Appendix:Irathient pronunciation
The Irathient language has 20 consonants, 7 vowels, 1 diphthong and 1 glide.
Standard Romanization
| Irathient | IPA | English example | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| a | ɑ~a | father | |
| ai | ɑi~ai | nice | |
| b | b | bad | |
| d | d | deck | |
| e | ɛ | get | |
| ei | e | gate | |
| ə | ə | sofa | |
| f | f | feather | only used in borrowed words, not native to Irathient |
| g | g | goat, never as in genius | |
| gy | ɟ | close to joke, eggyolk | used for /j/ and /dʒ/ in borrowed words, spelt ggy when geminated |
| h | h | hop | always pronounced, even if at end of a word (except in the digraphs sh and th) |
| hw | ʍ | when | allophone of /hw/ |
| i | i | machine | |
| k | kʰ | kite | |
| l | l | love, never as in milk | |
| m | m | matter | |
| n | n | never | |
| ng | ŋ | sing, never as in anger | can occur at the start of a word, spelt nng when geminated and n before k |
| ngg | ŋg | anger | |
| ny | ɲ | onion | spelt nny when geminated |
| nygy | ɲɟ | sequence of ny and gy | |
| o | o | hope | |
| p | pʰ | pike | |
| r | r | Spanish perro | may reduce to tap in some clusters |
| s | s | sad | |
| sh | ʃ | shack | used for /tʃ/ in borrowed words, spelt ssh when geminated |
| t | tʰ | take | |
| th | θ | thin, never as in that | spelt tth when geminated |
| u | u | crude | |
| v | v | very | allophone of /w/ before /u/ and /o/ |
| w | w | war | |
| z | z | zebra |
In some online sources /ɑ/ is spelled aa and the schwa /ə/ is spelled with a single a, as in aarko (DJP Tumblr). In that system, the diphthong ai is spelled aai.
Phonetics
Consonants
The consonants between parentheses are allophones.
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ny [ɲ] | ng [ŋ] | |||
| Plosive | voiceless | p [pʰ] | t [tʰ] | k [kʰ] | |||
| voiced | b | d | gy [ɟ] | g | |||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | th [θ] | s | sh [ʃ] | h | |
| voiced | (v) | z | |||||
| Lateral | l | ||||||
| Approximant | voiced | w | r | ||||
| voiceless | (hw [ʍ]) | ||||||
Vowels
A is generally just transcribed as /a/.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i [i] | u [u] | |
| Close-Mid | ei [e] | ə [ə] | o [o] |
| Open-Mid | e [ɛ] | ||
| Open | a [a~ɑ] | ||
There is one diphthong, ai (/ai/).
Word Stress
- Most words are stressed on the penultimate syllable.
- If a word's final or penultimate syllable contains ə, the stress is antepenultimate.
- Imperatives involve an accent shift towards the end of the word; ǝthít! go! (S1E1).
- Some verb auxiliary forms take a final accent.
- Some possessive suffixes are written attached to the noun, but do not cause a shift in accent, as in rólame my roller (S1E1).
- Borrowed words may have an irregular stress accent.
In dialogue meant for actors, the stress is always indicated with an acute accent.
Phonotactics
Irathient allows various consonant clusters in onsets and codas, the maximal possible syllable is CCCVCCC, most consonants may be geminated but vowel sequences very rarely occur. Words commonly start but rarely end with consonant clusters.
Adjacent obstruents must agree in voicing, voicing assimilation is regressive. Sonorants and [v], an allophone of /w/, do not affect voicing. Syllables do not end with /l/ or /w/, and /h/ does not appear after stops and fricatives.
Vowel harmony
Some affixes contain underspecified high or low vowels that harmonize either with the group /i a ai o/ or the group /u ɛ e/.
For instance, the active form of a verb begins with an underspecified low vowel and the passive form with an underspecified high one, so the verb shrazu, whose root is raz, has the active form arazǝ and the passive form irazǝ, but the verb sheligu, whose root is elig, has the active form eneligǝ and the passive form uneligǝ, the prefixes harmonize with the roots' first vowels.