| bilabial | alveolar | postalveolar | palatal | velar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plosive | p / b | t / d | k / g | ||
| fricative | f / v | s / z | sh / zh | shj / zhj | x / gh |
| nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||
| approximant | w | r | j | ||
| lateral approximant | l |
"shj" and "zhj" are phonemically /Sj/ and /Zj/ but phonetically realized as /C/ and /J\/. "sj" and "zj" on the other hand are pronounced as distinct alveolar fricative + glide, not as palatal fricatives.
| front | back | |
|---|---|---|
| high | i | u |
| mid | e | o |
| low | ä | a |
In the one-character-per-phoneme orthography used in the plain text version of the lexicon, capital ASCII letters are used: G = gh, S = sh, Z = zh, N = ŋ, A = ä. Except for 'A' these are the characters' X-SAMPA values.
Every morpheme begins with exactly one fricative. A monosyllabic word's initial fricative may be followed by an optional plosive, nasal, or liquid (approximant), with some constraints on relative voicing and point of articulation; then a vowel; and an optional final plosive, nasal, or liquid.
In words of two or more syllables, medial clusters can have two nasals, liquids, or plosives, but not two plosives of different voicing or two instances of the same phoneme (gemination).
/w/ does not follow /o/ or /u/ at the end of a syllable, and /j/ does not follow /i/ at the end of a syllable. If an approximant (or any consonant) occurs between two vowels, it belongs to the following syllable; so /vnowem/ is legal because the /w/ goes with /e/.
Last updated March 2007