Åzuli

Åzuli /ɒzúli/ is spoken in southwest Levant and, due to recent immigration, also increasingly as a minority language in the Nile delta. It has diverged considerably from its sister South Caucasian' languages, most noticably by having turned from isolating to agglutinativ and by having undergone complete click loss.

Vowels

Monofthongs: /i ɨ e ɛ a ɒ ɔ o u /, transcribed <i y e a å o u> here (<é è ò ó> if disambiguation is needed).

• /a/ is phonetically fully front [a], not central [ä].
• /ɨ/ is phonetically between IPA [ɨ] and [ɪ].

Long vowels: /iː eː ɒː oː uː/ <ii ee åå oo uu>
Difthongs: /i̯a i̯ɒ i̯ɔ/ <ia iå io>

• After a palatal consonant these become /e̯a e̯ɒ e̯ɔ/.
• Distinct from /j/ + V in that /j/ becomes [ɥ] before rounded vowels, while the /i̯/ portion of the difthongs remains fully spred.

There is partial vowel harmony: "ATR" /e a o/ and "RTR" /ɛ ɒ ɔ/ generally do not co-occur in a word. The vowels /i ɨ u/ are neutral and may co-occur with either group. As an exception, next to /ɬ/ or as a part of the difthong /i̯a/ (← *ɛː ), /a/ may occur even in RTR-harmonic words.

Some dialects merge /ɛ ɔ/ into /a ɒ/, where the first merger seemingly creates a fourth neutral vowel, but the distinction remains noticable as the new vowel alternates with both /e/ and /ɒ/.

Consonants

LAB	ALV		RFX	PAL	VEL	Transcription
m̥	n̥			ɲ̊	ŋ̊	<pm tn tň kŋ>
m	n			ɲ	ŋ	<m n ň ŋ>
pʰ	tʰ	tsʰ		tɕʰ	kʰ	<ph th tsh tšh kh>
p	t	ts		tɕ	k	<p t ts tš k>
b	d	dz		dʑ	g	<b d dz dž g>
f	ɬ	s	ɬ̢	ɕ	h	<f x s x̣ š h>
v	r l	z	ɽ ɭ	j	w	<v r l z ṛ ḷ j w>

Prosody

Åzuli has, at core, a pitch accent caracterized by the lack or presense of a high tone. A word must have at least one unaccented syllable, and all accented syllables must be consecutiv. A final accented syllable (closed or open just as well) may carry an additional floating tone ("contagious accent"), that has no distinct surface realization itself but may spred to a following suffix.

Monosyllables feature slightly more distinctions contrasting (at least?) high, mid, falling, and high-floating tone.

Accent shifts may occur in inflection.

Test drive

• khiaran dzooŋet phås
• tarphela pmiŋè Åzuli
• phragu typmiåku hèt
• gioŋrå buju kaxwòtsbè
• sèrd wåŋkhu
• jerugam heekŋy
• tšuugèxan
• ňèpiaš tshypmee
• x̣åňubåå džahyt