qhotbais

phonology and orthography

phonemes										graphemes
m	n		n̠ʲ		ŋ	ŋʷ				m	n		ny		g	gw
pʰ	tʰ		t̠ʲʰ		kʰ	kʷʰ	qʰ	qʷʰ		bh	th		tyh		kh	kwh	qh	qwh
b	t		t̠ʲ		k	kʷ	q	qʷ	ʔ	b	t		ty		k	kw	q	qw	ħ
			ç			xʷ			h				yh			wh			h
			j			w							y			w
	tɬʰ	tsʰ	tɬ̠ʲʰ	tʃʰ	kʟ̝̊ʰ	kʟ̝̊ʷʰ					tł	ts	tły	tsy	kx	kxw
	tɬ	ts	tɬ̠ʲ	tʃ	kʟ̝̊	kʟ̝̊ʷ					tl	tz	tly	tzy	kr	krw
	ɬ	s	ɬ̠ʲ	ʃ	ʟ̝̊	̝ʟ̊ʷ					ł	s	ły	sy	x	xw
	l	z	l̠ʲ	ʒ	ʟ	ʟʷ					l	z	ly	zy	r	rw
ɪ ʊ ə æ ɒ										i u e a o

the qhotbais language has forty-nine consonants, a large system by anyone's standards, and five vowels. they're shown here corresponding to their most common orthographical representation, but (as will be gone over later) it's not quite 1:1. columns and rows are arranged according to the phonological series they form, and are therefore not, like, perfectly phonetic.

brief tangent: why do so many conlangers feel pressured to arrange their phonologies into tables with hyperspecifically named places and manners of articulation? like, i know why, it's because beginners just start out fucking with the ipa chart on wikipedia and it's laid out that way, and because that's also how conworkshop does it for some reason, but that sucks actually. embrace table anarchy