Besanese

Phonology

Consonants

The following are phonemic transcriptions of Besanese consonants.

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n		ŋ1
Plosive	plain	p b	t d		k g
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ		kʰ
Fricative			s z2			h3
Affricate	plain		ts dz4
	aspirated		tsʰ
Liquid			ɾ~l5
Approximant		w		j

1. /ŋ/ appears only in the syllable coda.
2. /s, z/ are palatalized [ɕ, ʑ] before /i, j/
3. /h/ is palatalized [ç] before /i, j/; and is bi­la­bialized [ɸ] before /u, w/
4. /ts, dz, tsʰ/ may be pronounced [tɕ, dʑ, tɕʰ] by some speakers before /i, j/
5. /ɾ/ is an alveolar flap [ɾ] in the syllable onset; and is [l] in the syllable coda.

Vowels

Monophthongs

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open	a

Diphthongs

j-	w-	-i
ja	wa	aɪ
jɛ	wɛ	eɪ
jɔ		ɔɪ
ju		uɪ~wi1

1. /uɪ/ is a falling diphthong [uɪ] after a consonant in an open syllable; and is a rising diphthong [wi] when it is a syllable of its own or in a closed syllable.

Triphthongs

j-	w-
jaɪ	waɪ
jeɪ	weɪ

Positional allophones

Besanese consonants have two principal positional allophones: initial and final. The initial form is found at the beginning of a syllable and the final form is found at the end of a syllable. All plosives [p, t, k] are unreleased [p̚, t̚, k̚] at the end of a syllable. Final [ɾ] is a liquid [l].

Phonotactics

Besanese syllable structure is maximally CgVC, where the first C is the initial consonant; g is a semivowel glide /j/ or /w/; V is a vowel; the second C is a coda. Any consonant but /ŋ/ may occur initially, whereas only /m, n, ŋ, p, t, k, l/ may occur finally.

Below is the table of all syllable finals (gVC) in Besanese.

Vowel harmony

Traditionally, the Besanese language has had strong vowel harmony; that is, in pre-modern Besanese, not only did the inflectional and derivational affixes change in accordance to the main root vowel, but native words also adhered to vowel harmony. However, this rule is no longer observed strictly in modern Besanese. In modern Besanese, it is only applied in certain cases such as onomatopoeia and conjugation.

There are three classes of vowels in Besanese: positive, negative and neutral. The vowel classes loosely follow the front (positive) and back (negative) vowels; they also follow orthography. Exchanging positive vowels with negative vowels usually creates different nuances of meaning, with positive vowels sounding fast, hard, solid, hot, dry, focused or aggressive, and negative vowels sounding slow, soft, insubstantial, cold, wet, diffuse or tranquil. For diphthongs, the positive vowels are: /ja/, /jɛ/, /wa/, /wɛ/, /aɪ/, /eɪ/; and the negative vowels are: /jɔ/, /ju/, /ɔɪ/, [uɪ]~[wɪ]. All triphthongs are positive: /jaɪ/, /jeɪ/, /waɪ/, /weɪ/.