Phonemes

1. Phonemes

It is very useful to learn the Ankanian sounds in a particular way. This expedites the understanding of the vocabulary and the grammar in future study. The importance of this cannot be understated. While one could just learn the sounds haphazard as with any other language, the gain in Ankanian by understanding the sound patterns is well worthwhile. For example, in mastery of vocabulary, the sound patterns reduce the memorization requirements to one third the amount that would be required in any other language. The following table shows the basic 21 consonants of Ankanian. They come in sets of three. It is important to know the sounds as they are in this table. One should know if the sound is strong, middle, or weak and also which three sounds go together. Notice that the sounds are grouped by position of production in the mouth, strong sounds are voiceless (and aspirated), middle sounds are voiced, and weak sounds are nasals, liquids and semi-vowels. There is also a relation with positions (vertically). For example, looking at the table below, it can be seen that w is weak in relation to f, strong in relation to y, and has no relation to z:

strong	middle	weak
k Kill	g Go	ng siNG	weak
t Tell	d Do	n No	middle
p Pie	b Bee	m Me	strong
lh ³	ll ⁴	l Love
x ¹	gh ²	y You	weak
s See	z Zoo	r Read	middle
f Food	v Van	w We	strong

1. Like German "ch".
2. A voiced x as Arabic letter Ghain.
3. An "l" with breath like Welsh "ll".
4. A voiced Welsh "ll".

h House

h is different from the other consonants as it does not belong to a triplet.

There are 4 additional consonants that only come about from the reduction of various combinations. These have their own letters in the native alphabet.

cause	new sound
tt or .lhy	th THin
dd or .lly	dh THat
ss or .sy	sh SHe
zz or .zy	zh pleaSure

(The preceding periods above indicate that the two consonants must be in the same syllable for the change to occur.) These sounds also come about from certain combinations with r : .lhr > .thr; .llr > .dhr; .sr > .shr; .zr > .zhr.

There are 6 vowels in Ankanian as follows. They also are grouped into triplets which are useful to know. In stressed syllables (where the vowel is not final) and as the first element in a diphthong or before a lateral (lh, ll, l) they have a more tense pronunciation (shown below as the second choice).

strong		middle		weak
o gO	mOre	a fAther	fAther	e pAIn	pEn
u sOOn	lOOk	ś sIR	sOn	i sEEn	sIn

Finally, there is what is called a "linking vowel" which is not written in the native alphabet. It is a short vowel similar to the "i" in "pin". It is used in places where adjacent consonants need to be separated by a vowel to be pronounced. In transcription when a "-" is used, it means that the vowel can be used if required. Ex.: yond-vesta, linguist; k-vesa, male speaker.

While all of the native letters have been shown above, Ankanian utilizes the following additional marks which can only be written under half-height letters. They represent a following w (u), y (i), or r. They are shown in the next table using n and e as examples. There is also a short hand for nasal+stop combinations as shown in the second half of the table. This includes ld and lt which are not shown:

nw	ny	nr
eu	ei	er
nd	mb	ngg
nt	mp	nk

Punctuation is simple. Words are written with the letters connected, compounds and prefixes are indicated by a separation between the letters. All words begin with a curl and sentences begin with a straight stroke that extends above the other letters as in this example below:

Voti-n ve sonśamu-n te fa-nost.
I wonder if I will see you again.

The stress is typically on the root syllable of a word or the last root syllable of a compound word. Compounds are shown by dashes between the elements, so the stress can be recognized as being on the last element. The dash is sometimes used with single consonant roots to show that the stress is after the dash. Stress is important in Ankanian as a misplaced stress can change the meaning of a word and might not always be caught by the context.

Ankanian does not have long vowels or the perception of vowel length. It also does not recognize doubled consonants.

The diphthongs are formed by a following y or w, but the spelling convention is to change these to i or u. No 'pure' vowel ends a word other than -a. Instead there is an open sonant implicitly closing a vowel which ends a word. For example deke would actually be pronounced as, and grammatically behave as if it were dekey.

Ankanian has many double vowel prefixes and suffixes where each vowel constitutes a syllable. The vowels in these forms are not divided by a glottle stop, but by a semi-vowel which is most near the first vowel. For example -ea would be pronounced like -eya. Note also that in spelling, the semi-vowel is included if a diphthong might be inferred, ex: te+u would not be spelled teu since it would then be the diphthong. It would be spelled teyu.

When a word ending in a vowel is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, these vowels should never be connected by a semi-vowel in speech. A glottle stop should always occur before a word that begins in a vowel.

Words can only begin in a single consonant or a vowel. Though, if the second consonant is a neutral proximate, the combination can be allowed to be initial. Medially consonants can be followed by y, w, r. Other consonant combinations are allowed both medially and finally but the second consonant must be an alveolar (unless the first is r or l). Also a combination cannot have both utterances (i.e. kd, gt). The nasals (n, m, ng) in consonant combinations can only be followed by a contact consonant (stop) of the same position. They can also be followed by s, though one will hear the associated stop between the two in speech. For example, ms would sound like mps. The consonants sh, zh, th, dh, ll, lh are called the complex consonants and they cannot occur in a combination other than with a neutral proximate, r or a preceding l.

Ankanian has a rule that two equal neutral proximates (y, r, w and i, u when the second element in a diphthong) cannot be separated only by a single vowel. If a transformation or suffix causes this to occur, then it is resolved by various means which will be given as the cases occur. For example: if dekya (stones) is put in the genitive case (dekye) and since there is an impicit neutral proximate ending the word (=dekyey), this is not tolerated. It is thus resolved by changing the plural - y- to -r-. The genitive of dekya is thus dekre.

In compounds, all consonants can be adjacent at the morpheme boundaries. However in morphemes ending in double consonants, typically a weak vowel is inserted to aid in pronunciation which has the sound of "i" in "pin", but is never stressed. It is not written in the native alphabet or in the transliteration, but would occupy the position of the hyphen when needed.

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