Trentish Phonology

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Phonemic Inventory

Consonants

	labial	alveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
plosive	p pʼ pʰ (pʷ?)	tʼ tʰ tʷ	c cʰ cʷ	k kʼ kʰ kʷ	ʔ
nasal	m	n	ɲ	ŋ
lateral		l tɬ
fricative		s ʃ		x

Vowels

i y	ʊ u
e ø	o
	ʌ ɔ
	ɑ

Orthography

Orthography is phonemic.

Vowels
a	e	i	o	oh	ö	r	u	uh	ü
/ɑ/	/e/	/i/	/ɔ/	/o/	/ø/	/ʌ/	/u/	/ʊ/	/y/

Consonants
b	p	ph	pw	m	d	t	th	tw	n	s	sh	x
/p/	/pʼ/	/pʰ/	/pʷ/	/m/	/t/	/tʼ/	/tʰ/	/tʷ/	/n/	/s/	/ʃ/	/x/
dʼ	tʼ	tʼh	tʼw	ny	g	k	kh	kw	ng	l	ƛ	q
/c/	/cʼ/	/cʰ/	/cʷ/	/ɲ/	/k/	/kʼ/	/kʰ/	/kʷ/	/ŋ/	/l/	/tɬ/	/ʔ/

Spelling changes to reflect changes in pronunciation such as internal sandhi. Geminated vowels and consonants are spelled double; in digraphs the first letter is doubled (e.g., ssh, nny, uuh).

Internal Sandhi

Word-level

• Trentish words can only end in a vowel or a nasal. Stops and /l/ occurring at the end of a word are nasalized, thus /thɑk/ "wear" becomes [thɑŋ]. /ʔ/ and the other consonants are dropped.

Syllable-level

Syllable-final

• Plain voiceless consonants disappear, lengthening the previous vowel:

  /xlɔʔ/ "washed, clean" → [xlɔɔkʷʌ] "be washed".

• Ejectives and /l/ turn to nasals as at the word level:

  /tʰɔl/ "upon" → [tʰɔŋkʷʌ] "be on top of".

• Labialized consonants reduce to [w]:

  /kitʷ/ COLL → [kiwcʷecʷe] "set of journeys".

• Aspirated consonants fricativize:

  /pʼɑlɑkʰ/ "hate" → [pʼɑlɑxpʼɑlɑŋ] "grudge".

Syllable-initial after a nasal

• Aspirated stops are ejectivized by a preceding original nasal:

  /tʰɑŋ/ "wear" → [xɑntʼɑŋ] "wear that"

• Labialized stops inherit preceding nasality:

  /cʷe/ "go" → [xɑnɲʷe] "go up yonder".

• Plain stops are aspirated by a preceding nasal:

  /pɑ/ TOP → [xɑnpʰɑ] "yonder"

• Ejective stops geminate a preceding nasal:

  /pʼɑlɑŋ/ "hate" → [xɑmmɑlɑŋ] "hate that"

Syllable-inital after /ɲ/

• /ɲl/ > [ɲʎ]
• /ɲx/ > [ɲç]
• /ɲm/ > [ɲmʲ] etc.