Omni-kan

Pastok is an auxlang, though not one that actually strives to become an international language. It is only created for the sheer challenge of creating a conlang that could potentially be spoken by as many people as possible on Earth. For this reason the phonemic inventory is rather small, and several phonological constraints exist for ease of pronunciation. Yet homonyms are avoided at all costs. Pastok has borrowed all of its words from other languages. There are 49 languages that have been especially prioritized in word borrowing and phonology: Modern Standard Arabic, Mossi (Mòoré), Yoruba, Swahili, Armenian, Albanian, Tamil, Turkish, Kazakh, Uzbek, Mongolian, Hungarian, Finnish, Vietnamese, Indonesian/Malay, Mandarin, Burmese, Thai, Quiché (K'iche'), Quechua, (Paraguayan) Guaraní, Tok Pisin, Tashelhiyt, Hausa, Oromo, Fula, Akan (Twi dialect), Kanuri, Bambara, Telugu, (White) Hmong, Persian, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, English, Russian, Ancient Greek, Portuguese, Bengali, French, Japanese, German, Punjabi, Javanese, Marathi, Korean, Italian, Wu (Shanghai dialect), Cantonese (Canton dialect). All major language families, and major branches of the largest families, are present among these 49 languages.

Phonology

Pulmonic consonants

Bilabial

Labiodental

Dental

Alveolar

Postalveolar

Retroflex

Palatal

Velar

Uvular

Pharyngeal

Epiglottal

Glottal

Nasal

/m/ <m>

/n/ <n>

[ŋ] <g>

Plosive

/p/ <p>

/t/ <t>

/k/ <k>

Affricate

/tʃ/ <c>

Fricative

[f] <f>

/s/ <s>

/h/ <h>

Approximant

/ʋ/ <w>

/j/ <j>

Trill

[r] <r>

Tap or flap

Lat. fricative

Lat. approximant

/l/ <l>

Lateral flap

Co-articulated pulmonics

	Labial-palatal		Labial-velar		Alveolo-palatal		Palatal-velar
Fricative
Approximant

Vowels

	Front		Near-front		Central		Near-back		Back
Close	/i/ <i>								/u/ <u>
Near-close
Close-mid
Mid	/e/ <e>								/o/ <o>
Open-mid
Near-open
Open					/a/ <a>

The sounds of Pastok can be pronunced in several ways depending on what the speaker is capable of, but the most desirable pronunciations have been marked in the above tables. Each of these desirable sounds can be replaced by any other sound whose cell has the same color. The sounds in brackets are not quite phonemes because they are not contrastive. [ŋ] has complementary distribution with /n/, [f] with /p/, and [r] with /l/. The former ones can be replaced by the latter ones if the speaker can't pronunce any of the alternatives given in the above phoneme charts.

There are also six diphthongs: /ui, oi, ai/, [ei, ou, au]. The final /i/ could optionally be [j], and the /u/ could be [w]. The diphthongs can also be split up into two syllables, with an optional [ʔ] between. The au and ou are have complementary distribution with other phonemes.

Phonological constrains

The syllable structure of Pastok is (C)V(C). The onset can be any consonant except g, while the coda can be any of m, n, g, p, t, k, f, s, l. M can't appear at the end of a word though. The allowed medial clusters are:

• mp mf
• nt nc ns nj nw nr nl
• gk
• pt ps pr pl
• ft fr fl
• tn tw tr tl
• kn kp kt kc ks kw kr kl
• sn sj sw sr sl
• lm lp lf lt lk lc ls lj lw

The sequences ji, wu, wo, and word-final e and m are unallowed.

Complimentary distribution

In the following list · stand for either syllable break or word boundary.

• V₁n - V₁
• au - o
• ei - e
• f - p
• g - n
• ou - o, u
• r - l
• s· - t·
• ti - ci

Borrowing scheme

When borrowing words, the word might need to be changed to fit Pastok's phonological constrains. Generally, e is used to split up non-word final consonant clusters, while o is used at the end of words. If possible, the vowel is placed so that the consonants are still adjacent. Here some other rules, which take precedence over the above:

• #CiV > CijV (but see ji below)
• #CuV > CuwV (but see wo and wu below)
• Cː > C
• CCiV > CCijV (but see ji below)
• CCuV > CCuwV (but see wo and wu below)
• Vː > V
• Vst > Vt
• eu > e
• iV > jV
• ji > i
• m# > mo
• r· > l·
• wo > o
• wu > u