Haswaraba

Haswaraba is a language family located at the northern edge of Outer Poswob territory on the large tropical island of Nī. Its speakers have bled out into Paleo-Andanese lands and influences have gone in bhoth directions. Haswaraba is the name of the parent language; its descendants are called Haswarabic languages.

Phonlogy

Haswaraba is notable for the collapse of all short vowels (which were much more commonm than long vowels) into /a/ and the loss of length distinctions. Haswaraba had three major vowels: /a i u/, of which /a/ was far more common than the other two, and some marginal vowels: /â/ (seen as /aa/), and /wo/ (which comes from POP3 /oo/).

Consonants

The consonants systsem is very asymmetrical. /p b bʷ m mʷ w t d dʷ n nʷ l ʎ r s sʷ č š ñ ć ś j k ġʷ h hʷ/

The dot over the "g" is to emphasize that it is a true stop, not the voiced velar fricative that is muich more common in this area.

Vowels

/a i u/. /a/ could be considered non-phonemic, since this is a CV language and therefore any /a/ can be elided in fast speech. e.g. the name /hasʷaraba/ can be analyzed as /hsʷrb/ since it cannot be anything else. However the vowrel â, respresenting a sequence of two /a/'s, cannot be ommitted. It could be just as well treated as a conosnants, though, such as /ʕ/, and so can intiial /a/. Likewise /apapupa/ "border, frence" is /ʕppup/.

Since in a previous stage of the language, all word-final vowels had become short, and later all short vowels became /a/, all words end in /a/ except monosyllables and compounds whose final element is a monosyllable. This final /a/ was generally elided already in the proto-language, even before a word beginning with another vowel.