Syrenian/Phonology

Vowels

It is helpful to subdivide the many vowels into 'normal', '+RTR', '+rounding' and '+RTR,+rounding'. On the following chart in each group of four vowels, the top left is 'normal'. Moving to the right is '+RTR' and moving down is '+rounding.'

Syreni vowels in IPA

		Front		Central		Back
		-RTR	+RTR	-RTR	+RTR	-RTR	+RTR
High	-round	i	ɪ	ɨ	No	No	No
	+round	No	No	ʉ	No	u	ʊ
Mid	-round	e	ɛ	ɘ	No	No	No
	+round	No	No	ɵ	No	o	ɔ
Low	-round	æ	a	ä	No	No	ɑ

As you can see, front and back vowels contrast for +/- RTR, while central vowels contrast for rounding. /ä/ and /ɑ/ are grouped together as a back-vowel pair.

Under certain (common) conditions, vowels become their semi-vowel counterparts according to the following pattern:

	Front	Central	Back
High	/j/	/ð/	/w/
Mid	/l/	/ɻ/	/ʁ/
Low	/ɦ/	No	/ʕ/

Length is normal or long (e.g. a vs. aː). Vowel length is not intrinsic to the vowel, but part of the derivational pattern.

Consonants

First, there is the table of all sounds that occur:

	Bilabial	Dental*	Alveolar	Post-Alv.	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Nasal	m		n			ŋ	ɴ
Stop	b~ⱱ̟		d~ɾ			g	ɢ
Fricative	β		z~z͎	ʒ~ʒꟹ		ɣ
Approximant		ð	l~ɫ	ɻ	j	w~ɰ	ʁ	ʕ	ɦ
Trill	ʙ	r̝͆	r				ʀ
Click	ʘ~ʬ		!

* Syreni teeth are very sharp, so their tongues do not ever go over the ridge of their teeth.

Affricates are phonemically distinguished. The possibilities are bβ, dz, dʒ, dð, ɡɣ, ɢʁ

Tone

Syreni appears to have three tones, low, mid and high. These are marked with a grave for low, nothing for mid, and an acute for high.

Tone sandhi occurs when a high is followed by a low, and the low is then changed to a mid.

Transcription

The Syreni themselves have no writing system (and no need for one). Because of the large number of sounds present, a "romanization" scheme is not possible without many diacritical marks. It was decided early on to keep the area above the letter for tone symbols and the area below to mark necessary to distinguish similar vowels and consonants apart. A 'ring below' was chosen to represent lip-rounding, a single dot below to represent +RTR, and a tilde below to present both. Thus, the vowel table becomes:

Syreni vowels in transcription

	Front		Central		Back
High	ı	ı̣	и	и̣	u	ụ
	ı̥	ı̰	и̥	и̰	u̥	ṵ
Mid	e	ẹ	ə	ə̣	o	ọ
	e̥	ḛ	ə̥	ə̰	o̥	o̰
Low	a	ạ	No		α	α̣
	No	No			No	α̰

I is typically written without the dot (as in Turkish) but is nonetheless acceptable with it.

For consonants, less uniformity was possible.

	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Post-Alv.	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Nasal	m		n			ŋ	ṇ
Stop	b		d			g	q
Fricative	v		z	ж		x
Approximant		д	л	r	y	w	ɍ	c	г
Trill	b̰	д̰	r̰				ɍ̰
Click	p		t

Syllabification

Syreni syllables are quite complex. Because every sound is voiced, anything but a stop or a click may be syllabic. Sometimes, the only way to be sure of syllable boundaries is by a change in tone!