Lánc phonology

Main article: Lánc

Lantian phonology (in Lantian: Lánc fonetika) 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

Thus the stress is not distinctive, as in many languages of the world, i.e. there can't be two words that change their meanings depending on their stress.

If there is a compound word, for example a verb, the stress can remain on the first syllable of the original root, or can move on the new first syllable:

• gensor [ˈgensor], to take
• šagensor [ʃaˈgensor] or šagensor [ˈʃagensor], to involve, both are accetable.

With words with foreign origin, the stress usually moves on the first syllable, but it can remain on the original syllable.

• informákce [ˈinformaːkʦe] or informákce [inforˈmaːkʦe], information