Τëξëνι

Kxënt'exo phonology

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Kxënt'exo phonology is the system of sounds used in the pronunciation of the Kxënt'exo language.

This page reflects the pronunciation of Classical Kxënt'exo, there were various dialects of this language back when it was a living tongue, however this only focuses on the standard variety.

Kxënt'exo has 18 consonant sounds, and 9 vowel monophthongs, there are no diphthongs in the language.

Vowels

Front Central Back
High i ʉ ɯ u
Mid e ə ɵ o
Low a

Notes:

Consonants

Labial Alveolar Dorsal Uvular
Nasal m n (ŋ) (ɴ)
Ejective pʼ tʼ t͡sʼ kʼ
Stop p t k
Affricate t͡s k͡x
Fricative f s ɬ χ
Approximant w j (ɥ) ʀ

The symbols in parenthesis represent allophones, the allophony rules are as follows:

Other notes:

Stress

Stress in Kxënt'exo is lexical, that means that it isn't always predictable so it has to be memorized, though in most words it tends to be on the last syllable, and certain word endings indicate that the stress is probably in the second to last syllable.

In the proto stage of the language inflections and affixation could make the stress of the word move from its original position - since words were always stressed in the second to last syllable of the word - however that is no longer the case in the classical form of the language, if new affixes get added to a word the stress stays in the same place, which is why most dual forms of nouns tend to have penultimate stress.

Compound words keep the stress of the first word in the compound.

Loanwords that were borrowed during the proto stage of the language retain the typical stress pattern of Kxënt'exo, but words borrowed during the classical stage also borrow the stress pattern of the original word (though less educated speakers might pronounce most loanwords with word final stress to match the typical pattern).

Typically when a word ends in /wa/ /t͡sʼe/ or /χo/, or when a word is inflected for the dual number, the stress tends to be in the second to last position of the word (but not always), for example in Kxënt'exo /k͡xənˈtʼe.χo/.

Romanization

The romanization of Kxënt'exo is the use of the roman alphabet to write the Kxënt'exo language.

In universe Kxënt'exo is always spelled using the Standard Galactic Alphabet, so the romanization is not-canon to the worldbuilding of this project.

Romanized Kxënt'exo is only used in the real world for convenience, so that people who don't know how to read the Standard Galactic Alphabet are still able to get a rough idea of what Kxënt'exo words look like and sound like.

The standard romanization is as follows:

Letter IPA English approximation Notes
a a Like Received Pronunciation cat.
e e Like Australian English head. Pronounced like Spanish fe.
ë ə Like about. This is a fairly well known sound among linguistics enthusiasts because it's the most common vowel sound in English, it's even got its own name, it's called the "schwa".
f f Like full.
i i Similar to English sea. Like Spanish sí.
ï ɯ No English equivalent. Like Turkish kayık. Similar to an "oo" sound as in food but without pursing your lips.
k k Like lurk. This sound features no aspiration.
kx k͡x No English equivalent. Basically like the sound in lurk with the sound of Scottish English loch right after it. Kind of like pronouncing a "k" sound like in kiss but slowly and with emphasis.
k' kʼ No English equivalent. Like a regular "k" sound but while holding your breath, it comes out as a sharp noise, often used in beatboxing. There's an explanation of ejective consonants in this video.
lh ɬ No English equivalent. Like Welsh llan. Basically pronounced by having your tongue in the position to do an L sound but then blowing air out like you're trying to pronounce an H sound
m m (ɱ) Like moon. The allophone is pronounced with your bottom teeth touching your top lip, like an "f" sound.
n n (ŋ) (ɴ) Like noon. The allophones are pronounced like "ng" as in song, or sometimes a bit further back in the mouth depending on which consonant goes after.
o o Similar to Received Pronunciation caught. Like Spanish no.
ö ɵ Like Received Pronunciation foot. Like Swedish dum. Similar to "a" as in about but while pursing your lips.
p p Like lap. This sound features no aspiration.
p' pʼ No English equivalent. Like a regular "p" sound but while holding your breath, it comes out as a sharp noise, often used in beatboxing. There's an explanation of ejective consonants in this video.
r ʀ No English equivalent. Like German rot. To produce it the back of your tongue vibrates against your uvula.
s s Like soon.
t t Like bought. This sound features no aspiration.
t' tʼ No English equivalent. Like a regular "t" sound but while holding your breath, it comes out as a sharp noise, often used in beatboxing. There's an explanation of ejective consonants in this video.
ts t͡s Like cats. Like Japanese tsunami. This consonant doesn't appear at the beginning of syllables in English, it's similar to just a "t" and an "s" next to each other as in cats.
ts' t͡sʼ No English equivalent. Like a regular "ts" sound but while holding your breath, it comes out as a sharp noise, often used in beatboxing. There's an explanation of ejective consonants in this video.
u u Similar to General American food. Like Spanish tú.
ü ʉ Like Received Pronunciation food. Like Swedish ful. There is no easy equivalent in English, you can approximate this sound by pronouncing an "ea" sound as in sea but rounding your lips and then moving your tongue a bit further back into your mouth.
x χ No English equivalent. Like Castillian Spanish Don Juan. Pronounced by blowing air between the back of your tongue and the uvula.
y j (ɥ) Like yes. The allophone is pronounced like French lui, basically like saying y and w at the same time.

Since stress tends to be word-final it only ever needs to be marked when it appears elsewhere. In order to mark stress you add an acute ◌́ (or a double acute ◌̋ if the unstressed vowel has an umlaut ◌̈) to the letter.

Given the fact that the double acutes ◌̋ can be a pain to type for many and it doesn't render correctly in most fonts it can be replaced by a circumflex ◌̂ or even other diacritic marks.

Unstressed Stressed Alternative marking
a á
e é
ë e̋ ê
i í
ï i̋ î
o ó
ö ő ô
u ú
ü ű û

Since there aren't any words at the moment that differ only in stress (and when I write Kxënt'exo text I tend to provide a phonetic transcription anyway) the stress marking can be left out of the romanization altogether (it's also possible to guess where the stress is most of the time).

If it's not possible for you to type the special characters the stress marking can be replaced with underlining, bolding, italics or CAPITALIZATION, and the umlauts can be replaced by digraphs, perhaps something like ë > eh, ï > ih, ö > eu, ü > iu. To separate the digraphs from vowel hiatus an apostrophe can be inserted between the two vowels when they're not representing a single phoneme.

I will try to add stress marking to example words, sentences and translations I write so that you can know the exact pronunciation of a word without even having to look at the IPA (and because I have a custom keyboard layout that allows me to type double acutes easily), but don't feel pressured to do so if you wish to use this language, you can skip the stress marking if you want since most of the time it doesn't really matter.

The name of the language is usually typed as "Kxënt'exo" but the more detailed romanization would be "Kxënt'éxo", I usually leave the stress out of the conlang's name because it can be guessed that its stress is in the second to last syllable due to the "xo" ending, and I also want to avoid making it look too busy. The stress pattern of the endonym usually isn't relevant when I'm just talking about the conlang with my friends anyway so I feel like it's fine leaving it out.

When it's inconvenient or impossible to type special characters I tend to just type it as "Kxentexo" (like in the URLs of this website).