Cernelian/Phonetics and orthography
Phonetics
Consonants
| Labial | Dental | Post-alveolar | Alveo-palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Palatal | Plain | Palatal | |||||
| Nasal | /m/ | /mʲ/ | /n/ | /ɲ/ | /ŋ/ | |||
| Plosive | /p b/ | /pʲ bʲ/ | /t d/ | /k ɡ/ | /kʲ ɡʲ/ | (/ʔ/) | ||
| Affricate | /t͡s d͡z/ | /t͡ʂ d͡ʐ/ | /t͡ɕ d͡ʑ/ | |||||
| Fricative | /f v/ | /fʲ vʲ/ | /s z/ | /ʂ ʐ/ | /ɕ ʑ/ | /x/ | /xʲ/ | |
| Tap | /r/ | |||||||
| Approximant | /l/ | /j/ | /w/ | |||||
Unlike Polish, Cernelian has the phoneme /ʔ/ that arose between vowels to avoid hiatus (jeócmie /jɛˈʔutsmʲjɛ/ "if we share"), but this was actually not phonemic.
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | /i/ | /ɨ/ | /u/ | |
| Mid | Plain | /ɛ/ | /ɔ/ | |
| Nasal | /ɛ̃/ | /ɔ̃/ | ||
| Open | /a/ | |||
Extreme northern dialects has phonemic vowel length, denoted by acute accent (ác /aːts/ "boat", íłmo "air, sky"). Standard Cernelian have ⟨ó⟩, but only for etymological reasons.
Cernelian reflects limited vowel harmony between the vowels -o- (back) and -e- (front), otherwise the Proto-Finnic vowel harmonies *o : *ö displaced by Cernelian o : e, and *u : *y become Proto-Cernelian yers *ъ and *ь that often deleted in some positions.
The nasal vowels become /ɛn, ɔn/ before plosives and affricates, /ɛm, ɔm/ before labials, /ɛŋ, ɔŋ/ before post-alveolars and velars, /ɛɲ, ɔɲ/ before alveo-palatals, and /ɛ, ɔ/ before l or ł and word-finally in the case of ę.
Stress
Like Polish, Cernelian words are almost always stressed in penultimate (second-from-last) syllable. However, some conservative eastern and southern dialects influenced by Russian and Ukrainian, have unpredictable stress (jeò "to grind" vs. jèo "times", but both are stressed as jèo in standard variant).
- Proto-Finnic *áivastàdak → jawostà vs. standard jawòsta "to sneeze"
- Proto-Finnic *áutugas → ùto "blessed, wealthy" (same in standard patterns)
Orthography
The Cernelian orthography is written in Latin, and definitely same as that of Polish.
| Letter | IPA value |
|---|---|
| ⟨A a⟩ | /a/ |
| ⟨Ą ą⟩ | /ɔ̃/ (see above) |
| ⟨E e⟩ | /ɛ/ |
| ⟨Ę ę⟩ | /ɛ̃/ (see above) |
| ⟨I i⟩ | /(ʲ)i/ Palatalizes preceding consonants, see below |
| ⟨O o⟩ | /ɔ/ |
| ⟨Ó ó⟩ | /u/ |
| ⟨U u⟩ | |
| ⟨Y y⟩ | /ɨ/ |
| Letter | IPA value | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Elsewhere | Before -i- and -iV | ||
| Voiced | Unvoiced | ||
| ⟨B b⟩ | /b/ | /p/ | /bʲ/ |
| ⟨C c⟩ | /dz/ | /ts/ | /tɕ/ |
| ⟨Ć ć⟩ | /dʑ/ | /tɕ/ | always as ⟨c⟩ |
| ⟨D d⟩ | /d/ | /t/ | nonexistent |
| ⟨F f⟩ | /f/ | /v/ | /fʲ/ |
-V- in this context are all vowels except ⟨i⟩ and ⟨y⟩. In -iV- sequences, plosives are inserted with preceding /j/ before vowels, but velars not (Stamiece /stamʲjɛtsɛ/ "Cernelia").
