diff --git a/settings/eusocial-interbeing/language-design.md b/settings/eusocial-interbeing/language-design.md index aa280d5..3e50812 100644 --- a/settings/eusocial-interbeing/language-design.md +++ b/settings/eusocial-interbeing/language-design.md @@ -39,6 +39,28 @@ The Airawa Empire should not be named like a normal state with wet nouns glued on. It is an artificial quarter-continent clausiform exception imposed through biological-memetic control. +### Provisional Airawa Phonology Notes + +Airawa phonology is not finalized, but the current design pressure distinguishes +it from Sa'auei'a softness. Airawa names should feel sharper, more dorsal and +coronal, and more willing to close around hard edges. + +Provisional tendencies: + +- dorsal and coronal plosives should be prominent: `k`, `g`, `q`, `t`, `d`; +- sibilant and postalveolar fricatives should carry social texture: `s`, `z`, + `sh` / `zh`; +- `r` may be trilled in some Airawa registers; +- syllables can tolerate clipped or closed shapes where Sa'auei'a forms would + flow longer and wetter; +- avoid making native Airawa names read like smooth Sa'auei'a route names unless + the form is explicitly a loan, exonym, or cross-continental register. + +Current scratch name: **Druzkai**, with trilled `r` and `z` pronounced as a +voiced postalveolar fricative /zh/ [ʒ]. The name is being considered for a +Zyphos Face drawn from a non-imperial Airawa archival/fungal-road tradition: an +archivist shaped by memory as kinship, not content. + ## Sa'auei'a Pressures Sa'auei'a language work must account for: @@ -86,4 +108,3 @@ outputs: ``` The brief comes before the name. The name is the receipt, not the thought. -