In contrast to its unusually rich consonant system, the Ancestral vowel system is the picture of simplicity. It consists of the five most common vowels /i e a o u/, pronounced (I believe) in more or less the Spanish manner.

The truly remarkable thing about the Ancestral vowel is lexical, not phonological. Each vowel expresses one aspect of a single natural and metaphorical semantic sphere, namely “to be, to evolve, to grow, to live, to progress”. The nearest equivalents in today’s languages are (to my knowledge) the “sing, sang, sung” pattern of Modern English (an artefact of the Proto-Indo-European ablaut system), the vocalic transfix of the typical Semitic triliteral root, the sound-symbolic vowel hierarchies of the Tai language Zhuang, the onomatopoeic vocabulary of Japanese, and the demonstrative system of the Uto-Aztecan language Shoshoni.

The base vowel of every Ancestral word will have one of these five realizations, each of which indicates the specific “growth state” (literal or metaphorical) of that word.

The five cardinal vowels can be combined into twenty-five transfixes (the combination of an affix and a suffix), each of which can be used, for example, as a wonderfully compact tense marker.

Phonetic Analysis

• [i] high, front, unrounded vowel
• [e] mid, front, unrounded vowel
• [a] low, central vowel
• [o] mid, back, rounded vowel
• [u] high, back, rounded vowel

Phonemic Analysis

• /i/ high, front vowel
• /e/ mid, front vowel
• /a/ low, central vowel
• /o/ mid, back vowel
• /u/ high, back vowel

One Vowel Semantics

• /i / the unforeseeable future, far ahead, the dreamtime, the mythological future
• /e/ the foreseeable future, ahead, young, growing, waxing, living
• /a/ the present, here, now, peaking, mature, climax
• /o/ the remembered past, behind, old, fading, waning, dying
• /u/ the unremembered past, far behind, the dreamtime, the mythological past

Two Vowel Semantics

• /i_i/ the distant future > the distant future
• /i_e/ the distant future > the foreseeable future
• /i_a/ the distant future > the present
• /i_o/ the distant future > the remembered past
• /i_u/ the distant future > the distant past
• /e_i/ the foreseeable future > the distant future
• /e_e/ the foreseeable future > the foreseeable future
• /e_a/ the foreseeable future > the present
• /e_o/ the foreseeable future > the remembered past
• /e_u/ the foreseeable future > the distant past
• /a_i/ the present > the distant future
• /a_e/ the present> the foreseeable future
• /a_a/ the present > the present
• /a_o/ the present > the remembered past
• /a_u/ the present > the distant past
• /o_i/ the recent past > the distant future
• /o_e/ the recent past > the foreseeable future
• /o_a/ the recent past > the present
• /o_o/ the recent past > the recent past
• /o_u/ the recent past > the distant past
• /u_i/ the distant past > the distant future
• /u_e/ the distant past > the forseeable future
• /u_a/ the distant past > the present
• /u_o/ the distant past > the recent past
• /u_u/ the distant past > the distant past

Two Vowel Chart

At first glance, the Ancestral consonant system is breathtakingly complex, with an unheard of number of complex consonants. On closer inspection, however, I believe the Ancestral speaker understood it to consist of ten distinct places of articulation and ten distinct manners of articulation, the intersection of which was the unique sound (or, more properly, the absence of sound) we know as the glottal stop (or hiatus). Each of these individual places and manners was realized as a simple consonant, yielding a simple consonant inventory of twenty sounds (plus the glottal stop).

The Ancestral Places Of Articulation

My tentative reconstruction of the places of articulation, from left to right in Figure A below, is as follows:

• P Series = Labial
• B Series = Labial Rounded
• T Series = Dental
• D Series = Dental Rounded
• C Series = Palato-Alveolar
• ’ Series = Radical
• J Series = Palatal-Alveolar Rounded
• Y Series = Velar
• W Series = Velar Rounded
• K Series = Uvular
• G Series = Uvular Rounded

Note that the ’ Series corresponds to the places of articulation.

The Ancestral Manners of Articulation

My tentative reconstruction of the manners of articulation, from top to bottom in Figure A below, is as follows:

• R Series = Rhotic
• S Series = Whistled
• H Series = Whispered
• F Series = Falsetto
• X Series = Explosive
• ’ Series = Plosive
• Z Series = Implosive
• Q Series = Creaky
• V series = Murmured
• N Series = Nasal
• L Series = Lateral

Note that the ’ Series corresponds to the places of articulation.

Consonant Clusters

The Ancestral speaker combined the ten places of articulation with the ten manners of articulation (and vice versa) to create, in essence, an Ancestral Phonemic Alphabet composed of two hundred complex consonants. My tentative reconstruction of the Ancestral complex consonant inventory suggests that it can be thought of as consisting of twenty series, where C denotes any consonant stop, where the phonetic description before > expresses the series’ underlying phonetic features, and where the phonetic description after > expresses the series’ actual phonetic realization:

• CR = post-rhotacized stops > voiceless trilled affricates
• CS = post-spirantized stops > voiceless spirant affricates
• CH = post-aspirated stops > voiceless non-sibilant fricatives
• CF = post-high pitch stops > voiceless stops + high tone
• CX = post-exploxed stops > voiceless ejective stops
• CZ = post-imploded stops > voiced implosive stops
• CQ = post-creaky stops > voiced stops + low tone
• CV = post-murmured stops > voiced non-sibilant fricatives
• CN = post-nasalized stops > voiced nasals
• CL = post-lateralized stops > voiced clicks
• RC – pre-rhotacized stops > voiceless rhotacized stops
• SC = pre-spirantized stops > voiceless pre-spirantized stops
• HC = pre-aspirated stops > voiceless pre-aspirated stops
• FC = pre-falsetto stops > high tone + voiceless stops
• XC = pre-exploded stops
• ZC = pre-imploded stops
• QC = pre-creaky stops > low tone + voiced stops
• VC = pre-voiced stops > voiced stops
• NC = pre-nasalized stops > voiced pre-nasalized stops
• LC = pre-lateralized stops > voiced pre-lateralized stops

Figure A: Fundamental Consonant Chart (In Transcription)

Figure B: Place x Manner Complex Consonant Chart (In Transcription)

Figure C: Manner x Place Complex Consonant (In Transcription)