Pkalho-Kolo 2

On this page : Phonology/Phonotactics and a brief English to Pkalho-Kölo Word-List. (Back to Basic Grammar on Pkalho-Kolo ) (Further Grammar on Pkalho-Kolo 3 ) Translated text on Pkalho-Kölo/A. )

I. A. Consonants
Pkalho-Kölo has 24 consonants, in the following order: It is difficult to fit them neatly on a table:

pk is a sound peculiar to the city of Pkalho, double-articulated, a simultaneous implosive p and plosive k. Form the lips to pronounce a p and the back of the tongue to pronounce a k. The lips open with a pop, and at the same moment the k is released. pkw is the labialised version. fh is the corresponding fricative, which could be written /fç/

lh is an interdental lateral, close in sound to /ð/ Compared to "l" it sounds "dark" i.e. velarised.

cw is not simply labialised c. The tip of the tongue should press against the back of the bottom teeth, while the the top of the tongue touches the hard palate. fw is the corresponding fricative: it could be written /ɕʷ/ but the tongue should be in the same position as for cw. Why do I write "fw"? I was trying to avoid diacritical marks, and I didn’t like sw, chw or xw.

n is /n/ between vowels and before t, c, y and n. Before or after any other consonant it is /ŋ/

hw is the voiceless fricative w that we used to have in English in words like “hwæt"

Missing from the chart, which is already too big:

v is self-explanatory

rl at the beginning of a word, at the end of a syllable or after a consonant is /ɭ / the post-alveolar lateral of Dravidian and Australian Aboriginal languages. Between vowels it is /r/ an alveolar flap; I write "r" at the end of a syllable for brevity. Rl- retains its word-initial sound even if a prefix or aspectual extension is added.

pr could be written /pɭ / Native speakers regard it, like pk, as a single sound. The tongue should press against the back of the alveolar ridge, and release as the lips open.

I. B. Vowels
ä is the low rounded back vowel in British English “swan”. ë is a mid-central vowel, similar to the vowel in British English "her" but with the tongue drawn further back.

There are twelve diphthongs, six “like” (rounded + rounded, unrounded + unrounded) and six “unlike” (one rounded, one unrounded.)

II. Phonotactics
1. All root words end in a vowel

2. Syllables can end only in a vowel or the consonants m, n, rl, lh, or l.

3. A syllable can contain a diphthong or a final consonant, but not both. The exception is when a one-syllable word containing a diphthong takes the relative suffix in its reduced form -n, or the -n of n-conjunctives.

4. Words do not begin with a diphthong, though three words, au, ea and ui consist of a diphthong.

5. Words beginning with a vowel have glottal onset. Elision occurs only when the neutral demonstratives e and o follow the suffixes -la, -rë or -pë. Thus iturë en, (someone) said the following, becomes itur'en.

(Also, the word erä, person, human being, loses its first vowel in compound words: velya (to play music) - velyarä (musician), kaulo (garden) - kaulorä (gardener). The word for ten, thilä, also loses its last vowel before ea, one: thilea, eleven; heru thilea, forty-one.)

6. When a word beginning with a vowel takes a directional prefix, or is extended by aspectual stem-modification, an epenthetic r is inserted. Thus olkwela (it resembles) - pkärolkwela (they resemble each other); ilurë (a light shone) - yërilurë (a light flashed for a moment). Word-initial rl keeps its pronunciation /ɭ / even after a prefix, as noted above.

Minor points: after m, the consonants k and kw are realised as pk and pkw. The sequences m+kw and m+pkw I always write mkw, regardless of the original script. After m, r and l the consonant hw becomes the labialised form of the bilabial fricative, /ɸʷ/, an allophone that occurs only in this context. The sequence l+hw I write lphw, to distinguish it from the sequence lh+w. The double consonants mm, nn, rll and ll occur frequently: doubled lh ought also to occur, but it seems to have been replaced by the rather rare sequence lh+th, which I write lth.

III. Intonation.
Unlike English, Pkalho-Kölo does not have word-stress: each syllable is pronounced with equal weight, allowing for natural variation. It does however have pitch accent: accented syllables are pronounced at a higher pitch. Three rules roughly cover this:

I. Directional prefixes have an accent which they only rarely lose.

II. One-syllable root words do not normally have an accent.

III. Two and three-syllable root words have an accent on the first syllable, which they lose when immediately preceded by a directional prefix.

IV. If two or three two-syllable modifiers precede a two-syllable word with a suffix, the second word loses the accent on its first syllable. If two two-syllable words precede a one-syllable word with a suffix, neither modifier loses its accent. If three two-syllable modifiers precede a one-syllable word with a suffix, the first three syllables are all accented, but none of the rest.

Actually there's a bit more to it than that, but that’s enough to be going on with.

(A translated text on Pkalho-Kölo/A)

I'm going to upload a couple of scans of Pkalho-Kölo in its own writing system. These were written a few years ago and the language has changed slightly, but they show what the script looks like.