Iljena/Phonology

Vowels

iljena has a simple five-vowel system

	Front	Back
High	i	u
Mid	e	o
Low	a

They are given in the Standard Human transcription (also known as the Kennilworth Phonemic System), and have the usual IPA values.

Consonants

The phonemic consonants of iljena are given in the chart below. Each consonant is given in the Standard Human transcription, with its IPA value following

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Labiovelar	Velar	Glottal
Voiceless stop	p/p/	t/t/		q/kʷ/	k/k/
Voiced stop	b/b/	d/d/			g/g/
Voiceless fricative	f/f/	s/s/				h/h/
Voiced Fricative	v/v/	z/z/
Nasal	m/m/	n/n/
Approximant		r/r/	j/j/	w/w/
Lateral		l/l/

Sandhi

The following sandhi phenomena occur in iljena

Palatalisation of Alveolars

The sequence alveolar+j assimilates thus

Written	Phonemic	Phonetic
<tj>	/tj/	[ʧ]
<dj>	/dj/	[ʤ]
<sj>	/sj/	[ʃ]
<zj>	/zj/	[ʒ]
<nj>	/nj/	/ɲ/
<lj>	/lj/	[ʎj]

Notice that /r/ does not undergo palatalisation, and that /j/ is not lost when /l/ palatalises to [ʎ]

Velarisation of <h>

Before a consonant, or word-finally, <h> /h/ is realised as [x]

Voicing of <q>

When in contact with a sonorant, <q> /kʷ/ is realised as [gʷ]

Velarisation of n

<n> /n/ followed by a velar or labiovelar assimilates thus

Written	Phonemic	Phonetic
<nk>	/nk/	[ŋk]
<ng>	/ng/	[ŋ]
<nq>	/nkʷ/	[ŋgʷ]
<nw>	/nw/	[ŋw]
<nh#>	/nh/	[ŋx]

This last process only occurs word finally.

Phonotactics

The formation of an iljena word is subject to the following constraints

• Vowel occur singly within words - hiatus and diphthongs are disallowed.
• A maximum of two consonants may occur in sequence.
• Two consecutive consonants may not be identical, whether or not they are separated by a vowel. This constraint is relaxed in proper names of non-native origin.
• w may not follow q, whether or not they are separated by a vowel.