Okay, the last time wasn’t so bad. But Isian is supposed to be simple. Ardari, on the other hand, will be a little bit different. Again, I’m going to try to explain some of the reasoning behind my choices as we go.
Ardari Consonants
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |
| Stop | p pʲ b bʲ | t tʲ d dʲ | k kʲ g gʲ | q | |
| Fricative | ɸ β | s z ɬ | ɕ ʑ | x ɣ | ʁ |
| Approximant | w | l | j ʎ | ɫ | |
| Tap | ɾ |
Instead of the relatively few 19 consonants of Isian, Ardari has a total of 33, slightly above the world average. And some of them are…well, you can see the table. The main features of Ardari’s consonant system are as follows:
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A set of palatalized stops (all the ones with a ʲ). Note that there aren’t any actual palatal stops or affricates. Maybe they merged with the alveolar or velar stops at some point in the language’s history.
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The uvular stop /q/ and fricative /ʁ/. These don’t quite fit in, but we can say they developed from earlier glottal stops or something. /q/ doesn’t have a voiced counterpart (nor does /ʁ/ have a voiceless one), but allophonic alteration will likely fill in the gaps. (By the way, WALS Chapter 6 has info on uvular consonants.)
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A full set of fricatives, including bilabials (instead of the labiodentals of English), alveolars (the familiar /s/ and /z/), palatals (technically alveolo-palatals as found in e.g., Polish), and velars (voiceless and voiced).
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More lateral consonants. We have the basic /l/, the “dark” velar /ɫ/, the palatal /ʎ/ (like ll in some Spanish dialects), and the voiceless fricative /ɬ/. The last is rare in Europe, with the exception of Welsh, where it is written ll. (WALS Chapter 8 is all about laterals.)
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Two different kinds of “r” sound: the /ɾ/ from Spanish pero and /ʁ/, which is more like the French sound.
To add to this, some of the consonants will change at times. The most important point here is that palatalization and voicing change consonants in clusters. In pairs of consonants, the first takes on the voice quality of the second, while the second takes on the palatalization of the first. As an example, the cluster /sgʲ/ (assuming it’s possible) would be pronounced as if it were [zg], while /dʲs/ would come out as [tʲsʲ]. This only happens for stops and fricatives, though, since they’re the only ones where voicing and palatalization really matter.
As you can see, Ardari’s consonants are quite different from Isian’s. Still, even though some of them might be hard for you to pronounce, they still aren’t quite as outrageous as some of the real world’s languages. Be glad I didn’t add in implosives or clicks or something else completely weird.
Ardari Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | ɨ | u |
| Mid-High | e | o | |
| Mid | ə | ||
| Mid-Low | ɛ | ɔ | |
| Low | æ | ɑ |
The vowel system is more complex, but it’s still a system. Ardari has 10 vowel phonemes, and we can divide them into three groups: front (/i e ɛ æ/), middle (/ɨ ə/), and back (/u o ɔ ɑ/). The two middle vowels are most likely reduction vowels that gained full phonemic status at some point. /ɛ/ and /ɔ/, on the other hand, probably represent a lost length distinction.
The Ardari vowels, since there are so many of them, don’t show too much variation. In unstressed syllables, some vowels might be pronounced as [ɨ] or [ə]. There is one rule that will stick out, though: /i/ and /e/ are never found after a non-palatal stop. /ɨ/, conversely, can’t follow any palatal or palatalized consonant. (A similar constraint can be found in Russian, for example.)
There will still be diphthongs in Ardari, though we’ll postulate that most of them have been converted into pure vowels over time. The four that remain visible are /aj æw ej ou/ (phonetic [aɪ æʊ ɛi ɔu]), corresponding to English lie, how, say, and low. Most other combinations of vowels followed by glide consonants (/j/ and /w/) will end up being pronounced as one of these. For instance, the sequence /eu/ would become [æʊ], and /oj/ would turn into [aɪ].
Although the table looks ripe for it, Ardari doesn’t have vowel harmony. Sure it’d be easy to add it in, and I’ve done just that with a conlang that has these exact phonemes. But not this time. We’ll keep it simple for now, saving the complications for the grammar, which will come soon.
Orthography
With a total of 43 phonemes (not counting diphthongs), it’s clear that fitting Ardari into the English alphabet is going to be a challenge. We have two options. We can opt for digraphs, which are strings of multiple letters standing for one phoneme (like English and Isian sh), or we can use diacritics, those funny little squiggles above letters in foreign languages. For Ardari, a combination of both might be our best bet.
Some of the phonemes can take their letter values, just like we did with Isian. Here, we’ll let the consonant phonemes /m p b w n t d s z l k g q/ and the cardinal vowels /e i o u/ all be written as they are in the IPA (/ɑ/ is close enough to a that we can say they’re the same). But that doesn’t even get us halfway!
If you look at the chart above, you can see that the palatalized stops are a big component. Let’s write them as the regular stops followed by y. That’ll take care of six more. Then, we can do the same for the palatal nasal and lateral: ny and ly. Now we’re getting somewhere. We’ll write /j/ itself as j, though, and you’ll see why in a moment. For the palatal fricatives, we’ll use the digraphs ch and zh. (We could also use Slavic diacritics and type them as š and ž. We can call that an alternate standard.)
The bilabial fricatives are pretty close in sound to their labiodental counterparts, so we’ll use f and v for them. The velar nasal is almost everywhere written as ng, so we’ll do that, except when it comes before another velar sound, when it will be n. Since nasals will assimilate, that’s okay.
We have two “rhotic” sounds /ɾ/ and /ʁ/. Either one could lay claim to r, but I’m going with /ɾ/ for that. For /ʁ/, we’ll use rh. That helps signify its “rougher” quality, don’t you think?
That leaves two laterals, two velar fricatives, and five vowels. For the velars, we can use the digraphs kh for /x/ and gh for /ɣ/. The laterals are a little tougher to figure out, but I’ll choose lh for /ɬ/ and ll for /ɫ/. It’s an arbitrary choice, to be sure, but I’m open to suggestions.
For the vowels, the best bet is usually diacritics, because the English alphabet simply doesn’t have enough vowel letters. Sure, you can use clever digraphs and trigraphs, but that way lies madness and Irish orthography, which are pretty much the same thing. Squiggles it is, then. We’ll use familiar European standards where we can, like a German-style ä for /æ/. French gives us è for /ɛ/, and we can extend this by analogy to ò for /ɔ/. That takes care of all but the two central vowels, which turn out to be surprisingly difficult. For /ɨ/, we can use y, since we already said it can’t appear after palatal consonants. (In other words, there’s no way to get yy.) For the schwa, we’ll go with ë or ö. Which to use depends on the previous consonant: ë after palatals, ö otherwise.
Whew. There we go. Let’s look at all this in a format that’s easier to read.
| Written | Phoneme | Description |
|---|---|---|
| a | /ɑ/ | a as in father |
| ä | /æ/ | a as in cat |
| b | /b/ | b as in bad |
| by | /bʲ/ | palatalized b |
| ch | /ɕ/ | something like sh in show; more like Polish ś |
| d | /d/ | d as in dig |
| dy | /dʲ/ | palatalized d |
| e | /e/ | e as in Spanish queso |
| è | /ɛ/ | e as in bet |
| ë | /ə/ | a as in about; only after palatals |
| f | /ɸ/ | f as in Japanese fugu |
| g | /g/ | g as in got |
| gh | /ɣ/ | g as in Spanish amigo or Swedish jag |
| gy | /gʲ/ | palatalized g |
| i | /i/ | i as in German Sie |
| j | /j/ | y as in yet |
| k | /k/ | k as in key |
| kh | /x/ | ch like in German acht |
| ky | /kʲ/ | palatalized k |
| l | /l/ | l as in let |
| lh | /ɬ/ | ll as in Welsh llan |
| ll | /ɫ/ | l as in feel |
| ly | /ʎ/ | ll as in million (American English) |
| m | /m/ | m as in may |
| n | /n/ | n as in no |
| ng | /ŋ/ | ng as in sing |
| ny | /ɲ/ | ñ as in Spanish año |
| o | /o/ | au as in French haut |
| ò | /ɔ/ | o as in hot |
| ö | /ə/ | a as in about; only after non-palatals |
| p | /p/ | p as in pack |
| py | /pʲ/ | palatalized p |
| q | /q/ | q as in Arabic Qatar |
| r | /ɾ/ | r as in Spanish toro |
| rh | /ʁ/ | r as in French rue |
| s | /s/ | s as in sit |
| t | /t/ | t as in tent |
| ty | /tʲ/ | palatalized t |
| u | /u/ | ou as in French sous |
| v | /β/ | b as in Spanish bebe |
| w | /w/ | w as in wet |
| y | /ɨ/ | like i in bit; closer to Polish or Russian y |
| z | /z/ | z as in zebra |
| zh | /ʑ/ | like z in azure; closer to Polish ź |
Wow, that’s a lot of letters! Next time, it’s back to the theory, where we’ll discuss all the things that we can use to make these sounds into words.