Stilio/Phonology

Snakes have vastly simplified mouths compared to human-being. We are capable of making every sound they make, though some are easier than others. Snakes have no lips. Their soft-palate is occupied with the vomeronasal organ (Jacobson's organ), which acts as a sense of smell. Snakes have no uvula. Their glottis can move aside when eating large prey. They have no epiglottal region.

Sentient and non-sentient snakes hiss their entire volume of air without interruption, so a Parseltongue utterances cannot be longer than about fifteen seconds. Stops are typically initial, and in a verb. Whatever vocal-cords they are graced with by magic, snakes cannot speak very loudly or vary pitch beyond very low frequencies. Humans speaking above a whisper, voicing consonants and vowels, are something like "shouting barbarians" to the snakes we were allowed to interview.

Snake mouth anatomy

Given snake anatomy, even with the aide of magic, Parseltongue

• has no labial consonants
• has no palatal or alveolar-palatal consonants
  • except the lowered approximant /j̞̊/, a light, whispered 'y'
• has no uvular or epiglottal consonants
• has no voiced consonants
• is all spoken in creaky-voice
• has no corarticulated consonants
• has clicks
• allows all affricates
• prefer to end an utterance with a sibilant/fricative or a vowel
• has ejective forms of the stops and affricates
• ingressive sounds are possible

There is a non-phonemic sounds that snakes are readily capable of making, the trilled 'r'. However, /r/ is a highly erotic sound which no snake would make in polite company!

Non-parselmouths should take care not to "round" any consonants or vowels when speaking to a sentient snake. Snakes have no lips, so this can render one's speech unintelligible. English speakers should take greatest care with words beginning with 'r' or any 'sh' sound.

Consonants

Consonants (IPA above, Romanization below)
	Dental	Alveolar		Retro- flex	Velar	Pharyngeal	Glottal
		Central	Lateral
Nasal	n̪̊	n̥			ŋ̊
	m	n			ñ
Unaspirated Stop	t̪	t			k		ʔ
	b	d			g		'
Aspirated Stop	t̪ʰ	tʰ			kʰ		ʔʰ
	bh	dh			gh		'h
Ejective Stop	t̪ʼ	t'			k'
	p	t			k
Click	ǀ	ǃ	ǁ
	bq	dq	zq
Fricative	θ	s	ɬ	ʃ~ʂ	x
	f	s	z	c	x
Affricative	t̪θ	ts	tɬ	tʃ~ʈʂ	kx
	bf	ts	tz	tc	ks
Approximant		ɹ̊	l̥	j̞̊~ɻ̊	ɰ̊	ħ	h
		r	l	j	w	y	h

For those unfamiliar with the sound /ɰ/, pronounce a 'w' but leave off the lip-rounding. The dental click (¡) is used in the English "tsk tsk tsk", while the lateral click (¿) is used to spur on a horse. The (post) alveolar click (!) is made by placing the tongue at the top of the mouth and then letting it slap down. The African version of this click - where the mouth produces an overly loud, hollow sound - should be avoided. The lateral fricative (ł) is found in Welsh but may be very unfamiliar to English-speakers elsewhere. The pharyngeal approximant (ħ) is a very raspy 'h', produced as far down the throat as possible.

Somewhat surprisingly, a small cadre of Estonian wizards and witches who are all Parselmouths has been found in recent times. They have a traditional way of writing Parseltongue that we have systematized herein.

Ingressive

There are a small number of ingressive words in Parseltongue, mostly interjections, ideophones and onomatopoeias. There is no special notation for these words: they are either italicized or set off in astericies before and after.

Allophony

• g/x/k/gx/kx + l > /ɫ̥/
• g/x/k/gx/kx + ł > /ʟ̝̊/
• þ + l > /l̪/

Vowels

Vowels (IPA above, Romanization below)
	Front	Center	Back
High	i		ɯ
	i		u
Near-high	ɪ		ʊ̜
	ï		ü
High-mid	e		ɤ
	e		o
Low-mid	ɛ		ʌ
	ë		ö
Near-low	æ	ɐ
	a	ä

Like the Niger-Congo family of languages in Africa, Parseltongue has a system of five vowels, each of which has a twin with Retracted Tongue Root (RTR). These five vowels can be arranged in a 'V', with /i/ in the top-left. /e/ is in the middle-left and /a/ at the bottom. The unrounded (because, again, snakes have no lips) versions of /o/ and /u/ are the right-middle and top-right components of the 'V'. With this pattern in mind, one can see how /i/ and /u/ are "high", while /e/ and /o/ are "mid". /a/ is "low". /i e a/ are "front" and /u o a/ are "back". Notice how, in regards to frontness/backness, /a/ is both.

Vowel Harmony

	Front	Back
High	i/ï	u/ü
Mid	e/ë	o/ö
Low	a/ä

Phonotactics

Parseltongue can be extremely difficult to analyze phonotacticly. Even with enunciating as one would to a fool or simpleton, snakes never cease the continuous airstream. Syllable boundaries, therefore, are somewhat arbitrary. Snakes we interviewed regard this as an unimportant, human problem, akin to transcribing choking or sneezing. For our purposes, we should regard Parseltongue syllables as capable of having either a vowel or a fricative in the nucleus. The overwhelming majority of syllables are V, CV, or CVC. Like Estonian, Parseltongue distinguishes geminate consonants and vowels with a high degree of specificity. Under some analyses, there are three levels of gradation, but this is disputed and typically called a supersegmental feature. In our notation, doubling of any letter indicated gemination.

A fricative (in the onset or in the nucleus) may be long or short. A syllabic fricative may be preceded by a stop, and hence, part of an affricate. It may also be preceded by an approximant or another fricative. Open syllables, in this case, are common. A fricative, nasal, or approximant can be analyzed as the coda of a fricative-nucleus syllable.

If a vowel is the syllable nucleus, it may be preceded by a click, either nasal, a stop (which may be preceded by a fricative), a fricative, an affricate (which may be preceded by a fricative) or an approximant (which may be preceded by a stop or a fricative). The coda of a vowel-nucleus syllable may be a nasal (which may be followed by a fricative), a fricative, l or h, or it may be left open. Clicks and taps may only follow an open, vowel-nucleus syllable.

Aesthetically, snakes find it distasteful to have stops or clicks in the middle of an utterance. Hence, while it would be possible through appropriate case use to have any word order, verbs almost always come first.

Accent is very hard to detect at times in Parseltongue. It appears that almost all words are emphasized on the first syllable, though pronouns tend to be enclitic. Unusually stress patterns are marked with an acute herein (i.e. ´ ).

• a is /æ/ as in Sally
  • ä is /ä/ as in father
• b is /t̪/ like the 't' in uncouth talk, said rapidly, with the tongue between the teeth, but without a breath of air
  • bh is the same as b but with the exhaled breath
  • bq is the dental click, like spurring a horse on
• c is /ʃ/ as in shush (without lip-rounding)
• d is /t/ as in star', without a breath of air
  • dh is the same as d but with the exhaled breath
  • dq is the alveolar click, like children imitating horses trotting
• e is /e/ as in bet'
  • ë is /ɛ/ as in Scottish bet, like the vowel in thanks said rapidly (no diphthong)
• f is /θ/ as in thin, never they
• g is /k/ as in "kit", but without a breath of air
• h is /h/ as in harpie (can end a syllable)
  • also used after b, d, and g to produce aspirated stops
• i is /i/ as in sheet
  • ï is /ɪ/ as in shit
• j is /j/ as in "yes" (without the tongue actually touching the palate)

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http://zompist.com/gen

• k is /k'/ as in beatboxing 'k'
• l is /l/ as in lull, but can also be velarized, or dental
• m is the dental /n/ as in tenth
• n is /n̥/ as in nun whispered
  • ñ is /ŋ̊/ as in sung whispered (can begin a syllable)
• o is /ɤ/ like 'foe' without the lip rounding (not a diphthong, like Spanish)
  • ö is /ʌ/ like an English cot without lip rounding
• p is /t̪ʼ/, an ejective dental t, as in beatboxing
• q is only used in digraphs to produce clicks after b, d and z
• r is /ɹ̊/ as in rut whispered (be careful to put the tongue-tip behind the alveolar ridge)
• s is /s/ as in sass
• t is /t'/, an ejective 't' as in beatboxing
• u is /ɯ/, an unrounded version of shoot
  • ū is /ʊ̜/, an unrounded version of cut
• v is not used
• w is /ɰ̊/, like a whispered 'w' without lip rounding
• x is /x/, as in loch or Bach
• y is /ħ/ like a harsh 'h' said low in the throat
• z is /ɬ/, like the Welsh 'll'

• ' is the glottal-stop, like the dash in uh-oh