Yasaro

Yasaro (nį́si jasǎrą) is one of around 70,000 Zireen languages spoken on the planet Rishai. This is a brief introduction to the language, which will eventually grow to include more aspects of phonology, grammar, and vocabulary.

Consonants:

p	th [t̪]	t		č [tʃ]	k
m	nh [n̪]	n		ň [ɲ]	ŋ
v	l	s [s~z]	r [ʐ]	j	h

Vowels:

i į		u ų
e ę
		a ą

Pronunciation of nasal vowels:

• short vowel + homorganic nasal before stops: lę̀pa = [ˈlɛ̂mba], tą̀tu = [ˈtɔ̂ndɯ]
• long and nasal before fricatives: nį́si = [ˈnɪ̌ː̃zi], kelą̀ra = [keˈlɔ̂ː̃ʐa]
• short and non-nasal at end of words: jasǎrą = [ʝaˈsǎʐɔ]

Pitch accent: Underlying stress can fall on any syllable of the main root, but word-final syllables are never stressed. Stressed syllables on non-final syllables are pronounced with a falling tone. When a word ends with a syllable that would ordinarily be stressed, the preceding syllable gets the stress instead, but is pronounced with a rising tone. The stress remains on the final syllable of the root if a suffix is added (for example, tą́pa [ˈtɔ̌mba] "head", but tąpà-ta [tɔmˈpâɾa] "my head").

Vocabulary

Colors