Ezu

Ezu Ezyun shüfü
Type
Synthetic
Alignment
marked Nominative
Head direction
left
Tonal
Yes
Declensions
Yes
Conjugations
Yes
Genders
No
Nouns decline according to...
Case	Number
Definiteness	Gender
Verbs conjugate according to...
Voice	Mood
Person	Number
Tense	Aspect

General Information

Ezu (natively Ezyun shüfü [ə́zjūn ʃỳfȳ], lit. "language to the Ezu")

Phonology

Consonants

	labial	alveolar	palatal	velar	radical
nasal	m	n		ŋ
plosive	p p’	t t’		k k’
affricate		ts dz	tʃ dʒ
fricative	f	s z	ʃ		h (ħ)
approximant	ʋ		j		ʁʷ
flap		ɺ

Vowels

	front	central	back
high	i y		ɯ u
mid		ə
low		ä

Phonotactics

(C)V(n, f, s, z, ʃ, ħ, ɺ)

• minimal syllable: ǘ /ý/ "or"
• maximal syllable: jï̀n /dzɯ̀n/ "the berry"

Tone

There are merely three tonemes: high start, mid start, and low start. They each tend to surface as contour tones from the tone of the current syllable to the tone of the following syllable.

• ex. íkxǜ /ík’ỳ/ [i˥˩k’y˩] "the symbol"

Transliteration

Letter	a	c	ch	e	f	h	i	ï	j	jh
Sound	/a/	/ts/	/tʃ/	/ə/	/f/	/h/	/i/	/ɯ/	/dz/	/dʒ/
Letter	k	kx	l	m	n	ŋ	p	px	s	sh
Sound	/k/	/k’/	/ɺ/	/m/	/n/	/ŋ/	/p/	/p’/	/s/	/ʃ/
Letter	t	tx	u	ü	v	w	y	z	-	-
Sound	/t/	/t’/	/u/	/y/	/ʋ/	/w/	/j/	/z/	-	-

Declension

Nouns decline for three numbers (singular, dual, and plural) and five cases (absolutive, nominative, genitive-dative, ablative, and locative).

Nominative

If a noun ends in a low tone, raise it to a high tone. Otherwise, some nouns receive an ending -na and others replace any final vowel with -á and flip all other tones.

Genitive-Dative

ending -(e)n

Ablative

ending -(e)sh

Syntax

Word order is Topic-comment, Verb-final, and strictly left-branching.