Madha Phonology and Orthography

Before I leave the topic of phonology, which after all may be as far as is necessary for most people wanting a snippet of odd sounding language for their writing, I should share some of my own language.

The name of the language is Madha, which simply means 'speech.' It had a different, more grandiose name back when I was a teenager. But in time the original name began to sound more and more ridiculous. The roots which I joined together in the original name still are in the language as separate roots and are unchanged. They are the oldest pieces of the language as it exists now, over 40 years old.

The literary context behind Madha is a group of humanlike aliens called dars. They are discovered, on their own planet, before humans are discovered by a community of more advanced aliens who look nothing like us. The dars are thrust into the Void before they are ready as a culture, which results in them copying what their discoverers are doing. A couple hundred years later humans are discovered making their first clumsy steps into deep space. My first novel was set several hundred years after that when humans have become the darlings of the advanced aliens in terms of running the combined Fleet. While the dars have been somewhat been pushed to the background in Void, politically and morally they are much more respected than humans. The ship in my novel is a microcosm of the changes in both human and darrish society necessary to bring all of these allies through a long, painful war against an outside society with entirely different ideas about how the Void should be ruled.

Despite the fact that some pieces of the language have survived intact, much has changed over the years. Several times I changed the quality of the vowels, because as my study of linguistics and real languages got deeper, the sounds I liked hearing in Madha changed.

The vowels of Madha are: a å e i æ x o u
a as in father
å as ai in pain (I use a' or sometimes ai in English fonts)
e as in met
i as in machine
æ as i in tie (i' in English fonts)
x as u in nut
o as in open
u as oo in moon, not as the word you

The paired voiced and unvoiced consants of Madha are:
b,p,j,c (always pronounced like English ch),d,t,v,f,g,k,z,s,ź,ś,ð,þ,w,q
The unpaired consonants are h,l,m,n,r,y
r is a flap as r in Spanish or Russian, never like r in French or German.
ź or zh is as z in azure
ś or sh is as sh in should
ð or dh is as th in the or there
þ or th is as th in thin or thistle
q is as kf in book fair

The alterneratives make it easier to use English fonts. The letter 'w' represents a variable sound, explained as different dialects. It was originally intended to be pronounced 'gw' compared to q's 'kf' because I did not like the way English w sounded with some of the older vowels sets I was using. Now English w is working fine, but I still have the urge to pronounce it some other way. It's a true historical change in the making in phonology!