burruwanburruwan
Heavily influenced by tAruven, most buRa also speak this.
The mouth of a burr used to be very different from that of, for instance, humans. This made it quite difficult for them to pronounce many sounds that would make sense to a human mind, for instance /l/, /e/ and many others. As the buRa evolved, closely linked to the gvEnai, their mouths evolved too, to ease the all important interspecies communication. Thus, they now have few problems learning, and mastering the pronounciation of, once "impossible" languages. That doesn't mean they've started liking those "no-good" /l/s though...
Much to their pride, the mother tongue of them all still depends of the skills of old. Considering how stubb... err, proud they can be, it will most likely stay that way.
The most visible "features" of burruvan are the many trills and the few vowels. Many of the trills can be very hard to pronounce correctly for non-burra, much to the amusement of the burra themselves.
There are two alveolar trills, /r/ and /rr/, the only difference is in the length, the /rr/ being at least twice as as long as the /r/, but it can often be much, much longer.
The burra does not distinguish between voiced and unvoiced sounds, and in this text, I've chosen to use the voiced ones.
Be aware!
Do not forget that it doesn't matter whether a sound is voiced or not. zan and san is the same word in burruwan, although an average earther wouldn't look at it that way!
The tAruven /a/, /o/ and /u/ only. Furthermore, the /rr/ can have a syllable-bearing function as well.
There can be clusters of up to three vowels, the vowels in such clusters are always pronounced separately, as in french: Anaïs, Citröen.
Syllable = C(T or F)V(N or T or F)
The format is: burruwan term = english translation (closely related tAruven term)
Plural is formed by suffixing -a: burr one burra burra more than one burra
Copyright 1997 taliesin