Proto-Phwaim

Proto-Phwaim is a fictional language by Polka Dot. Proto-Phwaim is the reconstructed ancestor of the Phim-Hwan languages, a family spoken for the most part in the central region of Phwaim. It is estimated to have been spoken around 10.000 HW.

Phonology

The reconstructed consonant phoneme inventory of Proto-Phwaim, with 37 consonants, is shown in the table below:

Consonants

Proto-Phwaim Consonantal Phonemes

		Bilabial	Dental, Alveolar		Postalveolar	Palatal(ized)	Velar	Uvular
			Central	Lateral
Nasals		m [m]	n [n]			ń [ɲ]	ŋ [ŋ]
Stops	Aspirated	ph [pʰ]	th [tʰ]				kh [kʰ]
	Voiceless	p [p]	t [t]				k [k]
	Voiced	b [b]	d [d]				g [g]
Affricates	Aspirated				čh [t͡ʃʰ]	ćh [t͡ɕʰ]
	Voiceless				č [t͡ʃ]	ć [t͡ɕ]
	Voiced				ǧ [d͡ʒ]	ǵ [d͡ʑ]
Fricatives	Voiceless		s [s]	ṣ [ɬ]	š [ʃ]			x[χ]
	Palatalized		s' [sʲ]	ṣ' [ɬʲ]	š' [ʃʲ]			x'[χʲ]
	Voiced		z [z]	ẓ [ɮ]	ž [ʒ]			ḥ[ʁ]
Approximants		v [w]				y [j]
Liquids			r [r]	l [l]		r' [rʲ] l' [ʎ]

The phonemes *ń, *ćh, *ć, *ǵ, *l' were either palatalized [nʲ, t͡sʲʰ, t͡sʲ, d͡zʲ, lʲ] or true palatal [ɲ, t͡ɕʰ, t͡ɕ, d͡ʑ, ʎ].

The pronunciation of *r' is not precisely known, but it was approximately a palatalized trill [rʲ].

Vowels

The Proto-Phwaim vowel system is traditionally reconstructed to have used the following 10 vowel phonemes, contrasting two degrees of length, as shown in the table below:

	Front		Back
	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
Close	i [i]	ü [y]	ï [ɯ]	u [u]
Close-mid	e [e]	ö [ø]	ë [ɤ]	o [o]
Open	ä [æ]		a [ɑ]

Morphology

Nouns

Proto-Phwaim had 13 cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, ablative, instrumental, comitative, terminative, Illative, allative, equative, partitive), two systems of number (singular-dual–plural and collective–singulative) and two genders (human vs nonhuman). A noun stem can take up to 2 types of suffixes:

stem + (number) + (case)