'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 (sometimes spelled Arborese; no endonym documented) 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, as well as 16 "combined vowels" that appear as diphthongs or long monophthongs.

Phonotactics

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.

There are estimated to be 308 total possible syllables; properly including long monophthongs and diphthongs, up to 1,232.

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] Cc	/g/ [ɣ] Gg	/ʔ/ '
Fricative	/f/ Ff	/z/ [z̪] Zz			/ɦ/ Hh

- /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, as well as utterance-finally, where it may be considered somewhat syllabic in nature, as with /z/ and /ʒ/.

- Coda /ɣ/ and /d͡ʒ/ are semi-distinct intervocally from onset /g/ and /ʒ/, but are considered the same phoneme as they are in weak complementary distribution, even being somewhat in free variation in all environments.

- 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. Most linguists tend to use both phonemes depending on the context, though some use an archiphonemic /D/. Others still propose using /t/ given it also becomes a click utterance-finally. It is always represented with <d> in romanization.

- Conversely, coda [n] is commonly analyzed as simply /n/, even thought allophonically it can appear as [m].

- /o/ frequently is voiceless or disappears between /z/ and before /z/ or /ʒ/, most often being realized as something akin to [s͡s͜ʷs] and [ʃ͡ʃ͜ʷʃ] respectively.

- - 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 intervocalic sounds tend to be voiced, while other phonemes are most likely slack voice, with utterance-final sounds generally being fully voiceless, being more accurately transcribed as /v̥ z̥ ʒ̊ g̊ ɦ̥ ᶢ̥ǀ/.

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	Word-Final C	Utterance-Final C
Word-Initial O	m	n	ᶢǀ~ᵏǀ	b	l	t͡ʃ~d͡ʒ	g~k	f	z~s	h~ɦ	ʔ	∅	N/A	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	nm	n	ᵑǀ	nb~mb	nd, nɺ	nd͡ʒ	ŋg~nç	mv~ŋf	nz~nd͡z	nɦ	nʔ	n	n	n
f + O	fm	fn	fᵏǀ~ᵑǀ	fb~fp	fd~ft, fl	fd͡ʒ	fg~fk	fʷf	fs~fz	fɦ~vh	fʔ	f~ɸ	f	ɸ~ů
z + O	zm	zn	zᶢǀ~zᵑǀ	zb	zd, zl	zd͡ʒ	zg~sk	zf~sf	zʷz~sʷs	zh~sɦ	zʔ~sʔ	z~s	z~s	s
c + O	d͡ʒm~t͡ʃm	ʃn~d͡ʒ	ʒᶢǀ~ʒᵑǀ	d͡ʒb~ʒb	(d͡)ʒd, ʃɺ	ʒd͡ʒ~ʃt͡ʃ	ʒg~t͡ʃk	ʒf~t͡ʃf	ʒʷʒ~ʃʷʃ	t͡ʃh~d͡ʒɦ	t͡ʃʔ~ʒʔ	t͡ʃ~d͡ʒ	d͡ʒ	t͡ʃ~ʃ
g + O	km~ɣm	kn~ɣn	ᵏǀˀ~ǀ͡ɠ	gb	kt~gd~ɠ͡|	gʒ~ɣʒ	ʔɣ~kx	gf~xf	ɣz~d͡z	gh~kh~x	ɣʔ~çʔ	ʁ~ɣ~ç	ɣ~x	x
d/' + O	ʔm	ʔn	ᵏǀˀ~ǀ͡ɠ	ʔb~ɓ	ʔd~ɗ	ʔʒ~ʔt͡ʃ	ʔg~ɠ	df~ʔf	ʔz~t͡s	dh~ʔh	dʔ	d~ɾ	ɾ~ʔ	ǀˀ

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

Vowels

Arborese features four vowels: /a/ Aa, /ɛ/ Ee, /ɨ/ Ii, and /ɔ/ 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, some argue that these can further combine into triphthongs or glides with lengthened monophthongs, although much of the time (especially in cases where the second and third vowel would be the same, or "opposite" [a/i, e/o]) there is distinctly a vowel hiatus between vowels to help differentiate them from triphthongs. Furthermore, two monophthongs across word boundaries will have a true vowel hiatus and not become a diphthong.

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/	/ʒ/	/ɛ/	/f/	/g/	/ɦ/	/ɨ/	/d/	/m/	/n/	/ɔ/	/ǀ/	/z/	/ʔ/	Null Onset after Codas