Antarctican

Antarctican is spoken in the far future, after catastrophic global warming has rendered most of the world uninhabitable, forcing survivors to flee to the land exposed by the melting ice sheets in Antarctica. It's vocabulary is drawn from a wide variety of existing languages, across many language families.

Phonology

Vowels

The vowel system is complex, with vowels distinguished not only by quality but also by phonation (breathy, modal and tense). Vowels with breathy phonation (marked with a diaresis e.g. ṳ), are also pronounced with a lower than normal pitch. Vowels with a tense phonation (marked with a tilde e.g. æ̰), are pronounced with a higher than normal pitch.

Monophthongs

There are 11 of these. 5 have modal voice, 5 have breathy voice, and one has tense voice.

	Front	Mid	Back
High	i	ɨ̤	ṳ
			o̤ o
Mid		ə̤
	ɛ		ʌ̤ ɔ
Low	a̰ a

Diphthongs

Diphthongs are divided into three categories, "general", "opening" and "closing". Opening diphthongs are only ever found in open syllables (syllables that do not end with a consonant), closing diphthongs are only ever found in closed syllables (syllables that end in a consonant), and general diphthongs can be found in both.

Opening Diphthongs

There are five of these: /aɛ/, /aɔ/, /aə̰/, /ʌə̤/, /ʌo̤/. The first two of these (the modally voiced ones) are more common than the last three, especially /ʌə̤/ and /ʌo̤/ (the breathy voiced ones).

Closing Diphthongs

There are only two of these and they both have modal voice: /ɛi/ and /ɔu/

General Diphthongs

Most of the diphthongs in Antarctican fall into this category. There are four with modal voice: /ai/, /au/, /ɔi/ and /ɛu/. Another eleven have tense voice: /oṵ/, /eḭ/, /ɛə̰/, /ɔə̰/, /aḭ/, /aṵ/, /ɔḭ/, /ɛṵ/, /ɛḭ/, and /ɔṵ/. And six more have breathy voice: /ʌɨ̤/, /aṳ/, /oɨ̤/, /əṳ/, /əi̤/, /oṳ/.

Consonants

At most, there are 28 consonants that could be considered phonemic:

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal / Placeless
Nasal	m̥ m	n̥ n	ɲ̥ ɲ	ŋ̥ ŋ	ɴ
Stop	pʰ p	tʰ t	cʰ c	kʰ k	ʔ
Implosive	ɓ	ɗ
Fricative	f	sʰ s	ʃ	x	h
Approximant	w		j
Flap		ɾ

The implosives can only occur between vowels, and only if the following vowel has tense voice.

11 of these consonants are classed as "aspirated". These include not only the aspirated stops /pʰ/, /tʰ/, /cʰ/ and /kʰ/ and the aspirated fricative /sʰ/, but also the voiceless nasals /m̥/, /n̥/, /ɲ̥/, /ŋ̥/, as well as the fricatives /f/ and /h/. These consonants can only occur before a vowel with modal voice.

/ɴ/ only occurs in syllable codas. It assimilates to the place of articulation of the following consonant. Before /ʔ/, /h/ or at the end of phrases, it simply nasalises the preceding vowel.

Phonotactics

There is only an extremely small number of syllable shapes permitted, limited to syllables of the form C (j /w) V (ɴ). Furthermore, /j/ can only occur after labial consonants. When it occurs after /w/, the consonant cluster /wj/ is pronounced as a labiodental approximant [ʋ], or sometimes a flap [ⱱ]. The consonant cluster /jw/ is pronounced [ɥ].

Chroneme

The chroneme is vary important in Antarctican phonology (see here for an explanation: <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroneme">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroneme</A>). It can either attach to a vowel, or to the first consonant in a syllable onset. In both cases the sound is lengthened. Whether or not a word has a chroneme can distinguish words. So while /paxa/ is a person's name, /paxːa/ means a fool or an abnormal person (kind of like Mr. Bean) and /paːxa/ means a tout or a pimp.

Note that the chroneme cannot occur on the first sound of a word, not the last sound. So neither /pʰːaxa/ nor /pʰaxaː/ would be possible words. It can also only ever occur a maximum of one time per word. So none of /paːxːa/, /paxːaː/ or /paːxaː/ could be possible words. If the chroneme occurs on a diphthong, the first element of the diphthong is lengthened e.g. /ta̰seːḭ/ - steak, not /ta̰sḛiː/.