Mumblese

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The language with the least effort-demanding phonology ever!

There are five consonants:

  • <m n> are straightforward [m n]. They have syllabic counterparts.
  • <h> is generally [ɦ]. Can become a voiceless nasal when occurring before the syllabic nasals. [j] is an acceptable variant before a vowel.
  • <f> varies within the [ɸ ~ ʍ ~ β ~ w] ballpark. It does not occur word-initially.
  • <:> (yes, a colon) is a glottal stop [ʔ]. There is no contrast with a zero initial (never written in that position).

As well as one true vowel, written as <-> (a dash). The quality may be anything from a nasal shwa [ə̃] to your average [a]. (Given the situation pretty much any value would be understandable, be it [y] or [l̟] or [s̟], but naturally, anything that contrived would sound incredibly silly.) There is contrastiv length, written by two dashes. A word-final vowel is not written.

A word can only consist of syllables with a vowel, or syllables without.

In a vocalic word, three consonant clusters are possible across syllables: <mf hm hn>. Adjacent long/closed syllables are disallowed, as are final consonants.

A non-vocalic word has a maximum lenght of two syllables, of the structure (glottal consonant)+(nasal consonant)+(optional word-final glottal stop). A syllable without a following (coda or internasalic) glottal stop is somewhat longer in duration and written with a duplicated nasal consonant. So for example <hmm>, <mmhn:> or <hn:nn>, but not <mhn> or <hmm:m>.