#phonology

Consonants

The consonants are not out of the ordinary, with four-ish places of articulation, each of which have nasals, and two unvoiced plosives, with aspirated and unaspirated versions.

/l̥/ is a true lateral approximant, but in most dialects becomes a lateral fricative instead.

/j/ and /ʑ/ are allophones, with /ʑ/ replacing /j/ at the start of a word.

/h/ is separate because it's a little confusing and I'm not quite sure which category it belongs in.

while creating this, I forgot /g/ which evolved from /kʷ/

Vowels

Vowels are relatively simple as well. There are six base vowels (ä i u e ɔ y) and unrounded versions of /u/, and /y/ appear when these vowels end a word, while a final /ɔ/ becomes /ə/.

There are four diphthongs: /ei̯/, /au̯/, /ai̯/, /ɔu̯/

Tones

(Recieved) Early Tǎn Phǒkán has a very high number of tones, with three level and four contour.

˥    ˧    ˨   ˨˥ ˩˧ ˥˨ ˥˧

This high number of possible vowels and learning difficulty is why Early Tǎn Phǒkán speakers prided themselves on their language and their dialect, one of the few to maintain all seven, with most other dialects losing the mid level tone or undergoing tone gliding in which ˥  became ˧˥, for example.

This is why this specific dialect remained as the language of science and culture among the Phǒkán people - only the intelligent could be expected to learn it.

Orthography

You might note that I write allophones the same, and this does mean some words such as /ʑə˥/, "to be", as jó

This is my third and hopefully last draft of my phonology, and it's still pretty messy.... if you have any questions, suggestions, or criticism, please feel free to let me know!