Sounds
The sounds of Laal are transcribed here using International Phonetic Alphabet symbols. The consonants are:
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | Voiceless | p | t | c | k | ʔ |
| Voiced | b | d | ɟ | ɡ | ||
| Prenasalized | (ᵐb) | (ⁿd) | (ᶮɟ) | (ᵑɡ) | ||
| Implosive | ɓ | ɗ | (ʄ) | |||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| Fricative | s | h | ||||
| Trill | r | |||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | |||
Implosives and prenasalised stops, as well as h, are found only word-initially. Voiceless stops, as well as s, cannot occur at the end of a syllable. /ŋ/ occurs only intervocalically and word-finally. /s/ appears exclusively in loanwords and certain numbers. The prenasalized stops, as well as the implosive /ʄ/, are extremely rare.
The vowel system for non-initial syllables is: /i/, /ɨ/, /u/, /e/, /ə/, /o/, /a/, and the diphthong /ua/, with no length distinction. For initial syllables, however, it is much more complicated, allowing length distinctions and distinguishing the following additional diphthongs: /ia/, /yo/, /ya/ (though the latter two appear only as morphologically conditioned forms of /e/ and /ia/, and are perhaps better seen as allophonic.) In addition, /y/ may occur very occasionally; Boyeldieu quotes the example of mỳlùg "red (pl.)".
There are three level tones: high (á), middle (a), low (à). Combinations of these may occur on a single vowel, resulting in phonetic rising and falling tones; these are phonemically sequences of level tones. Such cases are transcribed here by repeating the vowel (e.g. àá); long vowels are indicated only by the colon (e.g. a:).
Suffixes may force any of four kinds of ablaut on the vowels of preceding words: raising (takes /ia/, /a/, /ua/ to, ), lowering (takes /e/, /ə/, /o/ to, ), low rounding (takes /i/ and /ɨ/ to ; /e/ and /ia/ to ; /ə/, /a/, and /ua/ to ), and high rounding (takes /i/ and /ɨ/ to ; /e/ and /ia/ to ; /ə/, /a/, and /o/ to ). They are transcribed in the suffix section as ↑, ↓, ↗, ↘ respectively. In some verbs, a/ə is "raised" to rather than, as expected, .
In suffixes, ə and o undergo vowel harmony: they become ɨ and u respectively if the preceding vowel is one of {i, ɨ, u}. Likewise, r undergoes consonant harmony, becoming l after words containing l. Suffixes with neutral tone copy the final tone of the word they are suffixed to.
Read more about this topic: Laal Language
Famous quotes containing the word sounds:
“I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“It sounds like a soul in hell.”
—Ben Maddow (1909–1992)