Paiodd

Phonology

Vowel

In Paiodd, all vowels exist in a hierarchy according to strength. The farther forward and high a vowel is, the weaker it is. The farther back and high it is, the stronger it is. The following is a list of the vowels, in order from weakest to strongest.

  /ə/ /i/ /e/ /a/     /o/ /u/
                  /ɔ/
    /ɪ/ /ɛ/ /æ/

The vowels in each row only interact with each other when vowels change, as they often do in Paiodd. A change in vowel to a stronger or weaker vowel can occur in both nouns and verbs to indicate whether an inflected noun is related to a verb or another noun, and to indicate which tense a verb carries. For more on these specific cases, see the sections on Nouns and Verbs below.

To explain the relationship of the vowels, however, what I mean is that depending on the word, /o/ may become either /ɔ/ or /a/, and /ɔ/ may become either /a/ or /æ/. However, /æ/ will always strengthen to /ɔ/, and weaken to /ɛ/. /ɛ/ will always strengthen to /æ/ and weaken to /ɪ/, and so on.

Similarly, both /i/ and /ɪ/ weaken to /ə/. However, /ə/ never occurs as a root vowel, so one need not worry about whether it strengthens to /i/ or /ɪ/.

Consonants

The consonants in Paiodd also interact with each other, but only in nouns, so these interactions will be explained in the section on Nouns. The consonants are:

/p/ /t/ /k/ /f/ /θ/ /x/ /b/ /d/ /g/ /v/ /ð/ /ɣ/ /m/ /n/ /ŋ/ /ŋ̥//w/ /j/ /ɹ/ /l/ /h/ /s/ /ʃ/ /ʧ/ /z/  /ʒ/ /ʤ/

There are a few possible consonant clusters, most of which are the same or similar to English.

In word-initial position, the stops /p/ /t/ /k/ /b/ /d/ /g/ as well as the fricative /f/ can be combined with the approximants /ɹ/ and /l/. In addition, /m/, /v/ and /θ/ can also combine with /ɹ/ in word-initial position.

Likewise, /s/ can combine with any of the voiceless stops, as well as /θ/, /ɹ/ and /l/ in word-initial position.

Any of the consonants may occur with the semi-vowels /j/ and /w/, which mark aspect in verbs.