Hrebenian Language

Phonology

Vowels

Monophthongs

• Vowel length is not phonemic. Word-final vowels are realized as long by some speakers.

Diphthongs

• All of the diphthongs are rising, i.e. their second elements have more prominence.

Consonants

• Voiceless stops and affricates are unaspirated.
• Voiced stops and affricates are fully voiced.
• /t, d, t͡s, d͡z, s, z/ are laminal [t̻, d̻, t̻͡s̻, d̻͡z̻, s̻, z̻].
• /ɣ/ is realized as /ɦ/ before consonants.
• /l/ is either neutral [l] or velarized [ɫ].
• /r/ is most often a tap [ɾ].
• /v/ is realized as:
  • Voiced fricative [v] in onsets before voiced obstruents;
  • Voiceless fricative [f] in onsets before voiceless obstruents;
  • Approximant [ʋ] in all other cases.

Some additional notes includes the following (transcriptions in IPA unless otherwise stated):

• /r, l/ can be syllabic: /r̩, l̩/.
• /m/ has the allophone [ɱ] in front of the labiodental fricatives /f/ and /v/.
• /n/ can be [ŋ] in front of the velar plosives /k/ and /ɡ/.

Stress

In the standard language, the stress is always on the first syllable of a word. Some speakers place an additional second stress on vowel-final codas.

Orthography

Alphabet

The Hrebenian alphabet is an extension of the Latin alphabet used for writing the Hrebenian language.

The 29 letters of the Hrebenian alphabet are:

Sound–spelling correspondences

Key

Notes

[All Notes below in this section are to be updated to reflect above changes]

Some additional notes includes the following (transcriptions in IPA unless otherwise stated):

The primary principle of Hrebenian spelling is the phonemic principle. The secondary principle is the morphological principle: forms derived from the same stem are written in the same way even if they are pronounced differently. An example of this principle is the assimilation rule (see below). The tertiary principle is the etymological principle, which can be seen in the use of i after certain consonants and of y after other consonants, although both i and y are pronounced the same way.

Finally, the rarely applied grammatical principle is present when, for example, the basic singular form and plural form of masculine adjectives are written differently with no difference in pronunciation (e.g. pekný = nice – singular versus pekní = nice – plural).

Most foreign words receive Hrebenian spelling immediately or after some time. For example, "weekend" is spelled víkend, "software" - softvér, "gay" - gej (both not exclusively), and "quality" is spelled kvalita (possibly from Italian qualità). Personal and geographical names from other languages using Latin alphabets keep their original spelling unless a fully Hrebenian form of the name exists (e.g. Londýn for "London").

When a voiced obstruent (b, d, ď, dz, dž, g, h, z, ž) is at the end of the word before a pause, it is pronounced as its voiceless counterpart (p, t, ť, c, č, k, ch, s, š, respectively). For example, pohyb is pronounced /pɔɦip/ and prípad is pronounced /priːpat/.

When "v" is at the end of the syllable, it is pronounced as non-syllabic u [ʊ̯], with the exception of the position before "n" or "ň". For example, kov [kɔʊ̯] (metal), kravský [kraʊ̯skiː] (cow - adjective), but povstať [pɔfstac] (uprise), because the "v" is not at the end of the syllable (po-vstať) and hlavný [ɦlaʋniː] because "v" stands before the "n".

Consonant clusters containing both voiced and voiceless elements are entirely voiced if the last consonant is a voiced one, or voiceless if the last consonant is voiceless. For example, otázka is pronounced /ɔtaːska/ and vzchopiť sa is pronounced [fsxɔpit sa]. This rule applies also over the word boundary. One example is as follows: prísť domov [priːzɟ dɔmɔʊ̯] (to come home) and viac jahôd [ʋɪ̯adz jaɦʊ̯ɔt] (more strawberries). The voiced counterpart of "ch" /x/ is [ɣ], and the unvoiced counterpart of "h" /ɦ/ is [x].

Hrebenian features some heterophonic homographs (words with identical spelling but different pronunciation and meaning), the most common examples being krásne /ˈkraːsnɛ/ (beautiful) versus krásne /ˈkraːsɲɛ/ (beautifully).

Diacritics

The haček indicates a change of alveolar fricatives into post-alveolar consonants. Four consonants can bear a haček: č, dž, š, and ž, which are all postalveolar affricates and fricatives.

Notes

All credit for formatting, as well many of the "notes," is due to the editors of the Slovak phonology and Slovak orthography pages.