Azarian
| Azarian Mejinsyè | |
| Spoken in: | Azaria (Mejín) |
| Conworld: | Melin |
| Total speakers: | ? |
| Genealogical classification: | Borogoni
|
| Basic word order: | SVO |
| Morphological type: | inflecting |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | nominative-accusative |
| Writing system: | |
| Created by: | |
| Pierre Abbat | late 1970s |
Contents
Phonetics
| Vowels | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Near-front | Central | Near-back | Back | ||||||
| High | i ĩ | |||||||||
| High-mid | o õ | |||||||||
| Mid | (ə) (ə̃) | |||||||||
| Low-mid | ɛ ɛ̃ | (œ) (œ̃) | ||||||||
| Low | a ã | |||||||||
| Consonants | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilabial | Labiod. | Dental | Alveolar | Post-alv. | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||||||||
| Nasal | m | |||||||||||||||
| Plosive | p | b | t | d | k | g | ||||||||||
| Fricative | f | v | s̪ | z̪ | sʲ | zʲ | ʃ ʃʲ | ʒ ʒʲ | h | |||||||
Tones
Azarian has three tones: falling, mid, and rising. Only stressed syllables have tone; unstressed syllables are pronounced with pitches determined by surrounding tones. Sentence intonation modifies the pronunciation of tones, making the falling tone high level, for instance. A word may have more than one toned syllable, e.g. fìxteynzàyhatvà "sixty-eight".
Minimal pairs are sá "you" and sā (interrogative particle); and kézd "time" and kèzd "tool". Sá onjō sā kézd ī xtá jè? Háx, mó xanztè kézdkèzd. "Do you know what time it is? No, I'll ask the clock." A minimal pair that can easily be confused is háyx "zero", related to háx, and hàyx "four". To avoid this, Azarians often say máx "nothing, nobody" for háyx.
Alphabet
Azarian has the same alphabet as Malwinish, except for letters representing sounds not found in both languages.
| Transliteration | Sound | Notes |
| k | k | |
| o | o | |
| s | s | Usually a dental sibilant, but the dental and alveolar sibilants are allophones. |
| j | ʒ | |
| z | z | |
| h | h | Initial hi is voiceless i, unless followed by a vowel, in which case a diphthong results. |
| v | v | |
| b | b | The letter for v originally represented b, and that for b is a modification of it. |
| a | a | |
| g | g | |
| e | e | Pronounced as either ɛ or ə. |
| x | ʃ | |
| t | t | |
| i | i | |
| f | f | |
| m | m | |
| p | p | |
| d | d | |
| y | j | Diacritic indicating palatalization of s, z, x, and j, and diphthong with o, a, and e. |
| n | ◌̃ | Diacritic indicating a nasal vowel. |
The falling (high) tone is written as an accent above the vowel, and the rising (low) tone as an accent below, when they are written. The mid tone is not written in the Azarian alphabet.
Some words, such as yhatvà, begin with y or n. This is not pronounced, and in Azarian writing is not written, unless the previous word ends with a letter that can take the diacritic. n and y commute.
Numbers
| Azarian | English |
| háyx, máx | zero |
| tan | one |
| và | two |
| háov | three |
| hàyx | four |
| xayf | five |
| fìxte | six |
| jáyn | seven |
| yhatvà | eight |
| ki, kays (archaic) | nine |
| káyn | ten |
| káyn tan | eleven |
| vàynzà | twenty |
| háovzà | thirty |
| hìzà | forty |
| xāyfzà | fifty |
| fìxteynzà | sixty |
| jáynzà | seventy |
| yhatvàynzà | eighty |
| kīzà | ninety |
| kèsfayn | hundred |
