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 9 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	[ŋ] (/n/?) n
Stop	/b/ Pb	/d/ [t̺~l~ɾ] ( )d	/ʒ/ [d͡ʒ] Gg	/g/ [ɣ] Cc	[ʔ] (/d/?) -k
Fricative	/f/ Ff	/z/ [z̪] Zz			[ɦ] (null) -h-

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

- /d/ is usually [ɾ] or sometimes [d̺], but is [d̺~ɾ~l] (Ll not [ǀ]) invervocally and [ɾ~l~ʔ] making "adua" and "a lua" usually phonetically distinct, though "a lua" may optionally be pronounced as "akua".

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

- If a closing end of a dipthong is the same as the following vowel, [ɦ] is inserted. [ɦ] also occurs before vowels after coda consonants and word-initially; in clusters, it may be realized as [h].

- - (It could be argued that /ɦ/ is a full phoneme and all syllables must begin with a consonant, though others analyze it as epenthetic in various environments. /ʔ/ is distinct in all environments.*)

 - - * [Despite this, word-intial /ʔ/ is not actually written, instead opting for a vowel, while [ɦ] and [h] is always written with Hh in all environments where it appears.]

- Coda consonants are distinct intervocally from onsets, in which case /ŋ/ /ʔ/ /d͡ʒ/ /ɣ/ may be coda-specific /n/ /d/ /ʒ/ (which is [d͡ʒ] word-initially) and /g/.

- /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.

Below is a table of all possible realizations of the coda consonants.

Coda + Onset	C + /m/	C + /n/	C + /ǀ/	C + /b/	C + /d/	C + /ʒ/	C + /g/	C + /f/	C + /z/	C + Vowel	Final C
n + O	ŋm	ŋ (ᵑǀ)	ᵑǀ	ŋb~mb	ŋd~ⁿd, ŋɺ	ɲd͡ʒ	ŋg~ŋx	mv~ŋf	nz~nd͡z	ŋɦ	ŋ
z + O	zm	zn	zᶢǀ~zᵑǀ	zb	zd, zl	zd͡ʒ	zg~sk	zf~sf	zʷz~sʷs	zh~sɦ	z~s
c + O	d͡ʒm	ʒn	ʒᶢǀ~ʒᵑǀ	d͡ʒb	(d͡)ʒd, ʃɺ	d͡ʒd͡ʒ~ʃt͡ʃ	ʒg~t͡ʃk	ʒf~t͡ʃf	ʒʷʒ~ʃʷʃ	t͡ʃ~d͡ʒ	d͡ʒ~ʃ
g + O	ɣm	qn	ɠ͡|? ᵏǀˀ?	ɣb~gb	kt~gd~ɠ͡|	gʒ~ʃt͡ʃ	ʔɣ~kx	gf~xf	ɣz~d͡z	ɣ~ç	ɣ~x
k + O	ʔm	ʔn	ᵏǀˀ	ʔb~ɓ	ʔd~ɗ	ʔʒ~ʔt͡ʃ	ʔg~ɠ	ʔf~p̪͡f	ʔz~t͡s	ʔ	ʔh

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 í	[eː~ej] ei é	[ɘɪ̆~ɔɪ̆] ai á	[wɛ~ɰ̃ɪ] oi ó
V + ɛ	[je] ie ì	[ɘː] ee è	[aɛ̆] ae à	[wɐ~ɰ̃a] oe ò
V + ɐ	[ja] ia î	[ɛă] ea ê	[a:~ɜ:] aa â	[oɑ̆] oa ô
V + ɔ	[u] [ʏʊ̆] io ĭ	[ɛʊ̆] eo ĕ	[aɔ̆] ao ă	[ɔ:~ɑː] oo uo ŏ

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]), [ɦ] is inserted to break up the vowel cluster.