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Lesson 1: Phonology and Orthography
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The phonology, orthography, and phonotactics of Eo'iona
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 26 Dec 2023, 01:38.

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Menu 1. Standard phonology 2. Dialectal variation 3. Orthography 4. Syllable structure and phonotactics 5. Stress
[edit] [top]Standard phonology

ConsonantsBilabialDentalAlveolarGlottal
Nasal n
Plosive (p)ʔ
Fricative (ɸ)(θ)

VowelsFrontBack
Close i í ì î
Close-mid e é è êo ó ò ô
Open a á à â

Eo'iona has an unusually small consonant inventory. Its consonants can be divided into two groups, native (/n ʔ/) and foreign (/ɸ p θ/). Foreign consonants only appear in loanwords.

Its vowels, however, make up for its consonants. Eo'iona has four vowel qualities, which are /a/, /e/, /i/, and /o/, and each can take the medium tone (a'a'èì), the falling tone (âna'èì), the high tone (ána'èì), or the low tone (àna'èì). In total, Eo'iona has 16 phonemic vowels.

The low tone is below the medium tone, and the high tone is above the medium tone by approximately the same amount. The falling tone falls from the high tone to the medium tone.

[edit] [top]Dialectal variation

Speakers from the province of Baties often pronounce /o/ as unrounded [ɤ].

In northern dialects, /θ/ is often realised as [t] or [s], and /n/ is assimilated to [m] before labial consonants. In dialects where /θ/ is dental, the sequence /nθ/ is typically realised as [n̪θ] in informal speech.

The glottal stop /ʔ/ is often realised as [h] in rural areas of Aoe'i and Onae.

[edit] [top]Orthography

Eo'iona is written using the Latin script. The following table shows the correspondences between Eo'iona letters and their IPA values.

LetterIPALetterIPA
Aa/a/Îî/î/
Áá/á/Oo/o/
Àà/à/Óó/ó/
Ââ/â/Óó/ò/
Ee/e/Ôô/ô/
Éé/é/Nn/n/
Èè/è/'/ʔ/
Êê/ê/Ff/ɸ/
Ii/i/Pp/p/
Íí/í/Tt/θ/
Ìì/ì/

The apostrophe (') does not have separate uppercase and lowercase forms.

[edit] [top]Syllable structure and phonotactics

Eo'iona has a (C)V(C) syllable structure, although syllables without consonants are most common.

The language has relatively few phonotactic constraints:
  • The same phoneme cannot appear twice in a row within a word (excluding falling vowels).
  • A medium vowel cannot follow a falling vowel with the same quality within a word (so that /âe/ and /â a/ are valid, while /âa/ is not).
  • /ʔ/ cannot be adjacent to a word boundary or another consonant.


[edit] [top]Stress

Eo'iona is a syllable-timed language, meaning that all syllables have roughly the same length.

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