Appendix:Yanga Kayang pronunciation

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Standard Romanization

Yanga Kayang	IPA	English example	Notes
a	ɑ, ə	pot, sofa	Pronounced like the "o" in "pot" in stressed positions. In unstressed positions, pronounced like the "a" in "sofa".
aa	ɑː	father	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".)
ai	ai	nice	Pronounced like the "i" in "nice".
aai	aːi	bide	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.)
b	b	bog	This sound was added in the updated version of Yanga Kayang.
g	ɡ	goat	Always pronounced like the "g" in "goat" (never like the "g" in "genius").
gy	ɟ	eggyolk	Pronounced very close to the "j" in "joke", but with a slight difference. 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	hop	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, ɪ	machine, chicken	Pronounced like the "i" in "machine" in stressed positions. In unstressed positions, pronounced like the "i" in "kit" or the "e" in "chicken".
k	kʰ	kite	Pronounced like the "k" in "kite".
kh	x	—	Pronounced like the "ch" in Scottish "loch".
ky	c	cue	Pronounced similar to the "ch" in "chalk", but further back. Sounds rather like "ky", pronounced quickly.
l	ɫ	milk	Pronounced like the "l" in "milk". This is a different sound from the "l" in "lot": it is made with the back of the tongue, as opposed to the front.
m	m	man	This sound was added in the updated version of Yanga Kayang.
ng	ŋ	sing	Pronounced like the "ng" in "sing". This sound can occur at the beginning of a word. Never pronounced like the "ng" in "anger" (for which, see ngg).
ngg	ŋɡ	anger	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	ɲ	onion	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	ʁ	—	Pronounced like the "r" in French "rouge". It is pronounced with the back of the tongue trilling against the uvula.
sh	ç	hue	Pronounced similar to the "sh" in "shack". 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.
u	u	root	This sound was added in the updated version of Yanga Kayang.
uu	uː	rude	This sound was added in the updated version of Yanga Kayang.
y	j	yoke	Pronounced like the "y" in "yoke".
zh	ʝ	azure	Pronounced similar to the "z" in "azure". This is the voiced counterpart to sh above.
'	ʔ	uh-oh	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".

Notes:

• 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

Consonants

b, g, gy, h, k, kh, ky, l, m, ng, ny, r, sh, y, zh, '.

Vowels

a, aa, aai, ai, i, ii, u, uu

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.
• 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]).