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Pabappa to English English to Pabappa
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PHONOLOGY Pabappa has a simple phonology, consisting of ten consonants (/p/, /m/, /s/, /b/, /l/, /w/, /r/, /t/, /n/, /d/) and five vowels (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/). All of these are indicated in the orthography with the same symbol as their phonetic transcription. In an average text, /a/ accounts for more than half of the vowels used, and /p/ accounts for nearly half of the consonants. The abundance of /a/ is a trait shared with related languages and neighboring unrelated languages, but abundance of /p/ and other labials is unique to Pabappa and languages such as Wamian that have loaned heavily from it. This trait makes Pabappa easy to pronounce, but very difficult to pronounce at a normal everyday speed. Thus Pabappa did not get much use in day-to-day life; it was mostly confined to ritual usage and occasionally as a makeshift language for Wamians who did not know each other's native languages. Here is a list of phoneme frequencies in an average Pabappa text:
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