Syltanennie

Syltanennie /ɕʏlteːnɛɲə/ is one of the official languages of Ettêre Ðiffyt, prior to the nation's renovation as Leporia, it was an official language exclusive to the region of Sevanpiec, which was called Svendie back then.

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 it 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.
• 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. Again, although /ʁ/ is phonetically a fricative it is phonologically an approximate, meaning it is not subject to the voicing agreement restrictions of double fricative clusters.

• 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.

Liaison & Elision

Liaison is a phenomenon where word-final consonants that are unpronounced, reappear and get pronounced with proceeded by a word that starts with a vowel or an approximate (/j/ and /w/).

This also applies to nasal vowels, where a word ending in one will have an interjecting nasal consonant if the following word starts with a vowel or an approximate. Usually /m/ if the proceeding vowel a rounded vowel or /w/; /ɲ/ if it's /iː/, /ɪ/ or /j/; and /n/ otherwise.

Word-final /l/ also works a little differently from other consonants, it only gets pronounced if the proceeding word starts with a vowel, and remains unpronounced if it is /j/ or /w/.

Elision is a phenomenon where word-final vowels become unpronounced when proceeded by a word that starts with a vowel or an approximate. Although this most widely happens with the schwa, almost any word-final vowel can undergo elision when coming in contact with a proceeding vowel, especially if the two vowels are of a similar quality, and especially in common grammatical words such as prepositions.

Stress Pattern

Syltanennie has mostly consistent stress patterns. A word always has its final syllable stressed, unless the vowel of said final syllable is the schwa, then the word has its penultimate syllable stressed.

Furthermore, conjugation and affixations that introduce new syllable to a word do not affect the stress pattern of the root. Thus, Syltanennie can be said to have marginal phonemic stress.

Orthography

Syltanennie uses the Latin Script. Originally adopted almost a millennia ago for the language, it has since undergone standardization under the rule of, around 2 centuries ago.

Below is the table with the respective orthographical equivalents of the consonant phonemes.

	Labial	Labio-Dental	Dental	Palatal[1]	Velar	Uvular
Plosive	p b		t d	ci gi	c g
Sibilant Fric.			s z	si zi
Non-sibilant Fric.		f v	ð[2]	xi
Nasal	m		n	ni
Lateral			l
Approximate				i[3]	u[3]	r

Word-final consonant letters are always unpronounced. Instead they are there to indicate instances of liaison, where they do get pronounced when preceding a word that starts with a vowel letter.

^[1]Palatal consonants are always represented with a 〈i〉 after 〈c〉, 〈g〉, 〈s〉, 〈z〉, 〈x〉, and 〈n〉. However, this 〈i〉 is removed if the proceeding vowel is 〈i〉 or 〈y〉 in which case the letters listed before are always pronounced as palatals.

^[2]Both dental fricatives are represented by 〈ð〉.

^[3]〈i〉 and 〈u〉 are only /j/ and /w/ respectively when preceding another vowel.

Below is the table with the respective orthographical equivalents of the oral vowel phonemes.

Orthography	Phonemes
i	iː ɪ
y	yː ʏ
w	ɯː ɯ̽
u	uː ʊ
e	eː ɛ ə[4]
o	oː ɔ
a	eː a

^[4]The Schwa only appears at the ends of words, and 〈e〉 at the ends of words is always /ə/.

Each vowel letter represents a long and short vowel. Which vowel the letter is representing is determined by the Open Syllable Lengthening rule:

• Open syllable vowels are long.
• Closed syllable vowels are short.
• A syllable is determined to be closed, and thus has a short vowel, if the vowel is proceeded by:

1. 1. One consonant with no vowel after.
   2. A double consonant.
   3. Two different consonants.

• Otherwise it is open, and thus has a long vowel.
• One major exception is in conjugation and appending of suffixes, where the word-final vowels involved in these changes are always short.

Furthermore each vowel letter have variants with each of three diacritics:

• Acute (í, ú, é, ó, á, ý, ẃ): Used to indicate long vowels, usually when the OSL rule would otherwise indicate a short vowel.
• Grave (ì, ù, è, ò, à, ỳ, ẁ): Used to indicate short vowels, usually when the OSL rule would otherwise indicate a long vowel.
• Circumflex (î, û, ê, ô, â, ŷ, ŵ): Used to indicate a word-final long vowel.

Below is the table with the respective orthographical equivalents of the nasal vowel phonemes.

Orthography	Phonemes
im in ym yn em en	ɛ̃ː
um un om on	ɔ̃ː
wm wn am an	ɑ̃ː

These digraphs only hold true if the nasal consonant isn't proceeded by a vowel.