Lexitechnia

Went through my list of Ibran sound changes to try and produce a canonical set of vowel phonemes in the language.

Not entirely sure that this is complete or correct—a quick glance through the vocab I’ve generated so far showed one or two things I’d overlooked, both in the vocab and in the rules, but this is a step towards that official list.

Anyway, there are eleven plain vowels.  In the examples below, the phonemic transcriptions of the vowels are more certain than the consonantal ones.

• /É‘/ as in larc /lÉ‘rk/  “wide”
• /a/ as in maillér /maˈjer/ “wife”
• /É›/ as in bechuol /bəˈcçuːl/ “animal”
• /e/ as in siéc /ʝek/ “dry”
• /Å“/ as in squeupir /Ê°kʲœˈpir/ “to spit”
• /i/ as in riÿr /riˈjir/ “to laugh”
• /y/ as in tular /tyˈlÉ‘r/ “to kill”
• /É™/ as in abominazón /É‘ËŒbo.mi.nəˈʃon/ “abomination”
• /É”/ as in filosof /viˈlÉ”.zÉ”f/ “philosopher”
• /o/ as in córt /kʲort/ “short”
• /u/ as in uont /ũt/ “where”

The last is a doubtful case; I’m not entirely sure /u/ occurs plain.  (A rule generates it from Old Ibran */wo/, but I don’t think there is a rule that would generate this /wo/.)  Most of these vowels also have nasal, long, and long nasal variants.

Both rising and falling diphthongs occur.  A diphthong may have an onglide in /w/ (as in cuerz /kʷɛrtʃ/, “[tree] bark”) or in /j/ (as in vientr /vjɛ̃tr/ “belly”).   However, apparently only /j/ can be an offglide, as in coill /kʲœj/ “neck”.   Diphthongal nuclei include /e/, /œ/, /ɛ/, /øː/, and /i/.   (/øː/ is not listed above, as it only appears long—if it can appear at all; it doesn’t appear in the wordlist so far…)