Kartillian

Consonants
Kartillian's consonant inventory includes 20 basic consonants. The vast majority of these consonants are also present in English, meaning that at least the consonant phonology is easy to grasp for an english speaker. Every consonant can be geminated, although the geminated version of a consonant may not necessarily be in the non-geminate's place of articulation.


 * 1. The alveolar nasal /n/ is Kartillian's only nasal phoneme. However, it becomes [m] before bilabial consonants, [ɱ] before labiodental consonants, [ɲ] before palatal consonants, [ŋ] before velar consonants and lastly [ɴ] before uvular consonants. In addition, /n/ has the tendency to become [m] after rounded vowels. In most cases it is represented by the letter ‹n›, except where it represents the allophone [m], in which case it is represented by ‹m›.
 * 2. The geminate forms of /k/ and /g/ tend to be pronounced /çc/ and /ʝɟ/ respectively.
 * 3. The geminate form of /h/ tends to be pronounced /xː/.
 * 4. The geminate form of /l/ tends to be pronounced /ɮː/.

Vowels
The Kartillian vowel system is quite complicated. The vowel inventory is extensive - there are six vowels that have corresponding long vowels in slightly different places of articulation. In addition to this, there are two other vowels that do not have long counterparts, bringing the total number to fourteen. There are also numerous diphthongs and tripthongs.

Below is the table of the twelve 'main' vowels. These are six short vowels, and their long counterparts. Unlike in some languages (for example Hungarian) where long vowels do not stray significantly from their short variant's place of articulation - in Kartillian the long vowels are often articulated in a place quite different from their short counterpart. For example, the short vowel /æ/ is near-open, whereas it's corresponding long vowel /aː/ is open.

In addition to the twelve shown above, there are two other vowel monopthongs present in Kartillian. These are the two central vowels /ɜ/ and /ʉ/, represented by the letters ‹ụ› and ‹ọ› respectively. Unlike the other vowels, these two do not come in a long and a short variety.