Consonants
Aldéril has a moderately small size consonant inventory. Except where indicated by brackets listing the IPA, the romanization given is identical to the IPA.
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labio-Velar | Glottal | |
| Stops | p, b | t, d | c [k], g | qu [kʷ], gw [gʷ] | ||
| Fricatives | s | sh [ʃ] | h | |||
| Approximants | r [ɾ], l | y [j] | w | |||
| Nasals | m | n | ng [ŋ] |
In Aldéril all stops are unaspirated, that is, there is no release of air following /p t k kʷ/ as is typical in most dialects of English. This results in—for English speakers—the unvoiced stops sounding much more similar to voiced stops. English speakers may also have some difficulty with <ng>, which is always pronounced as in “singer” and never as in “finger” and may occur word initially, and <r> which is pronounced by flapping the tongue once against the alveolar ridge, as the <t> in American English “water.” The remaining sounds are pronounced more or less as a typical English speaker might expect.
Consonants may also be geminate intervocalically. This is indicated in the romanization by doubling the consonant, or in the case of digraphs, doubling the first letter, resulting in <qqu>, <ssh>, and <nng>. Geminate consonants are held longer than their non-geminate counterpart, similar to the difference in the /n/ sound in English “pen knife” versus “penny.”
Vowels
Aldéril has a 5 vowel system with a length contrast. The romanization given in the chart below is identical to the IPA for these phonemes.
| Front | Central | Back | |
| High | i | u | |
| Mid | e | o | |
| Low | a |
Generally, these vowels should be pronounced as follows: /a/ as in “father,” /e/ as the vowel in “main,” /i/ as in “machine,” /o/ as in “mole,” and /u/ as in “due.”
Non-low, short vowels (that is /i u e o/) exhibit some allophonic variation among their short variants. Short variants in closed syllables become lax (that is /ɪ ʊ ɛ ɔ/), otherwise they remain tense.
Vowels in Aldéril are contrasted for length, which is marked with a grave accent in the romanization. These vowels are held for slightly less than double the duration of their short counterparts. This is similar to the difference in the length of the <i> in the words “writer” and “rider.”
There are two diphthongs: /aj/ which is written <ai> and pronounced as the vowel in “my,” and /aw/ which is written <a> and is pronounced as the vowel in “out.” Mid vowels can also be in hiatus with other non-high vowels. These a pronounced as two syllables. Licit combinations are <ëo>, <öe>, <ëa>, and <öa>. These are pronounced, in order, like the vowels in English “day old,” “low aim,” “say ah,” and “go on.” The diaresis over the first vowel is used as a reminder and an aid to pronounciation. Simialrly, word final /e/ is marked with a diaresis <ë> as a reminder to English speakers that it is to be pronounced. This convention is not followed in single syllable words.
Syllable Structure
The fundamental syllable structure in Aldéril is CV(R). That is, a typical syllable is composed of an onset consonant followed by a vowel with a possible final sonorant, which may be a nasal /m n ŋ/ or an approximant /ɾ l/. The vowel may be either a monophthong or a diphthong, as listed above. The onset consonant is not strictly necessary, and a syllable may begin with a vowel, potentially resulting in a syllable composed of solely a vowel.
The onset consonant of a syllable may be a geminate if an only if it follows an open syllable. Voiced plosives may only occur syllable initially if they follow a sonorant. When the syllable final resonant is a nasal, it will assimilate to the place of a following consonant.
Stress Accent
Words in Aldéril exhibit stress accent. Words are always accented on the penultimate (second-to-last) syllable, except in monosyllabic words, with secondary stress occurring every other syllable to the left of the stress accent. The accent thus moves with the addition of suffixes to a word.
There are a class of enclitics, predominantly used in nominal syntax, which do not have stress of their own, instead gaining their stress from the word to which they are linked. Proclitics (which come before the word to which they are linked) may receive secondary stress, but will never receive primary stress, even when preceding a monosyllabic word. Other enclitics (which follow the word to which they are attached) will change the stress pattern of the word, moving the stress accent one syllable to the right of where it would otherwise fall—typically the final syllable of the word so modified.
| cetelindë [ˌke.te.ˈlɪn.de] | pu pesé [pu ˈpɛ.seː] | enla te [ɛn.ˈla te] |
| shecallë [ʃe.ˈka.lːe] | ti shecallë [ˌti ʃe.ˈka.le] | narë te [na.ˈre te] |
| shí [ˈʃiː] |
Phonotactics
There are a number of processes that can change the way a sound is pronounced depending on the context in which the sound occurs.
Allophony
Some of the phonemes listed above will be realized differently depending on their environment, leading to a change in pronunciation from what might otherwise be expected. The changes and the environments in which they may occur are listed belowː
- i u e o → ɪ ʊ ɛ ɔ / _ [sonorant] #
Short, non-low vowels become lax and slightly centralized when they are in a closed syllable.
e.g. airindë [aj.ˈɾɪn.de], inngulequen [i.ŋːu.ˈle.kʷɛn]
Sandhi
In addition to sound changes that may occur within a word, some changes may occur across word boundaries.
- V → ø / _# V
Word final vowels are elided when preceding a word initial vowel. This happens most often when the words are particularly semantically joined, such as with a proclitic and its following noun, but may occur between any two words, especially in casual or quick speech or in poetry to fit the poetic meter. This change is indicated in the romanization with an apostrophe in the place of the elided vowel. In the case of clitics, the clitic is then written as part of the following word.
e.g. pu urilo → p’urilo [pu.ˈɾi.lo]
Phonological Processes
There are also some sound changes that occur regularly when an affix is applied to a word, these arise out of the historical changes that have taken place. These changes may then be applied even in newly coined derivation by a levelling process.
- l … l → t/d … l
- r … r → l … r
- N … N → N … n
Reduplication
One way of forming diminutives involves partial reduplication, in which the last syllable is reduplicated. Where the final syllable ends in a consonants, the onset is lost in the reduplication. The vowel of the reduplicated syllable is also reduced and diphthongs are simplified. The phonological process listed above also work as usual.