Imperial and Cherani Trade Speech Consonants and X-SAMPA

The IPA really doesn't apply to the original speakers of either
language, since they are not human. Imperial speech apparatus is rather
like that of a parrot, and Shayanans are complicated. These charts may
approximate what happens when a human speaks Imperial or Trade speech.
I'd appreciate suggestions for some of the ones I haven't been able to
figure out. (The web sites with sound crash my browsers: I think I'm
missing some plugins. RedHat 8.0 'helpfully' got rid of some of the
common ones that didn't haveopen licenses.)

Imperial
Consonants
s, p,t,k,b,d,g are /s/,/p/,/t/,/k/,/b/,/d/,/g/

x and q are as far back as you can get, but they are at the same
articulation point, and uvular is as far back as IPA supports,
so x is /q/ and q is /G\/

aspirates and nasals follow straightforwardly:
m,n, ~g and ~q are  /m/, /n/, /N/, and /N\/, and
ph,th,kh and  xh are /p_h/,t_h/,/k_h/, and /G\_h/

long consonants ss, pp, tt, kk, xx, bb, dd, gg, qq would be
/s:/, /p:/,/t:/, /k:/,/x:/, /b:/, /d:/, /g:/ and /G\:/ if I'm reading
the charts correctly.

y is more or less the sound in the English word yellow. It's not at all
clear to me what that maps to on the chart.

So much for the easy list...

Trade Speech

Simple stuff:
t, k, b, g, f, v, s, z, sh, zh, th, dh, n, ng,
/t/, /k/, /b/, /g/, /f/, /v/, /s/, /z/, /S/, /Z/, /T/, /D/, /n/, /N/

nn would be /n:/

Actually, k, g, and ng, may be more like Uvular than Velar... everything
back from the palate smears together phonemically. But they aren't as
far back as the back Imperial consonants, so if the Imperial consonants
use the Uvular symbols, Trade Speech gets the Velar slots.

Fairly straightforward:
I think ch, j, ts, dz, and tth, are supposed to be done as
/t_S/, d_Z/, /t_s/, /d_z/ and /t_T/.
And dth is /d_T/. It starts voiced and ends unvoiced.

m would be /F/, or possibly /F_f/, since it gets sort of lisped.

Aaaah.... run away...!!!:
r, l, w, y: rabbit, letter, wet, yellow. I'm sure they are on the chart
somewhere... (my dialect is rhotic, but I'm not sure my mouth is: I
never really learned to pronounce Rs properly in Spanish. Or Russian,
or Japanese.)

h and x are unvoiced and voiced fricatives and kh and gx are the
corresponding affricates, but I think h and x are farther back than g
and k, and the affricates get dragged. Bearing in mind that k ang g
straddle the Velar/uvular slots, we get something like /h/ and /h\/,
and /k_X\/ and /g_?\/.

ll and rr are front and back trills rather than flaps. ll is sort of
Welsh-sounding.
wl, tl, dl, kl, gl, hl are to trills what affricates are to fricatives.
Some of them use the back trill instead of the front one, but kr (etc.)
also appear as consonant clusters.

--
Elyse Grasso

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that
English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow
words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways
to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
James Nicoll

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