# Phonology

## Consonants

|           | labial | alveolar  | palatal | velar/uvular | glottal |
|-----------|--------|-----------|---------|--------------|---------|
| nasal     | m      | n         | ɲ (nh)  | ŋ (ng)       |         |
| plosive   | p b    | t d       | c       | k g          |         |
| fricative | f v    | s z       |         | x (kh)       | h       |
| approx.   |   w    |           |    j    |              |         |
| liquid    |        | l         |         |              |         |

- Consonants are often labialized before /w/ and palatalized before /j/
- /nj/ is also sometimes realized as [ɲ] or [ɲj]
- /j/ is realized as [i] after /h/ and /c/
- Likewise, /w/ is realized as [u] after /h/, and other labial consonants

## Vowels

|           | front  | central | back  |
|-----------|--------|---------|-------|
| close     | i y    |         | u     |
| close-mid | e      | ə (e)   | o     |
| open-mid  | ɛ̃ (e)  |         | ɔ̃ (o) |
| open      |        | a       |       |

- /e/ is realized as [ɛ̃] when nasalized and [ə] when preceded by /j/
- /o/ is realized as [ɔ̃] when nasalized

## Tones

There are five tones:

- mid level [33]: a
- low [21]: à
- falling [45] or [41]: â
- high [44]: á
- rising [324]: ǎ

## Phonotactics

All syllables in DianZì follows C(W)V(N)T pattern, where:

- C is a consonant
- W is either /w/ or /j/ or /y/
- V is a vowel
- N is the vowel nasalization marker
- T is a tone

/w/ cannot precedes /u/ and /j/ not /i/

There are thus 3910 possible syllables.

## Romanization

DjanZì is often written in CamelCase to disambiguate cases like /ng/ vs /ŋ/.
Hyphenation is also often used as DjanZì words are often not too long, in which
case capitalization is only mandatory for proper noun component.

J and W can be romanized as I and U for aesthetics, as there is no ambiguity
there. Nasalization is often denoted with N, but sometimes also with NG.

Following spellings are thus all valid for *DjanZì*:

- DjanZì
- djan-Zì
- DiangZì
- djang Zì