose second member is y become palatal singletons. This is a list of them: ky becomes ky; gy becomes gy; khy becomes sh; ry becomes zh; ngy becomes ny; and hy becomes sh. Palatal consonants followed by y merge, with the net result being that the y seems to disappear.
- A y will turn into a gy when occurring before the vowel i. Similarly, an r will turn into an l when occurring before the vowel i.
- The nasal ny will become ng when occurring before k, g, kh, r, ng and h. It will also become ng when occurring word finally.
- An epenthetic g will be inserted when r or l follows ng. (Note that due to other sound changes, both the clusters ngr and ngkh will automatically become nggr.)
- In unstressed syllables (i.e. syllables without a primary or secondary stress), long vowels reduce in length, but not in quality (thus, aa is pronounced [a] not [ə], and ii is pronounced [i] not [ɪ] or [ɨ]).
- If the spellings for the clusters kyk and gyg are unintuitive, they can be spelled (and pronounced) as chk and jg.