Parseltongue

Parseltongue-inspired
Pronounced:	n.a.
Timeline and Universe:	Harry Potter world
Species:	Ophidic (snakes and snake-likes)
Spoken:	All over the HP world
Total speakers:	unknown
Writing system:	n.a.
Genealogy:	Isolate
Typology
Morphological type:	Inflecting
Morphosyntactic alignment:	Accusative
Basic word order:	SOV
Credits
Creator:	Eugene Oh
Created:	July 2005

Parseltongue is a fictional language spoken by snakes in the Harry Potter series of novels (author: J. K. Rowling), whose known human speakers include the Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter. This language has, however, not been publicly described by Rowling and has no known form.

The Parseltongue referred to below in this article refers to Parseltongue-inspired, a hypothetical form of the abovementioned snake-speak. Because the tongue has no written form, the text samples appearing hereafter are in romanised form.

Phonology

Consonants

Being a language spoken by snakes and the like, Parseltongue, while having the complete basic plosive repertoire ([p]/[b] [t]/[d], [k]/[g]), is rich in sibilants and other fricatives, which occur at a far higher frequency. Plosives also assimilate frequently to neighbouring fricatives or sonorants.

Consonants
	Bilabial		Labiodental		Alveolar		Post-alv.		Velar		Glottal
Nasal		m				n
Plosive	p	b			t	d			k	g
Fricative			f	v	s		ʃ				h
Affricate					ts	dz		tʃ
Approximants	ʍ	w
Trill						r
Lateral Approximant						l

Assimilation

Due to the inherent tendency of snakes (and hence their human inheritors of Parsetongue) to fricativise sounds, plosives commonly assimilate to neighbouring continuants (including aspirate stops), even across word boundaries, except where plosives are geminate. Regressive assimilation is the most common, and changes of the following types have been observed:

• [p] + fricative = labialised fricative (e.g. pf = f^w)
• [b] + fricative = [v] + voiced fricative (e.g. bth = vð)
  • Occasionally, complete assimilation occurs, e.g. vð becomes ðð.
• [t] + fricative = geminate fricative
• [d] + fricative = geminate voice fricative
• [k] + fricative = [x] + fricative = geminate fricative in certain cases

When followed by a [h], whether or not separated by a vowel or diphthong, plosives are aspirated, eliding the [h], and in some progressive dialects fricativise.

• E.g. [t] + [h] = [tʰ] or [θ]

The velar plosives exhibit a slightly irregular pattern of fricativisation, and examples as illustrated below have been noted:

• [k/k] (i.e. across word boundaries) = [χ]
• [g] is frequently elided

With sonorants, devoicing frequently occurs before a fricative:

• [m] + [h] = devoiced m
• [r] + [h] = devoiced r or [hr]
• [l] + [h] = devoiced l or [hl]
  • [l] + fricative sometimes causes the [l] to vocalise to an [u]

Frequently, intervocalic [h] is elided.

See also [[{{{1}}}]] for more information

Vowels

Parseltongue vowels have phonemic length, but the distinction is not usually made as speakers generally lengthen and shorten vowels at will, or elide them; only the former process is substantially common, however. Occasionally, when two identical vowels occur consecutively (which happens only when they are across a word boundary or when an intermediate consonant, usually [h], has been elided), the resulting sound may be four times as long as normally due to such arbitrary lengthening.

Monophthongs

Vowels
	Front		Near-front		Central		Back
High	i						ɯ	u
High-mid			e					o
Low					a

The above table shows the phonemic vowels in Parseltongue. Among them, [e] and [o] have allophones of [ɛ] and [ɔ] respectively.

Diphthongs

Historically, Parseltongue had four diphthongs, [ai], [ei], [ao] and [au]. In modern times, only [ai] has remained unchanged over the years, while [ei] has become [e:], [au] has become [o:] and [ao] has taken the place of [au], leaving only two.

Diphthongs, like monophthongs, can also be lengthened, albeit in their case only for the first component vowel. For example, when [ai] is so lengthened, the resulting sound combination (no longer a diphthong, but two separate syllables) is [a:.i].

Arbitrary lengthening sometimes also alters the quality of Parseltongue diphthongs, when the next vowel (irrespective of whether there is an intervening consonant) is identical to the second component in the diphthong. E.g. arsiæ hinneis "my sister liked" [ar.si.ˈai ˈhin.ne:s] (two words) > ar.si.ˈa:i ˈhi.ne:s] (two words) > ar.si.ˈa:.hi.ne:s] (as though one word).

Orthography

Alphabet

Parseltongue, having no native script, is romanised with English consonants and Italian vowels.

Vowels that cannot be reduced or elided are marked with an acute accent ( ́), while stress is normally unmarked. In the rare cases where a vowel is prohibited from arbitrary lengthening, a caron (an inverted circumflex) is used to mark the vowel.

The full alphabet of 22 letters used to romanise Parseltongue is as follows (sounds in IPA):

Letter	Sound	Letter	Sound	Digraph	Sound
Aa	a	Mm	m	Ai	ai
Ææ	ai	Nn	m	Ao	au
Bb	b	Oo	o	Au	o:
Dd	d	Pp	p	Br2	bɯr
Ee	e	Rr	r	Ch	tʃ
Ff	f	Ss	s	Ei	e:
Gg	g	Tt	t	Hw	ʍ
Hh	h	Uu	u	Sh	ʃ
Ii	i	Vv	v	Ts	ts
Kk	k	Ww	w
Ll	l	Yy1	ɯ

¹

If, when [ɯ] elides in everyday speech, the preceding plosive is immediately followed by a fricative, assimilation takes place. When voiced plosives are followed by [h], they are aspirated, e.g. dy hí "and who-ACC" [dɯhi] > [dhi] > [dʰi].

²

Historic [r̩] unpacked itself to become [ɯr]. When followed by a vowel, [ɯ] elides and the digraph becomes the consonant cluster [br].

History

A fictional history involving J. K. Rowling's magical world in the Harry Potter series

Romanisation of Parseltongue for writing was first done by English wizards in the 17th century, by the principle of having, as far as possible, one letter to one sound without using letters outside the basic Roman alphabet or extraneous diacritics. There is one odd extra letter, <æ>, adopted from the Icelandic alphabet, to represent the diphthong [ai], but only where it denotes the first person genitive case (e.g. arsi, sister; arsiæ, my sister), the first-person verb ending (-æ), or the third-person masculine one (-æs). Besides the logically understandable diphthongs, digraphs are historically explicable:

• ch and sh were written as in English
• ts was adopted from romanisation of Greek and Russian