Long Wer phonology

Joe  <joe@...> 2002.08.14. 09:16:27 -7h-kor írta:

> > Well, are you interested in a summary of its grammar?
>
> Sure...
_VOWELS_

Long Wer has a quite simple vowel system similar to Hungarian (or if that's more
familiar, Quenya :) It has ten vowels but that ten is actually seven because
the distinguishment of short and long variants.

a       /A/             á       /a:/
e       /E/             é       /e:/
i       /i/             í       /i:/
o       /o/             ó       /o:/
u       /u/             ú       /u:/
Note that the last three long vowels(í,ó,ú) is actually written with grave
accent but often simplified to acute accent in computer transliteration. The
cats don't distinguish long vowels in writing but the language does (like
Latin) so there's a lil' difficulty reading their glyphs -- and that's not the
only problem.

_CONSONANTS_

Well, as with vowels, I wanted a simple system sounding familiar to european ears
and a friendly ortography.

Their consonants are the following (ordered according to the Meyadhew Alphabet Table)

d       /d/     t       /t/     s       /s/
g       /g/     q       /k/     z       /z/
                k       /k_h/   dzs     /dZ/
b       /b/     p       /p/     sh      /S/
y       /j/     ty      /t_j/   x       /ks/    {mostly for borrowed words except xit "foot"}
w       /v/     f       /f/     (ch     /tS/)
m       /m/     r       /r/     h       /h/
n       /n/     l       /l/
ny      /J/     (lh     /l`/)

The consonants in parentheses are disappeared form LW during its evolution but
they still have signs for them.

_CONSONANT CLUSTERS_
LW uses a limited number of consonant clusters. They are:
 mb, nd, ng, mbw, ndw, ngw, nt, nq, ntw, nqw, rd, ld, rt, lt, dw, gw, bw, yw,
mw, nw, nyw, tw, qw, rw, lw,sw, shw, hw, wy, my, ry, ly, sf, lq, lqw

_SYLLABE PATTERN_
At the beginning of a word, it can be (C)(w)V. Inside words we can have
(C)(C)(w)V. At the end of a word, (C)(C)(w)V(C). Of course only those
consonants can be put together whisch form a valid consonant cluster. Otherwise
an attaching vowel comes between the two consonants. (In words with front
vowels are in the majority, that's i or e, otherwise o or a [it depends on
whether the attaching vowel is binding two nouns to one or an ending to the
root etc.])
--
Mau
Ábrahám Zsófia alias Mau Rauszer
    |  http://hiandmau.host.sk  |

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