Ìnilingua

Tonemes
Ìnilingua, contains a rising, falling, and mid level tone. High and low tones are present, but are left unmarked due to the way Ìnilingua's tones work. Ìnilingua expresses tone sandhi, where the pitch of the word is dependent on the preceding tone. All words start on a mid level tone, but the level will be affected by tonal changes present. For example, the word 'çátàu' (thanks) contains a rising tone and a falling tone. Therefore, the word starts at mid level, rises to high level, and falls back to mid level. In vowel clusters, such as in the word 'hào' (hello) the tone is marked at the start of the cluster, and affects the entire cluster rather than affecting the initial vowel.

Orthography
Ìnilingua's orthography aims to be intuitive, following the latin alphabet as used in English. Therefore, each grapheme can only produce a single sound, and digraphs are supressed as often as possible. However, some confustion may arise from the graphemes ⟨ç⟩, ⟨c⟩, and the digraph ⟨ng⟩. As ⟨c⟩ is not used as a phonemic sound in Ìnilingua, it is used to represent the phoneme /tʃ/, while ⟨ç⟩ is used to represent /ʃ/. ⟨ng⟩ is the only digraph in the Ìnilingua orthography, and is used to represent /ŋ/. While this may seem to go against the rest of the orthography, in this case, intuitiveness was prioritised over simplicity and uniformity. Becauseof this, ⟨ng⟩ is the only phoneme that is not represented in the alphabet.

Syllable Structure
Inilingua has a (C)(C)V(V)(C)(C) syllable structure. This means that the maximum amount amount of phomenes that can create a single syllable is two onset consonants, two vowels, and another two coda consonants. Inilingua does not allow for three or more consecutive vowels or consonants, and therefore syllables with two onset or coda consonants are only allowed at the end of sentences, while words with two onset and two coda consonants are monosyllabic. Likewise, syllables with two vowels at the onset or end of the syllable are subject to the same rules as the consonants.