Denobulan/Language: Difference between revisions

There are eight vowels in Denobulan. The language also distinguishes some vowels by length. Long vowels are spoken for a longer amount of time and sometimes also differ in quality. The language has no diphthongs, meaning there can be only one vowel per syllable. The following tables shows the vowel phonemes of Denobulan:

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! Short

! Front

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! Long

! Front

The following is a pronunciation guide for the Denobulan phonetic inventory. The examples do not always correspond to the Denobulan pronunciation exactly, as some sounds are not in Federation Standard.

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! style="text-align: center;" | IPA

! style="text-align: center;" | Latin

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! style="text-align: center;" | IPA

! style="text-align: center;" | Latin

This can also be visualized in a table.

!  

! Subject

In Denobulan, nouns are categorized in a grammatical gender system based on animacy. A noun will always be either animate (<span style="font-variant: small-caps">an</span>) or inanimate (<span style="font-variant: small-caps">inan</span>). Nouns are animate when they relate to (parts of) people, animals, plants or other (things perceived as) living beings. Nouns are inanimate when they relate to concrete or abstract objects, natural forces or ideas. Often though, a noun is found in an unexpected gender. Therefore, a speaker of the language memorizes the gender alongside the meaning of a word. The gender of a word also changes its declension.

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! Singular

! Animate

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! Plural

! Animate