Taiman language

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The Taiman language is spoken primarily in Taima. The language's alphabet is based on the XXX alphabet. It comprises 29 letters:

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, Å, Ä, Ö

Summary of the main characteristics

In the following table, the letters of the Taiman alphabet are supplemented with IPA compatible spelling instructions:

Glyph	Pronunciation	Notes on usage
A	/ɑː/
B	/beː/	Occurs only in relatively unestablished loanwords (often pronounced as /p/).
C	/seː/	Occurs only in unestablished loanwords (usually pronounced as /k/ or /s/).
D	/deː/	Historically used to stand for voiced dental fricative /ð/, which has since disappeared from Taiman. In present standard language, letter "D" stands for /d/ but the pronunciation in dialects varies a lot. Natively used in Western dialects as /ɾ/.
E	/eː/
F	/æf/, occasionally /ef/	Occurs only in established loanwords (historically pronounced as /v/ or medially /hv/, natively used in some specific Western dialects as /f/).
G	/geː/	Occurs natively in the digraph "ng", which marks long velar nasal /ŋː/. Otherwise letter "G" occurs only in unestablished loanwords (often pronounced as /k/).
H	/hoː/
I	/iː/
J	/jiː/
K	/koː/
L	/æl/, occasionally /el/
M	/æm/, occasionally /em/
N	/æn/, occasionally /en/
O	/oː/
P	/peː/
Q	/kuː/	Occurs only in unestablished loanwords (pronounced as /k/ or /kv/).
R	/ær/, occasionally /er/
S	/æs/, occasionally /es/
T	/teː/
U	/uː/
V	/veː/
W	/veː/, /kaksoisveː/	May occur natively as an archaic variant of "V", but otherwise only in unestablished loanwords (usually pronounced as /v/).
X	/æks/, occasionally /eks/	Occurs only in unestablished loanwords (pronounced as /ks/).
Y	/yː/
Z	/tset(ɑ)/	Occurs only in unestablished loanwords (usually pronounced as /ts/ or sometimes as /s/).
Å	/oː/, /ruotsɑlɑinen oː/
Ä	/æː/
Ö	/øː/

Phonology

Characteristic features of Taiman language are vowel harmony and an agglutinative morphology; due to the extensive use of the latter, words can be quite long.

The main stress is always on the first syllable, and it is articulated by adding approximately 100 ms more length to the stressed vowel. Stress does not cause any measurable modifications in vowel quality. However, stress is not strong and words appear evenly stressed. In some cases, stress is so weak that the highest points of volume, pitch and other indicators of "articulation intensity" are not on the first syllable, although native speakers recognize the first syllable as a stressed syllable.

There are eight vowels, whose lexical and grammatical role is highly important, and which are unusually strictly controlled, so that there is almost no allophony]]. Vowels shown in the table below, followed by the IPA symbol when not identical. These are always different phonemes in the initial syllable; for noninitial syllable, see morphophonology below.

	Front		Back
	Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
Close	i	y		u
Mid1	e	ö [ø]		o
Open	ä [æ]		a [ɑ]

¹ Although conventionally and conveniently written with the close-mid symbols [e], [ø] and [o], they are more acurately described as mid vowels ([e], [ø] and [o]).

The usual analysis is that Taiman language has long and short vowels and consonants as distinct phonemes. However, long vowels may be analyzed as a vowel followed by a chroneme, or also, that sequences of identical vowels are pronounced as "diphthongs". The quality of long vowels mostly overlaps with the quality of short vowels, with the exception of u, which is centralized with respect to uu; long vowels do not morph into diphthongs. There are eighteen phonemic diphthongs; like vowels, diphthongs do not have allophony.

Taiman language has a consonant inventory of small to moderate size, where voicing is not distinctive, and there are only glottal and unvoiced alveolar fricatives. Taiman language has very few non-alveolar coronal consonants. Consonants are as follows, where consonants in parenthesis are found only in a few recent loans.

	bilabial	labiodental	dental	alveolar	postalveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
plosive	p, (b)		t, d 1				k, (g)	ʔ 2
nasal	m		n				ŋ 3
trill				r
fricative		(f)		s	(ʃ)			h
lateral				l
approximant		ʋ				j

1. /d/ is the equivalent of /t/ under weakening consonant gradation, and thus occurs only medially, or in non-native words; it is actually more of an alveolar tap rather than a true voiced stop, and the dialectal realization varies wildly; see main article.
2. The glottal stop can only appear at word boundaries as a result of certain sandhi phenomena, and it is not indicated in spelling: e.g. /annaʔolla/ 'let it be', orthographically anna olla. Moreover, this sound is not used in all dialects.
3. The short velar nasal is an allophone of /n/ in /nk/, and the long velar nasal /ŋŋ/, written ng, is the equivalent of /nk/ under weakening consonant gradation (type of lenition) and thus occurs only medially.

Almost all consonant have phonemic geminated forms. These are independent, but occur only medially when phonemic.

Independent consonant clusters are not allowed in native words, except for a small set of two-consonant syllable codas, e.g. 'rs' in karsta. However, due to a number of recently adopted loanwords using them, e.g. strutsi "ostrich", Taiman speakers can pronounce them, even if it is somewhat awkward.

It is somewhat special in two respects: loss of fricatives and loss of palatalization.

An interesting feature of Taimanic phonology is the development of labial vowels in non-initial syllables. Proto-Taiman had only 'a' and 'i' and their vowel harmonic allophones in non-initial syllables; modern Taiman language allows other vowels in non-initial syllables (they are uncommon, however, compared to 'a', 'ä' and 'i').

Taiman language has only two fricatives, namely /s/ and /h/. All other fricatives are recognized as foreign, of which Taiman speakers can usually reliably distinguish /f/ and /ʃ/.