Lánc phonology
Lantian phonology includes all phonemes and phonetical rules which are part of the Lantian language.
Consonants
This is the consonant system in the IPA consonant table:
| Consonants | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | ||||||||||
| Plosive | p | b | t | d | k | g | ||||||||||
| Nasal | m | [ɱ]1 | n | [ŋ]2 | ||||||||||||
| Vibrant | r | |||||||||||||||
| Fricative | f | v | s | z | ʃ | ʒ | x | |||||||||
| Affricate | ʦ | tʃ | dʒ | |||||||||||||
| Approximants | w | j | ||||||||||||||
| Lateral approximants |
l | |||||||||||||||
- 1: Allophone of [m] before labiodental consonants
- 2: Allophone of [n] before velar consonant
Correspondance
| IPA | [b] | [ʦ] | [ʧ] | [d] | [ʤ] | [f] | [g] | [x] | [j] | [k] | [l] | [m] | [n] | [p] | [r] | [s] | [ʃ] | [t] | [v] | [w] | [z] | [ʒ] |
| Letter | b | c | č | d | dž | f | g | h | j | k | l | m | n | p | r | s | š | t | v | w | z | ž |
Vowel sonorants
The lateral consonants r [r] and l [l] and the nasal consonants n [n] and m [m] can play the role as vowel centre of the syllable, as a real vowel.
This is a rare phenomenon, and they are usually found at the end of one of these words. In this case they are called vowel sonorants (they play this role also in English in some words):
- Petr [ˈpetṛ]: syllabication pe.tr
- turistezn [ˈturistezṇ]: syllabication tu.ri.ste.zn
They are pronounced as with a schwa vowel preceding them, a close, weak vowel phoneme. This is an approximate pronounce description, as there is no actual vowel between the two consonant, as Lantian language does not own any schwa vowel:
- Petr [ˈpetɘṛ]
When a vowel is added to a word, ending in a vowel sonorants, this one turns into a full consonant, losing his role as vowel centre.
- Nominative: Petr [ˈpetṛ]: syllabication pe.tr ‣ Genitive: Petru [ˈpetru]: syllabication pe.tru
Palatalization
Some consonants come in pair with a palatalized counterpart:
| Non-palatalized consonant | Palatalized counterpart |
|---|---|
| k [k] | č [ʧ] |
| g [g] | dž [ʤ] |
| s [s] | š [ʃ] |
| z [z] | ž [ʒ] |
| t [t] | č [ʧ] |
| d [d] | dž [ʤ] |
This phenomenon, called palatalization, is very common, usually (but not always) when one of these consonants comes (or, better, came) in contact with the semivowel [j]. It's very important, because it occurs many times in noun declension.
Vowels
Vowels can be short or long. The difference is very important because it is distinctive: two words can have different meanings with different vowel length:
- ban [ban] (real) - bán [baːn] (all)
| Vowels | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Central | Back | ||||||||
| High | i(ː) | ɨ(ː) | u(ː) | |||||||
| High-Mid | e(ː) | o(ː) | ||||||||
| Low | a(ː) | |||||||||
- See also Lánc vowel scheme for more information
Long vowels are marked by an acute accent, as in Czech language:
- a [a] - á [aː]
- e [e] - é [eː]
- i [i] - í [iː]
- o [o] - ó [oː]
- u [u] - ú [uː]
- y [ɨ] - ý [ɨː]
Stress
Stress has a very little meaning, and it falls always on the first syllabe of the root. If a word is simple the stress is on the first syllable, but if this word adds prefixes, the stress remains on the same syllable.
- mýzdosén [ˈmɨːzdoseːn], comprehension
- mýzdor [ˈmɨːzdor], understand
- temýzdesek [teˈmɨːzdesek], they will understand
- otemýzdesu [oteˈmɨːzdesu], I would have understood
