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.