Khangaþyagon Vowels

Khangaþyagon has five short vowels, five long vowels, and five permissible diphthongs. These are shown in the tables below first as IPA, then with the romanisation below them.

Short Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
	i		u
Mid	e		o
	e		o
Low	æ
	a

Short vowels are generally more common than long vowels.

Long Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	iː		uː
	ī		ū
Mid	eː		oː
	ē		ō
Low		aː
		ā

Most the stuff I've written online has the macrons missed off, as they're difficult to type.

Note the qualitative as well as quantitative difference in the low vowels.

Diphthongs

a̬e	a̬u	e̬u	o̬æ	o̬e
æ	au	eu	oa	œ

Fairly rare sounds. All diphtongs are falling.

Tense/lax Distinction

This is not phonemic in Khangaþyagon, so for example [i] and [ɪ] will be recognised as the same phoneme. Technically it's a free variation, although tense forms are more usual in careful speech. The emergence of allophonic and phonemic tense/lax distinctions in dialects was one of the mechanisms by which different languages diverged from Khangaþyagon.

Schwa

[ə] never occurs in Khangaþyagon.

Back : Consonants Up : Phonology and Script Next : Phonotactics and Stress

--PeteBleackley 08:09, 18 May 2006 (PDT)