Kalahá phonology

Phonemes

Consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	p	t		k	(?)
Nasal	m	n		N
Fricative		s			h
Lateral		l
Approximant	(w)		(j)

Romanisation of the consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	p	t		k	'
Nasal	m	n		g
Fricative		s			h
Lateral		l
Approximant	u		i

The phone [?] is not regarded as a phoneme by the imperial linguistic society. It enters first in words before a vowel, or breaks up disallowed vowel-clusters. In the romanisation [?] is written as <’> only between vowels.

The approximants [w] and [j] are regarded as allophones of the short vowels /u/ and /i/ by the kalahaic linguists.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid		@
Low		a

Romanisation of the vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid		e
Low		a

/@/ is not regarded as a ”pure” vowel by the kalahaic linguists, but nevertheless as an phonemic vowel.

The ”pure” vowels can be long: /i:/ /u:/ /a:/ which are romanised <ii> <uu> <aa>

Stress

Stress in Kalahá is phonemic, and can fall on any syllable of a lexical root containing a "pure" vowel.

Stress is marked with a <´> on the stressed syllable in the romanisation.

If there are several lexical roots in a word, the primary stress falls on the last stressed syllable, while the other stressed syllables receive secondary stress.

Syllable structure

Syllabic representation

Syllable structure is C(G)V(V)(X), where:

C	is any consonant, including [?] but excluding the approximants
G	is a glide, i.e. one of the two approximants
V	is any vowel
VV	is a long vowel, or an allowed diphthong
X	is any consonant, excluding [?] and the approximants, and with the nasal phonemes neutralising their contrast (to /n/ lets say)

G is not allowed before /@/. Also /j/ is not allowed before /i/ and /w/ is not allowed before /u/.

The allowed diphthongs are:

/ai/	[aI)]
/au/	[aU)]

Imperial moraic representation

The kalahans describes the syllable structure differently, which reminds of a moraic system.

They describe 3 different types of morae:

The opening empty mora:	C-
The opening full mora:	(C)V-
The closing mora:	-VC

Long vowels and diphthongs are described as the vowels belonging to different morae:

ta	ta	op.fu.
taa	ta+a	op.fu.+op.fu.
taat	ta+at	op.fu.+cl.
tat	t+at	op.em.+cl.
tjat	ti+at	op.fu.+cl.
tjaat	ti+a+at	op.fu.+op.fu.+cl.