Piais/Phonology

Monophthongs
The Piaisian vowel system contains 5 phonemes which can be short or long: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/. The phoneme /a/ is the only phoneme with only one possible pronunciation for both the short and long form - all other vowel phonemes have allophones for their short forms: [ɛ] is an allophone for [e], [ɪ] for [i], [ɔ] for [o] and [ʊ] for [u].

The vowel [ə] sometimes appears in the language but it is not considered a phoneme, nor is it used by anybody. Words ending in voiced consonants are sometimes pronounced with a final schwa to make their pronunciation easier.

Diphthongs
Piais distinguishes 2 different kinds of diphthongs - so called "true" diphthongs and "false" diphthongs.

The true diphthongs are those which only contain vowels. The following diphthongs are in this category: /aɪ̯/, /aʊ̯/, /eɪ̯/ and /oʊ̯/.

The false diphthongs are those which contain a semivowel. False diphthongs are the (much) larger group of diphthongs: The semivowel /j/ can form diphthongs with all vowels except /i/, the semivowel /w/ can form diphthongs with all vowels except /u/. The length of the vowel does not matter for false diphthongs.

Triphthongs
In a similar fashion to false diphthongs, all triphthongs are combinations of the 2 semivowels /j/ or /w/ and one of the true diphthongs.

Consonants
Notes:

/ŋ/ can only appear in the syllable coda.

[b], [d] and [g] are allophones of /p/, /t/ and /k/ in intervocalic position.

[f], [θ] and [ç] ~ [x] are allophones of /p/, /t/ and /k/ before other consonants. [ç] is used after front vowels; [x] after back vowels.

[ɾ] is an allophone in /r/ in all positions - the usage depends on the speaker.

Stress
The stress pf Piaisian words usually falls on the ultimate syllable. It shifts to thw penultimate if the ultimate is short and the penultimate is long.