Buthrotan

Phonology
The Buthrotan language has a relatively european-sounding phonology, comprised of six basic vowel sounds and twenty-six different consonant sounds (although some other consonants appear in allophonic positions).

Vowels
As said previously, Buthrotan has six vowels - ones that are often found in typical European languages.

The Buthrotan vowel system is unusal as it contains no basic vowel /a/, instead it contains the open back vowel /ɑ/ (like the pronounciation of English "ah!") and the near-open front vowel /æ/ (like the pronunciation of English "cat"). In word-final position, all non-close vowels /ɛ/, /æ/, /ɑ/ and /ɒ/ become a reduced central schwa sound [ə], so the word "burovo" sounds as if it is written "burova". In contrast, the close vowels /i/, /y/ and /u/ all become their longer counterparts /iː/, /yː/ and /uː/.

Buthrotan does not employ any aspect of vowel harmony or distinguishing vowel length, although vowel length can be allophonic (as mentioned above). In stressed syllables, vowels usually become allophonically lengthened in speech, although this is neither crucial nor phonemic.

Buthrotan has no dipthongs. It historically did have one /oʊ/ (like "oh!" in some dialects of English), but this later merged with /u/ (although it is still orthographically represented by the letter "ou").

Consonants
Where symbols for consonants appear in pairs, the one to the left represents a voiceless consonant, whereas the one on the right represents a voiced consonant. The consonant /h/ can become the glide [j] or [w] when found in an intervocalic position. So for example lhuha is pronounced [ɮuwə].

The languages only rhotic consonant /ɾ/ becomes the alveolar approximant [ɹ] (the "r" sound in English) in consonant clusters. In consonant clusters involving alveolar consonants (tr, dr, str, cr, sr, slr, slhr, sfr, svr, sqhr and zr), this sound has the effect of postalveolarising the entire consonant cluster, as seen in the table below.