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Phonology

Inventory

Plosives:
/p t c k ʔ/

/b d ɟ g/

Nasals:
/m n ɲ/

Fricatives:
/f s ɕ h/

Affricates:
/ts dz tɕ dʑ/

Laterals:
/l ʎ/

(other) Approximants:
/w r j/

Vowels:


Diphthongs: [aɪ] [aʊ] [iu] [ui] [eɪ] [eʊ] [oɪ] [oʊ], spelled as one would expect

*Yes, I marked palatal consonants inconsistently. I would use <ľ> for /ʎ/, <ť> for /c/ etc. but I feel the diacritic is too hard to see. I might change my mind later, more likely to replace all carons with Xj
**because I'm tired of copying and pasting everything, X-SAMPA follows.

Phonotactics

(C)(approximant)V(C) syllable structure
* unvoiced stops (except glottal stop) and unvoiced affricates, /h/, /w/, and /j/ cannot appear in coda, and only stops (plosives, nasals) and affricates can form initial clusters with approximants

Lexical words almost always have both an onset and coda. (Because of this rule, /?/ codas are common.) Exceptions all have diphthongs, or I screwed up.

Allophony

Of Consonants:
/h/ and /?/ are not pronounced at the beginning of an utterance
/h/ is pronounced [C] before /i/
/L/ velarizes before /k/ and /g/ (sandhi)
Unvoiced plosives aspirate at the beginning of words
Fricatives in syllable codas are voiced except before fricative initials (sandhi)
/r/ realized as [4] in coda

Of Vowels:
With /?/ as initial, nucleus vowel is lower in pitch (and farther back if it is /a/)

Reduction: occurs in unstressed syllables.
/i/ =
/u/ =
/e/ = [E]
/o/ = [O]
/a/ = [6] or [@] (free variation)

Alphabet/Easy Pronunciation Guide

*I'm lazy, so the alphabet is ordered based on types of phonemes... not very natural, but I have no con-culture. Also, note on pronunciations: these are just approximations of the IPA values given above. I speak, I think, a standard TV American dialect, and my Spanish pronunciation is mostly north Mexican and somewhat gringa from lack of practice. Where no explanation is given, I didn't think it was necessary.

A - as Spanish "a"; somewhere between English cat and cot
E - as Spanish "e" but a bit closer to "i"
I - Spanish "i"; English "ee"
O - as in Spanish "o" but closer to "u"
U - as in Spanish "u"
P - ...
T - ...
Tj - unvoiced plosive like pronounced about where the consonant "y" is in English
K - ...
' - Glottal stop. Like a pause... or sometimes final "t" in English, when not pronounced
B - ...
D - ...
Dj - as , but voiced
G - ...
M - ...
N - ...
Ň - like Spanish "ñ" or English onion
F - ... As in English, not Japanese (or Spanish?); labiodental
S - ...
Š - like "sh" in Japanese and Mandarin (simultaneously pronounce a "sh" sound and the palatal "h" in hue)
H - like English "h"
Ts - like "ts" in Japanese or "z" in German
Dz - above but voiced; "dz"
Tš - like "ch" in Japanese; see Š
Dž - above but voiced
L - ...
Lj - like "ll" in Castilian Spanish (?), or like "l" pronounced where "y" would be. Or like a cluster
W - like English "w"
R - trilled r
Y - like English "y", but strictly palatal, not velar or close

Grammar (Syntax): pronouns, articles, particles, common auxiliaries, etc.

Personal pronouns

First and second person pronouns have three forms (grammatical, informal, formal), and the informal and formal forms are not a closed class: other words can be used for address to be more formal or intimate, though the forms given are much more common. Grammatical forms have a special use in relative clauses, and are never used to talk about or address someone.

1st. dje (informal), goň dai (formal), lau (grammatical)
2nd. gu (informal), pweg (formal), te (grammatical)
3rd. 'i (animate), dža (inanimate), grammatical forms are the same

Plural forms are formed by following the pronoun with the particle "lje" or (less commonly, and not at all for third person forms) with a plural article. (Grammatical forms do not take this particle or any article.)

Some less common forms: gwei: informal, slightly condescending 2nd person singular form (takes articles and lje); tšar: informal, quite rude 1st person singular form (does not take lje or articles; is actually derived from the article tša).

Other pronouns/Demonstratives

The basic demonstratives are ša (this), ňo (that, medial), and ki (that or yonder, distal), which are both the demonstrative determiners and pronouns, as in English. A rhyming example: Ňo myer ya wer (he) (that river NOM green (is)) "That river is green"; Ňo ya myer wer (he) (that NOM river green (is)) "That is a green river".

The determiners above can be used to form phrases that I probably should have come up with distinct forms for: ša yeb means "this place" or "here".

Some words that can be used to form the equivalents of some common demonstratives (here, thus, why, etc.) are listed here: dai' (person), yeb (place), tswa' (period of time), tsin (manner, method, path); 'a (what), en (not, no), tei (all, every), ňi (one, the "some" in "somebody" etc.).

As modifiers generally follow nouns:
Sa tsin "this way"; "thus"
Tswa' en "never"; "at no time"
Yeb ňi "sometime" (not ňi yeb, "one time", because numerals normally precede nouns)

Articles

Ňeu 'ar requires all nouns to be marked with a determiner or quantifier. This is the only way to indicate regular (not associative) plurality, and all the distinctions here are mandatory.

Tša: definite singular article ("the" or "el", singular)
Tšom: definite plural article ("the" or "los", plural)
Hi: indefinite singular article ("a" or "un", singular)
Um: indefinite plural article (like above but plural; not quite "some" or "unos"; the equivalent in English may lack an article)
Bou: partitive "singular" article (used as English "some", "some of"; "indefinite quality of a mass noun", says Wikipedia; the equivalent in English may lack an article)
Mo: "partitive plural" article (has the sense of "a few"; not really partitive)

Associative plural

The particle used to mark associative plurality is lje. This is the kind of plural marked by Japanese "-tachi" and Mandarin "-们", meaning something like "... and such". It is usually used with people and personal pronouns (for example, Sonya lje "Sonia and her friends/group"; gu lje "you and your people", "you (plural)"). Only very rarely would it be used for animals, and never would it be used with inanimate objects.

Basic copulas

He is the copula for basically everything but location; it corresponds to English "is" mostly and is used with relationships such as "A=B". This may be omitted when the meaning would be clear without it, (but omission is informal) and is always omitted when the sentence is a simple noun+following predicate adjective statement.
Ta is the copula for location and takes the location as its object: 'i ya ki yeb ta (3P NOM yonder place is.at) would mean "he/she is over there." A postposition with the object is optional: the above could also be 'i ya ki yeb su ta (3P NOM yonder place inside is.at), and mean more specifically, "He/she is inside that.distal place." When the preposition is omitted, a general at/in/on/near relationship is assumed.
**Med is the verb meaning "to exist". He is never used to express this meaning. Dje ya tai', ša tsin dje ya med, "I think, therefore I exist."

Negation

The word used for negation is en. It is placed after what it negates and acts as an auxiliary verb. It is a can be moved around freely to negate any word. (So, en could theoretically negate itself, but not the particle lje or an article.)

Questions

Word order does not change in questions. The question word/phrase occupies the place it would have in a normal sentence. Questions are not marked when a question word is used, but in yes or no questions, the interjection so (yes; right) may appear at the end of the question. En (no) could appear instead at the end of the sentence if the answer is expected to be no.

Postpositions, conjunctions

Postpositions

ga: at/in/on. Also used for time (in January, at this time, on some date, optionally)
na: to, towards, into; also indirect object marker (to/for sth.)
kyo: from, away from
su: inside
woi: outside
pro: above, on
gye: below, under
ri: by, alongside, near; about (concerning)

dem: with (not in the sense of "I wrote it with a pen" as below, but "I had a pen with me")
mai: by means of


Conjunctions

džo: and (or also, when there is only one noun as object); not used for verbs or clauses. May be omitted, especially when only two objects are involved.
me: and, then (used only with verbs with the same grammatical subject: 'i ya tadz ku me kau ku "he/she subject stand PERF and fall PERF)
oi': and; but; then. Used to connect clauses and verbs whose subject is different.
soi: if (actually precedes clause); this is also a common filler word featured in the poll answer (like "ummm...")
two: because (also precedes clause)

Full vocabulary, alphabetized in near-English order.

(coming soon..? I might give a link to Google documents or a media-download site for a document.)

(reserved)

Common phrases and interjections

None yet... People are heard greeting each other with Mil ga pweg! ( (1P.sg) see CONT 2P.formal.sg ) and Tšar kyo tel ku! ( 1P.rude.sg from move PFV ).

So, guys... What do you think? I know it's far from complete, but besides getting the vocabulary together and ordered properly, I'm not sure what to do. As always, I'm already tired of this language and want to make a verb-initial head-marking language with loads of weird morphology and noun classes and no palatal stuff... confused