Syltanennie

Syltanennie /ɕʏlteːnɛɲə/ is one of the official languages of Svendie, a region of Leporia.

Phonology

Consonants

	Labial	Labio-Dental	Dental	Palatal	Velar	Uvular
Plosive	p b		t d	c ɟ	k g
Sibilant Fric.			s z	ɕ ʑ
Non-sibilant Fric.		f v	θ ð	ç
Nasal	m		n	ɲ
Lateral			l
Approximate				j	w	ʁ

The dentals are dental-apical.

Although /ʁ/ is shown to be an approximate for phonological reasons, it is pronounced as a uvular fricative.

/θ/ and /ç/ are often voiced when intervocalic and neither of the vowels are stressed. /ç/ may even merge with /j/ in such cases.

/ð/ is very rare word-initially and is often exists just an allophonic voiced /θ/. However, loan words plus the prefixation and voicing of the definite article /ðɪ/ have introduced a few minimal pairs, making /ð/ a marginal phoneme.

/j/ and /w/ are both realized as [ɥ] when they precede /uː ʊ/ and /iː ɪ/ respectively.

Vowles

	Front	Central	Back
High	iː yː		ɯː uː
Near-High	ɪ ʏ		ɯ̽ ʊ
Mid-High	eː		oː
Middle		ə
Mid-Low	ɛ ɛ̃ː		ɔ ɔ̃ː
Low		a	ɑ̃ː

/ə/ only exists in word-final positions in polysyllabic words and is often extra-short [ə̆]. However, other vowels can also exist in the position so it is a marginal phoneme.

When back vowels precede palatals, they tend to become fronted, as the following:

• /ɯː/ to [ɨː]
• /uː/ to [ʉː]
• /ɯ̽/ to [ɘ̝]
• /ʊ/ to [ɵ̝]
• /oː/ to [ɵː~øː]
• /ɔ/ to [ɞ~œ]
• /ɔ̃ː/ to [œ̃ː]
• /a/ to [æ]
• /ɑ̃ː/ to [ʌ̃ː]

Syllable Structure

(C)(L)V *Generally

• Any consonant can start a syllable.
• V can be any vowel.
• C + L can be any non-palatal obstruent (stops and fricatives) + liquid (laterals and approximates) respectively.
• More complex syllables can come about through contracted words and constructions: most notably, /ʁ/ + (/j/ or /w/) only exists in contracted constructions and not in any root.
• Word-internal clusters, i.e. there must be a vowel immediately preceding and proceeding the cluster (and the preceding vowel cannot be a nasal vowel), can be either:

1. 1. (/ʁ/ or /l/) + any obstruent (stops and fricatives), or
   2. Two fricatives that agree in voicing, the preceding fricative cannot be palatal, the proceeding fricative can be any fricative.