Tasratal: phonology

Note: According to this list of ASCII IPA schemes (http://www.cs.brown.edu/
~dpb/ascii-ipa.html) SAMPA represents barred-lowercase-i as <l>, which
only seems confusing (at least if you already have [l], which is also
<l>).  So for now I'll use the Kirschenbaum <i">.

(At least, I hope that's the vowel I want.  I'm thinking of the Turkish
dotless-i, and I'm almost positive it's barred-i, but I could be wrong.)

Tasratal is a conlang whose origins lie in an earlier possible-version of
Czevraqis (...back when I spelled it Chevraqis).  The concepts were fun,
but n the end I decided it was a bit too extreme for the culture that I
wanted to connect it to.  It was, however, very tempting just to use
Czevraqen phonology on this.  :-p

I'm bowing to majority and using SAMPA.

Consonants:
[p]       [t]       [k]
[P]  [f]  [s]  [S]  [x]
      [pf] [ts] [tS]
           [r]
           [l]
[m]       [n]       [N]

Notes on romanization:
[P] is written as <ff>
[f] is written as <f>
[S] is written as <x>
[x] is written as <xx>
[tS] is written as <tx>  (I have some book that says Basque does this, so
I don't feel too bad about it...OC that's assuming the book is accurate.)
[N] is written as <g>

So the romanized chart would look like this:

p     t     k
ff f  s  x  xx
    pf ts tx
       r
       l
m     n     g

(Yeah, I know it's kinda screwy, but I wanted it to be symmetrical and
quasilogical.  If anyone has suggestions for improvement I'd love to hear
them.)

Vowels:
[i]        [u]
[e]  [i"]  [o]
      [a]

[i"] is barred-i unless I find out the Turkish dotless i is some other
vowel, in which case I'll change it to whatever it is.  :-p

Romanization is pretty much as expected except [i"] is written as <y>.
(Why waste a perfectly good grapheme...)

Phonotactics (I hope that's the right word, it's been a while):
Syllable structure is basically (C)V(C).

Exception(s): The language likes to treat [pf], [ts] and [tS] as
"consonants."  However, they only occur initially or finally in a word.
(Mainly to prevent consonant traffic jams.  I refuse to create a conlang I
can't at least *almost* pronounce...)

I'll post a grammar sketch later, but I find it difficult to think about
grammar without some *words* to hang ideas from.  Call it a weakness.

Yoon Ha Lee
requiescat@cityofveils.com

A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.--Paul Erdos

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