The Phonology of T�syelan

Vowels

T�syelan has 13 phonemic vowels (not counting diphthongs), more than one would expect from most languages (not counting diphthongs, of course;).
Rounded vowels can be tense or lax. The following PACAD notation used indicates tense rounded vowels for the most part.

T�syelan Vowels
		tense	lax	rounded
front	high	i	�	�
	middle	�	e	�
	low	�
central		u		�
back	high			�	�
	middle			�	�
	low	a

T�syelan Vowels using the IPA
		tense	lax	rounded
front	high	i	ɪ	y
	middle	e	ɛ	œ
	low	�
central		ʌ		ɜ
back	high			u	ʊ
	middle			o	ɔ
	low	a

Consonants

T�syelan has 15 phonemic consonants, each with 3 sets of allophones. Each set of allphones in T�syelan is called a neerul se tent�ii, a "sound set" or phonology, so you will see "the three phonologies" mentioned a lot. The reason that there are three different phonologies seems to be for ease of speaking in different situations. One would want to use only his lips to speak, for instance, if his tongue hurt; or one would rather use an alveolar or velar phonology when he had chapped lips; or one might want to use the bilabial phonology (to preserve breath or maybe to keep the inside of your mouth dry; who knows..) if one were trying to speak under water; or one would want to use the alveolar phonology (so you wouldn't have to move your lips) if one were making a puppet talk or wanted to throw your voice without being noticed as much. There are countless situations for one phonology over the other, and it lets the speakers, who are almost always fluent in each one and can certainly understand each one, be creative in the way their words come out. Because the phonologies can be mixed and matched, not just in the middle of a sentence, but a within a word, there are numerous ways to say the same sentence without using numerous words. In some towns and in what there are of T�syej��l cities, fashions often develop in the way one arranges the phonologies within a word or sentence. When explaining, demonstrating, or using the language, I'll most often employ the alveolar phonology since it is the easiest to represent in PACAD, which I use to represent T�syelan, though sometimes (when unimportant for ease of learning) I'll use some more stylish ways of saying things; you can always change the phonology of something to suit you using the consonant chart. Perhaps I will develop another simpler way to represent T�syelan in the Roman script some time, but since the T�syej��l don't do not use the Roman script, I probably will stick to using PACAD.
In any case, let me explain the three sets of allophones in T�syelan:

alveolar - sounds made by the tip of the tongue (or the peak created when the tip is placed at the back of the bottom row of teeth) making contact with the alveolar ridge, like s, t, and n.

labial - sounds made exclusively with the lips, like b and p, except for sounds made with the teeth (upper and lower sets in T�syelan, as you will see shortly) and the lips, like v and f.

velar - sounds made when the back of the tongue makes contact with the soft palate, from its joindre to the hard palate to the point at which the uvula comes into use. In English the only alveolar phonemes are k and g, but in T�syelan there are fricitives and a distinction between uvular-velar sounds and pure velar sounds.

T�syelan Consonants
		alveolar	labial	velar
plosives	voiced	d dj	b bv	g g
plosives	voiceless	t t�	p pf	k q
fricatives	voiced	z j	� v	ɣ r̊
fricatives	voiceless	s �	ƒ f	� ʒ
nasals	voiced	n	m	ŋ
nasals	voiceless	nh	mh	ŋh
laterals	voiced	l	ƕ	ɬ
laterals	voiceless	lh	ſ	ɬh
tap/pop/flap		r	p'	q'
whistles		s̊	ƒ̊	�?
aspirate		h

Two Columns of Plosives and Fricatives

Many of the sounds above will need explanations, especially since I'm not familiar with the IPA notation for a good many of them.
To start with, the plosives and fricatives have two columns of sounds for each phonology.

In the alveolar sound set, the left-hand column has the normal alveolar/dental-alveolar sounds. The sounds in the right-hand column are separate phonemes from those on the left, but each is still, for example, a voiced plosive in the alveolar phonology. However, these are alveolo-palatal sounds, made slightly further back from the standard p.o.a. for alveolar sounds. j is the �zh� sound in English measure; � is the sound in show; dj the sound in job; and t� the sound in church.

The same basic principle as applies to the two alveolar columns applies to the labial columns. b, p, v, and f are the same sounds as in English, basically. bv and pf are labio-dental plosives, so, for an English speaker, pronouncing them as a b followed by v and p by f will generally produce the right sound. � is an unvoiced interlabial fricative; put your lips together as if you were blowing out a candle and blow. � is the same basic idea, just voiced.

Same principle, again, for velar sounds, but this time only three sounds in the whole velar column are found as phonemes in most dialects of English. But we're only dealing with plosives and fricatives now, where there are only two sounds that are phonemes in English. g and k are pronounced as in English, though often g and occasionally q are found in place of them. g and q are pronounced using not only the soft palate (velum), but the uvula as well. q is found in Arabic. ɣ and � are pronounced just as their IPA equivalents, but neither exists as a phoneme in English. Even in German, only � is a phoneme. � is pronounced in basically the same place as English k, but it's like a soft hiss. ɣ is the voiced version and when articulated correctly sounds like a hum. r̊ and ʒ are the uvularised versions of ɣ and �. Though I'd like to claim that the sound of German r is the same as r̊, when done properly by real Germans, the German r is a real uvular trill with no friction on the velum. I'd also like to use the French r sound as an example, but it seems less and less of the uvula is used. So I'll just say that T�syelan r̊ is similar to French and German r sounds and leave it at that. ʒ is prounounced as German Macht. If you don't know how that sounds, it sounds like a cat tied up by its tail choking on a frog. And if you still don't know how its pronounced, drink a glass of full-fat milk, a glass of lemonade, eat a piece of chocolate cake with mashmallow icing and wait a few minutes.
(Disclaimer: when I talk about French and German phonology here, I'm talking about French and German as standardly taught in American schools and not about dialects like Bavarian or Acadjenne where r is a tap like T�syelan r)

Voiceless Nasals?!?

�Fraid so. But first let me run through the voiced nasal sounds of T�syelan.

n - more or less the same as English, French, Finnish, whatever.

m - see n

ŋ - Like the n in the word English or the sound of Finnish ng (though shorter) or the sound of the n in Spanish sangre.
The devoiced phonemes are articulated the same way, but with no voice. nh, for example, sounds like someone trying to clear their nose when it's mostly clear to start with. In fact, all three unvoiced nasals sound like that, and if you don't quite understand, just remember that it doesn't matter which one you use anyway :-�

Labial Laterals?!? (a.k.a. ƕ??)

Yep. And velar laterals too :-P Well, kinda. Sorry to be misleading at first, but by now, if you're reading this, then obviously your curiousity has been piqued in some manner or another. To start with,

l tends to be similar to the American l, though it can be anywhere in the range from the German l to the Finnish l. lh is the unvoiced version of what we call l, as found as a separate phoneme in Welsh and Navajo and a handful of other langauges on Earth (and often found in English words like platter), but it tends towards the crisp clear l of German (just unvoiced).

ɬ is an l-sounding sound (and technically it is lateral, as well as a velar proximate) made basically just like the Finnish l, but with the tip of the tongue resting in the front of the mouth (as opposed to making contact with the alveolar ridge) as it is when sounds like k and g are made. It's often made in American English when approximating l at the end of a word, especially when syllabic or at least partially so, such as at the end of rumble. In a few dialects of American English, this sound (/əl/ or thereabouts originally, and then /əɬ/) has often turned into /əw/ which is phonemically very similar to the o phoneme in American English (most often /ʌw/) and might stand out better in your memory if you think of it as having once heard o where there should have been an l. ɬ is basically the same, just without voice.

ƕ and ſ aren't exactly latteral sounds, though. These just happen to be the sounds that the T�syej��l use as correspondences in the labial phonology for the latteral sounds in the two other phonologies. They're much like v and f, respectively, but they use the lower row of teeth. This tends not to be very natural for us humans, especially ones like me with a bit of an overbite, but most T�syej��l have teeth that line up pretty nicely top to bottom�molars, bicuspids, and even their poor excuses for canines.

Tap, Pop, Flap

r, the tap, is the same as the Spanish r. It is also refered to by most phonologists as the alveolar tap or flap.

p', the pop, is a type of sound found in languages such as Navajo and sometimes called a glottal consonant, where the glottis (your voice box) is held closed so air is trapped in your lungs and you're forced to use only air available from in your mouth or whatever's around when making the sound. So basically, hold your breath, make a p or some sort of pop with your lips, and open your glottis for the next sound (likely a vowel), and you'll've probably gotten the sound nearly perfect at least.

q', the flap, is supposed to be a uvular flap. If you know what this means and are able to do it, great. If you can't do it, so be it�nothing I say is going to help you. If you don't know what I'm talking about, or aren't quite sure anyway, go ahead and give up now. There are few people talented enough to produce this sound; even I can't do it on a regular basis ;-) There is an alternative pronunciation that will work in place of the uvular flap though. Apply the rules for p' to the sound of k or even q (whichever is more natural), and you'll be quite understood.

Whistles

For all whistles, tone doesn't make much difference. To pronounce T�syelan, you need to recognise all as whistles, but you only need to be able to produce one.

s̊ - an alveolar whistle, similar to s in many ways. People who wear braces whistle alveolarly instead of using the more common labial whistle.

ƒ̊ - a labial whistle, the normal sound produced that is called a whistle.

"Uvular Whistle" - I don't have a symbol for it because I have no clue how it is pronounced. I only have a sound recording from Zylom, who claims that it is possible. I suppose I should get in contact with him about this sound again, but until I can remember to, you'll just have to wait, or e-mail him yourself.

Aspirate

The easiest part of the whole section, to most. h is pronounced the same in all phonologies. It's just unvoiced glottal friction and tends to work in the p.o.a. for just about any other sound. h is the same as the h sound found in English, German, Japanese, and many other languages.

Onglides, offglides

w and y are classified as vowels in T�syelan as probably should be h since they don't belong to any certain phonology. They're used as onglides (sounding just like w and y in English) before vowels and as offglides (sounding like the offglide in diphthongs like 'Ow!' /au/ that I pronounce as /�w/ and 'eye' /ai/ that I like to transcribe /aj/ respectively) after vowels.

Now you should be just about ready for the Grammar :)