Leerish

'''The creator of Leerish, Aryo Nazaradeh, asks of all not to alter this page in any way. ''' The Leerish language is still undergoing construction of its foundation. Some details may be inconsistent. Comments and concerns are welcome. Seriously though, if you edit this page without my permission, I will find you... Leerish (natively lheere [ˈɬəɦəɾə]) is an experimental language, created in 2015 by Aryo Nazaradeh, based on the idea of having only one vowel. The language was first introduced in its proto stage by Nazaradeh on /r/conlangs under the username /u/the-postminimalist, on June 4th, 2015.

Leerish is an SOV, head-final language with the use of postpositions. Its vocabulary is heavily based on Iranian languages, such as Persian, Balochi, and Avestan. Other words are entirely artificial, like yee (IPA [ˈjəɦə]; English: to be).

Inventory
The Leerish language contains one vowel /ə/, and 28 consonants. Unlike the majority of languages, Leerish contains no nasal phonemes or allophones.

Proto-Leerish
The short-lived Proto-Leerish (natively lheeri [ˈɬəːɾə̤]) had a few differences, mainly in inventory. The vowel would appear as either oral e /ə/, with the addition of a long vowel ee /əː/ (which later became a two-syllable /əɦə/), a breathy vowel i /ə̤/, and a creaky vowel a /ə̰/. In the very early stages of Proto-Leerish, the vowel was a front central /e/ instead of the mid central vowel it is now. Consonant differences would include /v/ instead of the current /β/, as well as the lack of /b/, /p͡ɸ/, /b͡β/, /d͡z/, /ɡ͡ʟ̝/, /ɮ/, /ʝ/, /ʁ/, and /ɦ/. These letters were added to compensate for the loss of the breathy and creaky vowels, as well as to make the consonantal inventory more natural and less random.

Chart
Leerish can be written in one of two possible scripts: the Latin script, and the Leerish script. The Latin variant includes 17 letters and 11 multigraphs, each representing one unique phoneme. The Leerish script includes 14 letters, most of which can be "squished" together to act like multigraphs.
 * 1) 1 never appears at the beginning of a word.

Allophonic variants

 * The vowel /ə/ elongates before the alveolar flap and the voiced uvular fricative /ɾ, ʁ/ when either-or occures in the syllable coda.
 * The alveolar flap /ɾ/ becomes a trill [r] when it occures at the beginning of a word (more specifically when preceded by a pause / no other words), or as the second consonant of a syllable onset.
 * The alveolar flap /ɾ/ devoices before voiceless consonants.
 * The liquids /ɾ, l/ devoice when it occures directly after a voiceless consonant in the same syllable.
 * The voiceless obstruents /p, t, k, p͡ɸ, t͡s, k͡ʟ̝̊/ become aspirated before vowels as well as word-finally, though aspiration is not contrastive.

Phonotactics
(C)(C)V(s)(C)(C), where (s) represents the optional sonorant consonant (/l/, /ɾ/, or /j/). The one to two consonants may follow the vowel whether or not the optional sonorant consonant is present.

Grammar
Under construction, please take the detour to your right.

Diacritical Latin script
For a balance between practicality and artistic purposes, while still keeping the capability of having the text typed out, Leerish may be written in the Latin script with macrons replacing  in the standard Latin script.

This script is as of yet a work in progress.

Leerish script
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