Kaw'amu

Introduction
Kaw'amu, or Underhill/Grenfair, is a dialect continuum composed of several closely related languages spoken in Khaskam'iwa, Tamba, and Ko'ulamo'iwa. The system described here is the formal or literary dialect used by elites and the educated classes for official business and the production of literary and scientific works. There are a number of phonetic and grammatical divergences in local dialects, but they generally have the same structural basis.

Consonant Inventory
The Voiced Labial-Velar Approximant [w] also occurs, as well as ejective forms of all the pre-glottal plosives.

Voiced and Voiceless forms of the pre-glottal stops occur in free variation, but contrast against their ejective forms.

Vowel Inventory
Vowels can also be lengthened, giving a total inventory of ten vowels. Coda [w] is often expressed as a rounded vowel, but is analyzed as a consonant by speakers.

Phonotactics
Syllables follow a (C)V(C) form, with strict rules regarding onset and coda consonants.

The sibilant fricatives are only allowed as codas, but may in limited circumstances be analyzed as an onset where they precede a syllable with no onset consonant.

Plosives, on the other hand, are only permitted as onsets. Additionally, where the palatal nasal occurs as an onset following a coda consonant, it's realized as an alveolar nasal.

Orthography
Kaw'amu is a hybrid abugida, read in vertical columns from bottom to top. Each syllable is expressed using a base consonant glyph, vowel ligature, and optional coda consonant tail. Horizontal orientation proceeds from left to right between lines, but is variable within lines. Generally, the onset consonant strictly determines the horizontal orientation of its syllable. A sampling of possible glyphs is presented below, from which any allowed syllable can be derived. Where there is no onset consonant, the glottal stop acts as a 'dummy' consonant. Final forms of allowed coda consonants generally closely resemble their onset forms, written as tails following the vowel ligature. The exceptions are the sibilant fricatives, which are marked as a diacritic over the vowel ligature. There are four vowel ligatures, with [a] occuring as a base vowel with no ligature. A dot indicates a lengthened vowel.

In ambiguous formulations, the written form will tend to minimize the use of 'dummy' consonants. For instance, Kaw'amu can be analyzed as either [kaw.ʔa.mu] or [kaw.ʔam.u], but will almost always be written as shown above.