Denobulan/Language

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