Cernelian/Phonetics and orthography

Phonetics

Consonants

	Labial		Dental	Post-alveolar	Alveo-palatal	Velar		Glottal
	Plain	Palatal				Plain	Palatal
Nasal	/m/	/mʲ/	/n/	/ɲ/	/ŋ/
Plosive	/p b/	/pʲ bʲ/	/t d/			/k ɡ/	/kʲ ɡʲ/	(/ʔ/)
Affricate			/t͡s d͡z/	/t͡ʂ d͡ʐ/	/t͡ɕ d͡ʑ/
Fricative	/f v/	/fʲ vʲ/	/s z/	/ʂ ʐ/	/ɕ ʑ/	/x/	/xʲ/
Tap			/r/
Approximant			/l/		/j/	/w/

Unlike Polish, Cernelian has the phoneme /ʔ/ that arose between vowels to avoid hiatus (jeócmie /jɛˈʔutsmʲjɛ/ "if we share"), but this was actually not phonemic.

Vowels

		Front	Central	Back
Close		/i/	/ɨ/	/u/
Mid	Plain	/ɛ/		/ɔ/
	Nasal	/ɛ̃/		/ɔ̃/
Open				/a/

Extreme northern dialects has phonemic vowel length, denoted by acute accent (ác /aːts/ "boat", íłmo "air, sky"). Standard Cernelian have ⟨ó⟩, but only for etymological reasons.

Cernelian reflects limited vowel harmony between the vowels -o- (back) and -e- (front), otherwise the Proto-Finnic vowel harmonies *o : *ö displaced by Cernelian o : e, and *u : *y become Proto-Cernelian yers *ъ and *ь that often deleted in some positions.

The nasal vowels become /ɛn, ɔn/ before plosives and affricates, /ɛm, ɔm/ before labials, /ɛŋ, ɔŋ/ before post-alveolars and velars, /ɛɲ, ɔɲ/ before alveo-palatals, and /ɛ, ɔ/ before l or ł and word-finally in the case of ę.

Stress

Like Polish, Cernelian words are almost always stressed in penultimate (second-from-last) syllable. However, some conservative eastern and southern dialects influenced by Russian and Ukrainian, have unpredictable stress (jeò "to grind" vs. jèo "times", but both are stressed as jèo in standard variant).

• Proto-Finnic *áivastàdak → jawostà vs. standard jawòsta "to sneeze"
• Proto-Finnic *áutugas → ùto "blessed, wealthy" (same in standard patterns)

Orthography

Vowels

Letter	IPA value
⟨A a⟩	/a/
⟨Ą ą⟩	/ɔ̃/ (see above)