Åzuli

Åzuli /ɒzúli/ is spoken in southwest Levant and, due to recent immigration, also increasingly as a minority language in the Nile delta. It has diverged considerably from its sister South Caucasian' languages, most noticably by having turned from isolating to agglutinativ and by having undergone complete click loss.

Vowels

Monofthongs: /i ɨ e ɛ a ɒ ɔ o u /, translitterated <i ì e è a å ò o u> here.

• /a/ is phonetically fully front [a], not central [ä].
• /ɨ/ is phonetically between IPA [ɨ] and [ɪ].

Long vowels: /iː eː ɒː oː uː/ <î ê â ô û>
Difthongs: /i̯a i̯ɒ i̯ɔ/ <ia iå io>

• Before a palatal consonant these become /e̯a e̯ɒ e̯ɔ/.
• Distinct from /j/ + V phonotactically and in that /j/ becomes [ɥ] before rounded vowels, while the /i̯/ portion of the difthongs remains fully spred.

There is partial vowel harmony: in native vocabulary, "ATR" /e a o/ and "RTR" /ɛ ɒ ɔ/ generally do not co-occur in a word. The vowels /i ɨ u/ are neutral and may co-occur with either group. As an exception, next to /ɬ/, /a/ may occur even in RTR-harmonic words.

Some dialects merge /ɛ ɔ/ into /a ɒ/, where the first merger seemingly creates a fourth neutral vowel, but the distinction remains noticable as the new vowel alternates with both /e/ and /ɒ/.