Acarmar

&nbsp

Alphabet
/ʋ/ is . /ts/ is . Retroflex consonants are written as the alveolar equivalent + , even ɻ: .

Vowels
Acarmar vowels form rhotic/non rhotic pairs. The rhotic form is written with two dots over, so /ɑ˞/ is <ä>. Thus, the native spelling for Acarmar is Acämä (The English name is Acarmar to aid pronunciation).

Alphabet
The alphabet is abcdefgijklmnoprstuv.

 is used to form the retroflex consonants. Two dots over: <ë> is used to symbolize R-colored, acute <é> is used for stress (excluding 1st syllable, which is most common), and double acute <e̋ > is used for stressed rhotic vowels.

Phonotactics
Structure is CVC. All non-retroflex non-approximant consonants are allowed as the final; however, the initial and the verb are closely intertwined. The following table shows the possiblilities. "Sometimes" is only allowed when there is a non-rhotic vowel preceeding the non-retroflex consonant. example: Acämä  (IPA:/ 'atsɑ˞mɑ˞/) Legal combinations include /da/, /me/, /ʈʂu˞/. Illegal syllables are /ɖa/, /me˞/, /ʈʂu˞ɳ/.

Nouns
The main issue with nouns in Acämä is an unusual 3-way number system: Acämä distinguishes "One cat" from "Cats are cute" from "Cats are in my backyard"; that is, singluar from collective plural from finite plural. Acämä declines its nouns using a stem change in the last syllable. the rule is simple, although difficult to apply in real life: To make a noun plural, take the last vowel and raise it: /a/ would become /ɛ/, /ɛ/ would become /ɪ/. /ɪ/ or /u/ cannot be the last vowel in the singular. Then, collective plural uses the rhotic form, and finite plural uses the plain form. Examples:

There is one irregularity: if changing the non-rhotic to a rhotic creates an illegal syllable, as in latmët, then instead of the rhotic vowel, the collective would use the plain vowel plus ï, in a diphthong. Thus, latmeït.

Noun case is expressed using postpositions: Here is a list (remember they come AFTER the noun): Interesting things to notice: compare "trö" to English "to", and "de" to the Chinese "de." Purely coincidental.