The Language of the Ethuveraz (TGE)

[extrapenguin]

A collection of The Goblin Emperor stuffs, originally published elsewhere, being added here for the benefit of my readers. These mostly from my alt-tumblr, csathu-athmaza 

Phonology

The Consonants

	Labial	Dental	Alevolar	Post-Alevolar	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n
Plosive	p	t			k
	b	d
Affricative				t͡ʃ <ch>
Fricative		θ <th>	s	ʃ <sh>	x <kh>	h
			z	ʒ <zh>
Liquid	ʋ <v>	r
		l

Note that /ʋ/ and /r/ are merely best guesses. Based on the lack of /f/ and /w/, I guessed that <v> was the apprroximant /ʋ/ rather than the fricative /v/. I have also marked <r> as the trill /r/, though it could just as well be any other rhotic.

The values given here are the IPA values guessed from the descriptions of the sounds. If the sound is spelled with anything other than the IPA letter, the spelling used is presented in <angle brackets>.

The Vowels

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Mid	e̞	o̞
Open	a

+ the diphthongs ai and ei, probably /ai e̞i/ or /aɪ e̞ɪ/.


Attested clusters
Broken down into initial and medial.

Initial
Attested
br cl cs csth dr st
Save for st, all of these start with a plosive, and then a liquid or a fricative. I would consider csth to be an archaicism, since it is found only in the name of the deity Cstheio, and furthermore is the only triconsonantal cluster attested. (Also, /sθ/ is hard to pronounce/.)

Speculative
Assuming that PLOSIVE + LIQUID is a combination that is always allowed, we can add in
pr tr cr pl bl tl dl.
For clusters involving s, I would assume that voicing assimilation is in effect, ie only p t c participate. We have two hypothetical series:
s + PLOSIVE: sp sc
PLOSIVE + s: ps ts.
(Alternatively, we could have ones involving z, that is, zb zd bz dz, though given that /z/ is rare in the corpus, I would use these with care.)

Medial
Attested
lt lc lch lm ln lv lth lsh lzh
mb md mn mr
nd nm nn nth ns nsh
rb rch rm rn rr rv rth rs
thm thv
st sm sth
vr
Most of these consist exclusively of liquids, nasals, and fricatives. The ones that contain a plosive or affricative have it as the second component: lt lc lch mb md nd rch st. Note the lack of sh-, kh-, z- and zh-series. The nasal series seem not to have unvoiced plosives, though they have unvoiced fricatives.

Speculative
For the m- and n-series, I have only presented those where the second component shares the point of articulation. (I realize that this is a completely arbitrary decision on my part, but crosslinguistically homorganic NASAL + STOP clusters are one of the most common types.) For the fricative-initial, I have not included any with dissimilar voicing (sd or its ilk). Clusters in (brackets) are combinations (eg LIQUID + NASAL) not attested in that initial consonant’s series, but attested in other series where the initial consonant is of similar type.
lp ll lr ls lz lkh
mp mm mv
nt nch nr nz nzh
rp rt rd rc rl rz rsh rzh rkh
thp tht thc thn thl thr (thh ths thsh thkh)
sp sch sc sn (sl sr) ss ssh skh
vl vv*

The even more hypothetical sh-, kh-, z- and zh-series:
shp sht shc shm shn shl shr shv
khp kht khc khm khn khl khr khv
zb zd zm zn zl zr zv
zhb zhd zhn zhl zhr zhv

* I have argued that v is an approximant. If it patterns with the liquids l r, the clusters vp vb vt vd vc vm vn vth vs vs vsh vzh vkh sv are also possible. If it patterns with the nasals m n, the clusters vb vd vm vn vth vs vsh sv are also possible.