Azarian

Azarian Mejinsyè
Spoken in:	Azaria (Mejín)
Conworld:	Melin
Total speakers:	?
Genealogical classification:	Borogoni Bori Melonian Azarian
Basic word order:	SVO
Morphological type:	inflecting
Morphosyntactic alignment:	nominative-accusative
Writing system:
Created by:
Pierre Abbat	late 1970s

Phonetics

Vowels
	Front		Near-front		Central		Near-back		Back
High	i ĩ
High-mid										o õ
Mid					(ə) (ə̃)
Low-mid			ɛ ɛ̃	(œ) (œ̃)
Low					a ã

Consonants
	Bilabial		Labiod.		Dental		Alveolar		Post-alv.		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal		m
Plosive	p	b					t	d					k	g
Fricative			f	v	s̪	z̪	sʲ	zʲ	ʃ ʃʲ	ʒ ʒʲ					h

Tones

Azarian has three tones: falling, mid, and rising. Only stressed syllables have tone; unstressed syllables are pronounced with pitches determined by surrounding tones. Sentence intonation modifies the pronunciation of tones, making the falling tone high level, for instance. A word may have more than one toned syllable, e.g. fìxteynzàyhatvà "sixty-eight".

Minimal pairs are sá "you" and sā (interrogative particle); and kézd "time" and kèzd "tool". Sá onjō sā kézd ī xtá jè? Háx, mó xanztè kézdkèzd. "Do you know what time it is? No, I'll ask the clock." A minimal pair that can easily be confused is háyx "zero", related to háx, and hàyx "four". To avoid this, Azarians often say máx "nothing, nobody" for háyx.

Alphabet

Azarian has the same alphabet as Malwinish, except for letters representing sounds not found in both languages.

Transliteration	Sound	Notes
k	k
o	o
s	s	Usually a dental sibilant, but the dental and alveolar sibilants are allophones.
j	ʒ
z	z
h	h	Initial hi is voiceless i, unless followed by a vowel, in which case a diphthong results.
v	v
b	b	The letter for v originally represented b, and that for b is a modification of it.
a	a
g	g
e	e	Pronounced as either ɛ or ə.
x	ʃ
t	t
i	i
f	f
m	m
p	p
d	d
y	j	Diacritic indicating palatalization of s, z, x, and j, and diphthong with o, a, and e.
n	◌̃	Diacritic indicating a nasal vowel.

The falling (high) tone is written as an accent above the vowel, and the rising (low) tone as an accent below, when they are written. The mid tone is not written in the Azarian alphabet.

Some words, such as yhatvà, begin with y or n. This is not pronounced, and in Azarian writing is not written, unless the previous word ends with a letter that can take the diacritic. n and y commute.

Numbers

Azarian	English
háyx, máx	zero
tan	one
và	two
háov	three
hàyx	four
xayf	five
fìxte	six
jáyn	seven
yhatvà	eight
ki, kays (archaic)	nine
káyn	ten
káyn tan	eleven
vàynzà	twenty
háovzà	thirty
hìzà	forty
xāyfzà	fifty
fìxteynzà	sixty
jáynzà	seventy
yhatvàynzà	eighty
kīzà	ninety
kèsfayn	hundred