Cefh language

**Cefh** is the most common language among humanoids. Its origin is beyond investigation, but it undoubtedly carries the most cutting-edge technology, history and art of humanoids.

Cefh has tens of thousands of dialect variants, but there are two standard Cefh languages: serious standard language and informal standard language, which differ only in grammar and vocabulary.

## Consonants

Cefh has 26 consonants (not counting glottal stops and semivowels).

The n and ŋ at the end of a syllable are a pair of free variants that are not distinguished in Standard; but at the beginning of a syllable they are opposites.

Cefh is a rare language that does not have a bilabial stop and a lateral l. According to research, it is speculated that the triple opposition of p, pʰ, and b in ancient cefh may be finally devoiced into a labial fricative Φ.

In some dialects, mood environments, or depending on speaker differences, the labial-voiced fricative Φ/velar-uvular fricative x~χ is sometimes realized as the corresponding vibrato B/R. Some dialects have an extra phoneme of the alveolar trill r, but this feature is slowly disappearing; at the same time, many loanwords also have alveolar trill.

Cefh's labiodental fricative, labiodental affricative, alveopalatal plosive, alveopalatine fricative, and velar-uvula velar all have a triple opposition of "unaspirated-voiced-aspirated-voiced", but some studies have shown that the opposition between voicing and voicing may be weakening.

Cefh has a rare three-fricative opposition (throatal fricative, velar~uvular fricative, retroflex~hard palatal fricative), these fricatives rarely occur at the end of the syllable.

The voiced labiodental fricative v is sometimes realized as a labiodental nasal ɱ, which usually occurs in a nasal context.

ɥ is j in the rounded-lipped form.

### Geminates

Stops at the end of a syllable before another consonant (not nasal or fluid) do not distinguish between aspirated and voiceless (t/d, ʈ~c/ɖ~ɟ, k~q/g~ɢ), they Unified into the corresponding silent and deblocking form; but if it is followed by a pause as a sign of semantic group separation, it will be uniformly realized as a clear aspirated form; if it is followed by a vowel, nasal or stream sound, then it will be realized as a voiced aspirated form .

Cefh allows up to two consecutive consonants, where the affricate is treated as one consonant, and the near consonant is treated as a semi-vowel.

## Vowels

Cefh language has 9 vowels, among which there is opposition in ɑ, ɑ¹ is a back low vowel with a very high opening of the lips, and ɑ² is a back low vowel with tense lips, and the lip muscles are tense and stretched to both sides vowel. However, some scholars believe that the difference between the two vowels is not only the lip shape, but the tongue position of ɑ² is higher and more forward.

## Orthography

Cefh can be written in various scripts, but almost 87% of literature and everyday documents are written in the 30 *Nies* alphabet.

At the same time, for the convenience of readers, we have formulated a set of transliteration schemes for Latin letters:

* Nasal m/m/, n/n/, ng/ŋ~ɴ/
* Alveopalatal stops t/t/, th/tʰ/, d/d/
* velar-uvula stop c/ʈ~c/, l/ɖ~ɟ/
* Alveopalatal stops k/k/, kh/kʰ/, g/g/
* Glottal stop ’/ʔ/
* Frontal fricatives p/Φ/, f/f/, fh/fʰ/, v/v/, s/s/, z/z/
* Back fricative x/ç/, r/x~χ/, h/h/
* Labial-dental affricative bf/pf/, pf/pfʰ/, bv/bv/
* Alveopalatal affricatives q/ts/, qh/tsʰ/, j/dz/
* Upper vowels i/i/, y/y/, w/ɯ/, u/u/
* Middle vowels oe/ø~œ/, e/ə/, o/o~ɔ/
* Lower vowels a/ɑ¹/, ae/ɑ²/

## Stress

Cefh is a stress-syllable language, and its stress is divided into grammatical stress and emphatic stress.

In two-syllable words or multi-syllable words, if they start with a vowel (glottal stop), the stress is placed on the penultimate syllable. But in two-syllable non-vowel-beginning words, the stress is placed on the last syllable; in multi-syllable non-vowel-beginning words, the stress is placed on the first closed syllable.