Arborese

Arborese
Language family	Unknown
Era	today
Writing system	None (Latin)
Official status
Spoken in	'Arbor 'Iland
Speaker
Demonym	Arborese
Number of speakers	only a couple dozen; critically endangered
Technical information
Usage	rare; in private, chiefly among elders
Language code	arb

Arborese is a critically endangered language seldom spoken in the volcanic island territory of 'Arbor 'Iland. It is believed to be weakly agglutinative, although not much is known about its grammar at this time.

Phonetics

Arborese features a fairly minimalist phonemic inventory, with only four vowels and 11 consonants, though there is a degree of free variation and allophony depending on where a sound appears in a word, syllable or utterance.

Consonants

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Nasal / Click	/m/ Mm	/n/ Nn	/ǀ/ [ᶢʇ~ᵏǂ] Tt		∅ ∅/-
Stop	/b/ Pb	/d/ [t̺~l~ɾ] Lld	/ʒ/ [d͡ʒ] Gg	/g/ [ɣ] Cc	/ʔ/ '
Fricative	/f/ Ff	/z/ [z̪] Zz			/ɦ/ Hh

The syllable structure is (C)V(V)(C). Any consonant phoneme may start a syllable, but only /n/, /g/, /ʒ/, /d~ʔ/, /f/ and /z/ can appear in coda.

- /d/ is usually [ɾ] or sometimes [d̺], but is [l~ɾ] (Ll not [ǀ]) invervocally and word-initially, making "adua" and "a lua" usually phonetically distinct, although speakers sometimes pronounce them interchangeably.

- /f/ becomes [ɸ] before /ɔ/, including diphthongs.

- Coda /ŋ/ /ɣ/ and /d͡ʒ/ are distinct intervocally from onset /n/ (/m/) /g/ and /ʒ/, but are considered the same phoneme as they are phonetically identical or interchangeable in most other environments.

- (which itself is really [d͡ʒ] more often than not, but simpler to write).

- Coda /d~ʔ/ is hard to describe, since it's usually /ʔ/, but is believed to have come from /d/, which exists in some environments. Linguists tend to use both phonemes depending on the context, as does the romanization, while others use an archiphonemic /D/

- Similarly, while coda [ŋ] is commonly analyzed as /n/, there's no reason it couldn't be /m/ or even a distinct /ŋ/; some linguists sometimes use both n and m, others use /N/, and others only use /n/ like the romanization.

- /o/ frequently is less voiced or disappears between /z/ and before /z/ or /ʒ/, becoming something similar to [s͡s͜ʷs] and [ʒ͡ʒʷ͜ʒ] respectively. This also occurs with /z.z/ and /z.ʒ/ clusters.

- - A similar process happens between two /f/s, although in this case the realization is more likely [fɵ̥f].

- Voicing is non-contrastive, although /m/, /n/, /b/ /d/ and intervocal sounds tend to be voiced, while /f/, /ǀ/, and utterance-final sounds (and arguably ʔ) are more often voiceless, with others frequently in between.

Below is a table of some of the more common realizations of morphological syllable clusters, although some sounds and especially voicing are fairly loose.

Coda + Onset	C + /m/	C + /n/	C + /ǀ/	C + /b/	C + /d/	C + /ʒ/	C + /g/	C + /f/	C + /z/	C + /h/	C + /ʔ/	(C +) Vowel	Final C
Initial O	m	n	ᶢǀ~ᵏǀ	b	l	t͡ʃ~d͡ʒ	g~k	f	z~s	h~ɦ	ʔ	∅	N/A
Vowel (+ O)	m	n	ᶢǀ~ᵏǀ	b	l~ɾ	ʒ	g~k	f	z~s	ɦ	ʔ	see: vowels	∅~h~ʔ
n + O	ŋm	ŋ (ᵑǀ)	ᵑǀ	ŋb~mb	ŋd~ⁿd, ŋɺ	ɲd͡ʒ	ŋg~ŋx	mv~ŋf	nz~nd͡z	ŋɦ	ŋʔ	ŋ~ɲ	ŋ~n
f + O	fm	fn	fᵏǀ~ᵑǀ	fb~fp	fd~ft, fl	fd͡ʒ	fg~fk	fʷf	fs~fz	fɦ~vh	fʔ	f	f
z + O	zm	zn	zᶢǀ~zᵑǀ	zb	zd, zl	zd͡ʒ	zg~sk	zf~sf	zʷz~sʷs	zh~sɦ	zʔ~sʔ	z~s	z~s
c + O	d͡ʒm~t͡ʃm	ʒn~d͡ʒ	ʒᶢǀ~ʒᵑǀ	d͡ʒb	(d͡)ʒd, ʃɺ	d͡ʒd͡ʒ~ʃt͡ʃ	ʒg~t͡ʃk	ʒf~t͡ʃf	ʒʷʒ~ʃʷʃ	t͡ʃh~d͡ʒɦ	t͡ʃʔ~d͡ʒʔ	t͡ʃ~d͡ʒ	d͡ʒ~ʃ
g + O	km~ɣm	kn~ɣn	ᵏǀˀ~ǀ͡ɠ	ɣb~gb	kt~gd~ɠ͡|	gʒ~xʃ~ʃt͡ʃ	ʔɣ~kx	gf~xf	ɣz~d͡z	gh~kh~x	ɣʔ~çʔ	ʁ~ɣ~ç	ɣ~x
d/' + O	dm	ʔn	ᵏǀˀ~ǀ͡ɠ	ʔb~ɓ	ʔd~ɗ	ʔʒ~ʔt͡ʃ	ʔg~ɠ	df~tf	ʔz~t͡s	dh	dʔ	d~ɾ	ʔh

This phonetically creates a distinct [ŋ], [ᵑǀ], [ǀˀ], [d͡ʒ], [ɣ], [sʷs], [ʃʷʃ], and [fʷf~fɵ̥f], and non-distinct [ɓ], [ɗ], [ɠ], [ǀ͡ɠ], and [t͡s], although none of these are considered phonemic.

Vowels

Arborese features four vowels: /a/ Aa, /e/ Ee, /ɨ/ Ii, and /o/ Oo. Each of these may combine into a different diphthong or lengthened monophthongs, as shown in the below table.

	Close Front	Open Front	Open Back	Close Back
Short	/ɪ/ [ɨ] i	/ɛ/ e	/ɐ/ a	/ɔ/ o
V + ɪ	[i:~ɨː] ii	[eː~ej] ei	[ɘɪ̆~ɔɪ̆] ai	[wɛ~ɰ̃ɪ] oi
V + ɛ	[je] ie	[ɘː] ee	[aɛ̆] ae	[wɐ~ɰ̃a] oe
V + ɐ	[ja] ia	[ɛă] ea	[a:~ɜ:] aa	[oɑ̆] oa
V + ɔ	[u] [ʏʊ̆] io	[ɛʊ̆] eo	[aɔ̆] ao	[ɔ:~ɑː] oo

In addition, many of these may combine into triphthongs or pairs of dipthongs, although roughly half the time (especially in cases where the second and third vowel would be the same, or "opposite" [a/i, e/o]) there is actually a vowel hiatus between vowels. This is also the case between words.

Romanization

Arborese does not feature its own alphabet, and the Latin script has been adopted to cover it, although in day-to-day use things are rarely written down in Arborese and linguists tend to use the IPA.

Letter	Aa	Pb	Cc	Ee	Ff	Gg	Hh	Ii	Lld	Mm	Nn	Oo	Tt	Zz	'	-
Ipa	/a/	/b/	/g/	/e/	/f/	/ʒ/	/h/	/i/	/d/	/m/	/n/	/o/	/ǀ/	/z/	/ʔ/	Null Onset after Codas