Tundrayan language

Tundrayan is a constructed language made by Sapphoenix for the Tundrayans, taking heavy inspiration from the Slavic languages.

## Phonology

#### Consonants

Tundrayan is notorious for having palatalised forms of almost every consonant phoneme present in it, alongside a deceptively large vowel inventory. Tundrayan has 28 to 29 distinct consonants, not counting the palatalised forms of all consonant phonemes except /j/, /w/, and /ʔ/.

/t̬ t̬ʲ k̬ k̬ʲ/, represented by the letters đ/ѳ and q/ҁ respectively, are "half-voiced" obstruents, where only one side of the syrinx is used to voice them. This leads to them sounding like being in between /t tʲ kʷ kᶣ/ and /d dʲ gʷ gᶣ/.

#### Vowels

Though upon listening Tundrayan may appear to have as many as 19 vowels, Tundrayan actually only has 9 common vowel phonemes (bolded and italicised), with the rest being merely allophonic*.*

Vowels
 Mid
 Open

## Orthography

#### Latin alphabet

Tundrayan can be written in a Latin alphabet as shown below:

#### Cyrillic alphabet

Tundrayan can also be written in a Cyrillic alphabet as shown below:

#### Hrtnaká alphabet

Tundrayan can also be written in its native alphabet, Hrtnaká, as shown below:

***WIP***

#### Pronunciation rules

The non-palatalising vowels are treated as their palatalising equivalents when preceded by /ɕ ʑ/. Since the umlaut vowels have no palatalising equivalent, they are treated exactly like their non-umlauted forms i.e. ***śa*** (***ща***) /ɕa/ and ***śä*** (***щѣ***) /ɕæ/ are both pronounced [ɕæ].

The consonants /ɫ/, /ʎ/, /m/, /mʲ/, /n/, /ɲ/, /ŋ/, /ŋʲ/, /r/, and /rʲ/ can act as syllabic consonants.

The consonants are palatalised ("flattened") after a palatalising vowel ⟨á, é, í, ó, ú, ĭ⟩ or ⟨я, е, и, ё, ю, ь⟩, with the exceptions of the hush sibilant fricatives and semivowel approximants. A good example is the series /na/, /ɲa/, /nja/, /ɲja/, spelt ⟨na, ná, nŭya, nĭya⟩ or ⟨на, ня, нъя, нья⟩.

Consonant assimilation occurs to an extent in Tundrayan. All obstruents except for /h/ and /ʔ/ are paired into voiced-unvoiced pairs.

Obstruents assimilate their voicings at the ends of words and after the last obstruent consonant in a cluster, except for when the obstruent is on its own as a word (many obstruents are at one point or another). For example, the word for ***to*** in Tundrayan is "k". Sonorants, alongside /h/ and /ʔ/, are unaffected by this.

Consonants also assimilate in palatalisation; but /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /ɕ/, /ʑ/ are always pronounced as they are and never assimilate in palatalisation. Being obstruents, they still assimilate in voicing. For example, ⟨s **g**la**š**nádĭ⟩ would be pronounced as if it were spelt ⟨s **k**la**š**ńatĭ⟩. Note that only the /n/ is palatalised, and the ***š*** remains /ʃ/ and does not get palatalised to /ɕ/.

The letters for /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /ɕ/, and /ʑ/ can only be followed by the vowel letters ⟨a, ä, e, i, î, o, ö, u, ü⟩ in Latin or ⟨а, е, і, o, у, ѵ, ы, ѣ, ѣ̈⟩ in Cyrillic. This is known as the *Hush Rule*. In names, the vowels ⟨ŭ⟩ and ⟨ĭ⟩ or ⟨ъ⟩ and ⟨ь⟩ are also allowed, though only ⟨šŭ žŭ śĭ źĭ⟩ may appear, unless the ⟨ś ź⟩ originate from ⟨sč šc šč⟩ or ⟨zj žj̈ žj⟩ respectively.

The letters ⟨ć, j́, ĺ, ń⟩ in the Latin alphabet are shorthand for ⟨cĭ, jĭ, lĭ, nĭ⟩ when not preceding a palatalising vowel. They are unofficial and created with analogy with ⟨ś⟩ and ⟨ź⟩, though often used.