Akachenti Phonology

Phonology

Orthography

The phonemic inventory of Pre-Modern Akachenti was somewhat captured at the adoption of the Tongchan writing system, a series of glyphs for the perceived phonemes of the language. In particular, the current ae diphthong was considered a vowel, length was distinguished for five of the six vowels, and several current consonantal phonemes were and are considered consonant clusters.

• Vowels: a, a:, o, o:, u, u:, ae, e, e:, i, i:
• Consonant "Clusters": nl, hl, tl, dl, ngl, khl, kl, gl

The above are all clicks with pre-glottalized allophones in glottalic tone syllables.

Vowels

The phonemic vowel inventory contrasts five qualities, three heights, and length.

Vowels

	Short Vowels			Long Vowels
	front	central	back	front	central	back
close	i		u	i:		u:
mid	e		o	e:		o:
open		a			a:
PHONEMIC DIPHTHONG	aɛ - aɪ

Long vowels are pronounced with a low tone. The phonemic diphthong in the bottom row is the only one treated as a phonemic vowel in Akachenti's orthography and is romanized as ae. Other diphthongs are treated orthographically as vowel clusters.

Diphthongs

	Front		Back
	unrounded	rounded	rounded
close	iɪ - ij		ui
mid	ie	ue
open	ia	ua

The close diphthongs in the top row are typically falling diphthongs, with the first vowel more prominent, though iɪ can realize as rising "diphthong" jɪ. The remaining four diphthongs are typically rising, with e and a being prominent.

Consonants

Phonemic Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar			Post-Alveolar			Palato-Velar			Glottal
			voiced	voiceless	murmured	voiced	voiceless	murmured	voiced	voiceless	murmured	voiceless	murmured
nasal		m	n						ŋ
click	nasal		ᵑǃ			ᵑǁ
	simple		gǃ	ǃ		gǁ	ǁ
	fricated release		(sgǃˡ)		sǃʱˡ			sǁʱˡ
stop/affricate		b	d	t		dʒ	tʃ		g	k		ʔ
fricative		f-v		s			ʃ			ç	x		(ɦ)
tap/approximant			ɺ			ɹ - ɾ

Consonants in parentheses are allophones. The only true consonantal approximant in Akachenti is an allophone of the rhotic tap. The lateral tap has the allophone of a voiced fricated alveolar click.

Akachenti disallows clicks in coda positions or multiple clicks appearing in a single lexical root.

Clusters

Consonant Clusters

	n	ŋ	ɹ	ɦ	x	d
nonlabial click/stop/affr.	n(C)	ŋ(C)	∅	∅	∅	∅
labial (m, b, v) + g	∅	∅	(C)ɹ	∅	∅	∅
v	∅	∅	(C)ɹ	(C)ɦ	(C)x	∅
ʃ	∅	∅	∅	∅	∅	(C)d

Regional dialect variations may allow sɹ, ʃɹ, dɹ, or ɹɦ and ɹx, but this is disfavored in most Akachenti dialect regions.

Allophones

Consonant Allophones

Syllable	Midtone (default)				Glottalic Tone			Low Tone
	Onset	Intervocalic	Coda	Word-Final	Onset	Intervocalic	Coda	Onset	Intervocalic	Coda
Q Dialect	k		k	k̚	kʼ		kʼ	k		k
S Dialect	k		k	k̚	q		q	k̬	k̬x̆	k̬