In modern times, only has remained unchanged over the years, while has become, has become and has taken the place of, leaving only two.ĭiphthongs, like monophthongs, can also be lengthened, albeit in their case only for the first component vowel. Historically, Parseltongue had four diphthongs,, , and. Among them, and have allophones of and respectively. The above table shows the phonemic vowels in Parseltongue. Occasionally, when two identical vowels occur consecutively (which happens only when they are across a word boundary or when an intermediate consonant, usually, has been elided), the resulting sound may be four times as long as normally due to such arbitrary lengthening. They also have phonemic length, but the distinction is not usually made as speakers generally lengthen and shorten vowels at will, or elide them only lengthening is substantially common, however, given the tendency of Parseltongue speakers to speak slowly. Parseltongue vowels are generally voiceless, unless preceded or followed by a nasal(, ) or liquid (, ). See also #Diphthongs for more information In the text example provided below, the past tense of "to like" is hinneis the stem of the verb is actually hil-, but with the adding of the past tense suffix -n-, the -l- of the stem completely assimilates, resulting in a geminate nn. In the construction of the past tense ( see also Verbs below), assimilation takes place regularly with consonant-stem verbs. + fricative sometimes causes the to vocalise to an.With sonorants, devoicing frequently occurs before a fricative: The velar plosives exhibit a slightly irregular pattern of fricativisation, and examples as illustrated below have been noted: When followed by a, whether or not separated by a vowel or diphthong, plosives are aspirated, eliding the, and in some progressive dialects fricativise. + fricative = + fricative = geminate fricative in certain cases.+ fricative = geminate voice fricative.Occasionally, complete assimilation occurs, e.g.+ fricative = + voiced fricative ( e.g.+ fricative = labialised fricative ( e.g.
Regressive assimilation is the most common, and changes of the following types have been observed: Due to the inherent tendency of snakes (and hence their human inheritors of Parsetongue) to fricativise sounds, plosives commonly assimilate to neighbouring continuants (including aspirate stops), even across word boundaries, except where plosives are geminate.