Khangaþyagon Vowels
Khangaþyagon has five short vowels, five long vowels, and five permissible diphthongs. These are shown in the tables below first as IPA, then with the romanisation below them.
Short Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | u | |
| i | u | ||
| Mid | e | o | |
| e | o | ||
| Low | æ | ||
| a |
Short vowels are generally more common than long vowels.
Long Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | iː | uː | |
| ī | ū | ||
| Mid | eː | oː | |
| ē | ō | ||
| Low | aː | ||
| ā |
Most the stuff I've written online has the macrons missed off, as they're difficult to type.
Note the qualitative as well as quantitative difference in the low vowels.
Diphthongs
| ae | au | eu | oæ | oe |
| æ | au | eu | oa | œ |
Fairly rare sounds. All diphtongs are falling, ie the first element is the syllabic nucleus.
Tense/lax Distinction
This is not phonemic in Khangaþyagon, so for example [i] and [ɪ] will be recognised as the same phoneme. Technically it's a free variation, although tense forms are more usual in careful speech. The emergence of allophonic and phonemic tense/lax distinctions in dialects was one of the mechanisms by which different languages diverged from Khangaþyagon.
Schwa
[ə] never occurs in Khangaþyagon.
Back : Consonants Up : Phonology and Script Next : Phonotactics and Stress
--PeteBleackley 08:09, 18 May 2006 (PDT)((Category:Phonology]]
