Kartillian

Gemination
All fricative, liquid and approximant consonants can be geminated, whereas stop consonants cannot. Although the geminate forms of consonants are usually articulated in the same place as their non geminate forms, there are some geminate consonants which have a place of articulation quite different from their shorter consonants. The geminate of the consonant /h/ is /xː/, /l/ is /ɮː/, /ɾ/ is /rː/ and /j/ is /ʝː/. The gemination of consonants is represented by the doubling of that consonant letter.

Vowel length is not phonemic in Kartillian, although stressed vowels (i.e. ones which occur in the first syllable of a word) are usually pronounced as a long vowel.

Letter Combinations
The digraph dx represents the voiced postalveolar affricate /dʒ/, like the sound in the english words judge and general. The obscure tetragraph ppch represents the sound /çʷ/, which is sometimes realised as the more archaic consonant cluster /ɸç/, which is the modern Kartillian lenition of the Old Kartillian consonant /pʲ/.

Historical Consonants
Kartillian's ancestor, Old Kartillian had the consonant phonemes /pʲ/, /kʲ/ and /tʲ/. All of these palatalised phonemes became lenited during the transition to present-day Kartillian. /pʲ/ became the unusual consonant cluster /ɸç/, which became further the labialised sound /çʷ/. /kʲ/ became the sound /ç/, and /tʲ/ merged with the sound /ʃ/. In renditioning of Old Kartillian, these palatalised plosives are represented by the letters ṕ, ḱ and ť respectively.

The following table shows how the consonant change altered Old Kartillian words.

Letter W
The letter 'w' is the only letter of the basic latin alphabet which does not see productive use in Kartillian native words. Even the letters x and q see productive use. It is however retained in foreign place names, such as Washington and names of foreign people, such as William.