Cuinaom

Setting
Cuinaom (IPA: Ku̯inao̯m) is an a-priori language created by John Stevens. It is spoken by a clan of 200 gnomes who live in the forests of Siberia. Please also see John Stevens' other conlang, Nuktaq (http://conlang.wikia.com/wiki/Nuktaq).

Phonology
Cuinaom has 14 consonant phonemes, seven vowels and 23 diphthongs. Its consonant inventory includes an extremely unusual sound, the voiceless bidental non-sibilant fricative.

Consonants
Cuinaom has the following 14 consonant phonemes:

Vowels
Cuinaom has the following seven vowels:

Diphthongs
Cuinaom has the following 23 diphthongs: /ei̯ eɨ̯ e̯a eo̯ eu̯ əi̯ əo̯ əu̯ ai̯ ae̯ aɨ̯ ao̯ au̯ oi̯ o̯e oɨ̯ o̯ə o̯a u̯i u̯e u̯ə u̯a u̯o/

Allophony
/s/ becomes voiced to [z] and /l/ becomes a tap [ɾ] when appearing morpheme-medially between two vowels. They are /s/ and /l/ when adjacent to a consonant or when morpheme-final. Neither phoneme occurs morpheme-initially. There isn't much allophony other than this. /h/ may have palatal frication when occurring after /i/, and may have velar frication after /u/. /m/ may become labio-dental before /f/. There is little to no allophony in the vowel system.

Phonotactics
Syllable structure is CV(C), where "C" stands for consonant and "V" stands for vowel or diphthong. Open syllables are about three times as common as closed syllables. Morphemes do not begin in the consonants /s ɬ l/. The consonants /ɓ ɗ h/ are restricted to the syllable onset. Due to the CV(C) syllable structure, clusters of adjacent vowels are not possible, and consonant clusters are only possible across syllable boundaries and do not exceed two consonants in length. While a large range of consonant clusters are possible across morpheme boundaries, there are several restrictions regarding which consonant clusters may occur within a morpheme. For instance, a (voiceless) plosive may not be followed by a voiced consonant, and a fricative may not be followed by another fricative, an implosive or a nasal. In existing morphemes, the following consonant clusters are found: /pt pk ph̪͆ ps pɬ tp tk kp kt kf kh̪͆ ks kɬ ft fk fl h̪͆p h̪͆t h̪͆k h̪͆l sp st sk sl ɬp ɬt ɬk mp mɓ mh̪͆ ms mɬ mh ml nt nɗ ns nɬ nh nl ŋk ŋh̪͆ ŋs ŋɬ ŋh ŋl lp lt lk lɓ lɗ lf ls lh lm ln/.

Orthography
Cuinaom is written in the Latin script. Its alphabet is entirely transparent, with one symbol corresponding to one sound. The phoneme /s/ is spelled as  when realized with the [z] allophone, and the phoneme /l/ is spelled as  when realized with the [ɾ] allophone. The tables below show the spelling of each consonant sound and each vowel. Dipthongs are spelled accordingly with whichever vowels combine to form the diphthong. For instance, the diphthong /e̯a/ is spelled  and the diphthong /oɨ̯/ is spelled (the vowel /ɨ/ is spelled ).

Basic grammar
Coming soon.