Otrainste

Setting
=Phonology=

Gemination
All Otrainste consonants can be geminated (lengthened). This is represented by doubling the letter used to pronounce it. Geminate /j/ often becomes rendered as [ʝ], or even [ʑ], and geminate /ʟ/ often becomes the cluster [ʟɣ].

Consonants with Ambiguous Status
There are a couple of consonants which have an ambiguous phonemic status in Otrainste. Whether they should be regarded as phonemes in there own right, or as mere allophones of Otrainste phonemes, is still being considered.

The Velar Approximant [ɰ] appears as both the syllable-final allophone of the phoneme /ʟ/, and as the allophone of /g/ in positions following a vowel and preceding a consonant. However, the fact that it appears as an allophone of /ʟ/ has meant that it forms minimal pairs with /g/, a consonant that it would otherwise be in complimentary distribution with. For example in the word pal [p​ɐɰ] "bad" (where the [ɰ] is a result of the phoneme /ʟ/), as opposed to pag [pɐg] "dog" (where the word-final /g/ does not lenit to [ɰ] because it doesn't precede another consonant). /ʟ/ however, never contrasts with [ɰ], so the status is still vague.

The two labiodental fricatives /f/ and /v/, as in English foot and very respectively, are not native phonemes to Otrainste, which has the phonemes /ɸ/ and /β/ (represented by the letters ‹ph› and ‹bh›) instead. However, words borrowed from other languages containing /f/ and /v/ usually retain their spellings (‹f› and ‹v›, as they are not used elsewhere in Otrainste) - keeping them distinct from ‹ph› and ‹bh›, leading some speakers to pronounce them differently from eachother. This can lead some speakers to have minimal pairs between words such as native phrank "apple" versus foreign frank "franc".

L-Sounds
Otrainste does not have a simple(alveolar) /l/ sound as in English. Instead, it has a palatal /ʎ/ (called "light l") and a velar /ʟ/ (called "dark l"). Neither sound are found in English, but they can be approximated by the sounds in all year ("light l") and the pronunciation of the English 'dark l' as in call ("dark l").

Hard & Soft and Light & Dark Sounds
In Otrainste terminology, 'hard' sounds refer to alveolar consonants, and 'soft' sounds refer to their post-alveolar or palatal counterpart - see the table below:

The Soft Sounds are represented in writing by the Hard Sound letter followed by ‹i› when before a vowel ‹si zi ci xi ni›, and by the Dotted Letters ‹ṡ ż ċ ẋ› when before a consonant and at the end of a word. As Soft N cannot be found before a consonant or at the end of a word, there is no Dotted N letter, just a ‹ni› digraph before vowels. The distinction between hard and soft sounds is very important, as there is at least one minimal pair for every Hard-Soft companion.

The Light-Dark distinction is slightly different. The light-dark distinction is only for the language's two l-like sounds, in which Light L refers to palatal /ʎ/, and Dark l refers to velar /ʟ/.

Phonotactics

 * The sounds Light L /ʎ/ and Soft N /ɲ/ cannot appear anywhere other than syllable initial position before another vowel, as in liák [ʎak] "fine" and nieṡ [ɲɛʃ] "no, not".
 * The hard sounds /s z ts dz/ cannot appear before the vowel /i/ except in foreign words, only their soft counterparts /ʃ ʒ tʃ dʒ/ can.

Vowels
Otrainste has a ten-vowel system.

=Writing=

Unusual Letters
There are five letters of the basic latin alphabet that are not regularly used in Otrainste: ‹f h q v w›. They are all used however to some degree in Foreign words adopted into the alphabet - as in ‹finn› "Finnish", ‹hélo› "halo", ‹quázár› "quasar", ‹vélo› "bicycle" and ‹watt› "watt". Although the foreign letters ‹f v w› tend to be retained (as the sounds they represent are not found in native Otrainste), the position of ‹h› and ‹q› is more vague and is up to the choice of the writer. ‹h› is usually silent, so can be simply ommitted, for example ‹élo› instead of ‹hélo› "halo". ‹q› represents the same sound as the native letter ‹k›, so is often replaced with it, for example ‹kuázár› instead of ‹quázár› "quasar".