User:Masako/nkala

kamalo

Phonology

Consonants

Consonants	Labial	Coronal	Dorsal
Nasal	m	n
Plosive	p	t	k
Fricative		s
Approximant	w	l	j (y)

Vowels

Vowels	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Mid	e	o
Open	a

Syllable Structure

All syllables are of the form (C)V(N), that is, optional consonant + vowel + optional final nasal, or V, CV, VN, CVN.

Phonotactics

The following sequences are not allowed: /wo, wu, yi, yu, lu, tu/.

Allophony

Because of its small phoneme inventory, kamalo allows for quite a lot of allophonic variation. For example, /p t k/ may be pronounced [b d ɡ] as well as [p t k], /s/ as [z] or [ʃ] as well as [s], /l/ as [ɾ] as well as [l], and vowels may be either long or short.

Parts of Speech

All kamalo words are built from basic roots. These roots are always CVC (consonant+vowel+consonant) and surrounded by various affixes to subtly add nuance and change meaning. The majority of these roots are primarily verbal. The only other part of speech is particles.