Denobulan/Language

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An example of the Denobulan script.

Denobulan (/də'noʊ.bju.læn/) is the primary language spoken by Denobulans along with Federation Standard. Most Denobulans who grew up on the planet speak both the languages. The language has been heavily influenced by Federation Standard since the planet's entry to the Federation; some Denobulans prefer speaking Standard, even among other Denobulans. However, as part of the Federation, the number of non-native speakers has grown significantly.

Disclaimer

The language was seen and heard on-screen, but the writers have confirmed that those words and sentences had no system or grammar. The version of the language delved into here is merely inspired by what was seen, but is more realistic. The two versions will be incompatible. Please reach out to User:Pholin before editing anything major.

Throughout this page, the International Phonetic Alphabet is used. For more information about that, please visit this article.

Phonology

For a non-linguistic summary of the phonology, click here.

Consonants

The following table shows the consonant phonemes of Denobulan:

Consonants	Bilabial	Alveolar	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	p b	t d	k g	ʔ
Pre-nasalized pl.		ⁿd	ᵑg
Affricates		t͡s d͡z
Nasal	m	n	ŋ
Fricative	ɸ	s		h
Approximant	β	ɹ	j
Lateral appr.		l

If there are two consonants in one cell, the left one is voiceless and the right one voiced.

Notes

• Unlike Federation Standard, Denobulan doesn't aspirize its voiceless plosives. However, in some non-native dialects aspirization can be found.
• The glottal plosive is only placed between two of the same vowel phones.
• The pre-nasalized plosives are a relic of Denobulan's proto-language and can only be found word-initially nowadays. Second language speakers often struggle pronouncing these two phonemes.
• The two affricates are often pronounced as the palato-alveolar affricates [t͡ʃ] and [d͡ʒ] due to Federation Standard influences.
• There are no voiced fricatives in Denobulan, although some speakers pronounce fricatives between two vowels as voiced phonemes, which are written [β], [z] and [ɦ].
• The bilabial fricative sounds like Federation Standard's [f] but does not include the lower teeth touching the upper lip.
• The bilabial approximant sounds like Federation Standard's [w] but does not include pushing the tongue back.

Vowels

The following table shows the vowel phonemes of Denobulan:

Vowels	Front	Back
Open	i	u
Open-mid	e
Mid	ɛ	ɔ
Close		ɑ