In this post I have presented the Quebric consonant mutation system. This is inspired by (and largely ripped off from) the Celtic (particularly Welsh) mutations. Initial consonant mutations are the change in the initial consonant of a word due to it following a “trigger” - a word which causes mutations. One of the most common “triggers” in Quebric is the definite article: i. This causes soft mutation to singular feminine nouns and nasal mutation to plural masculine nouns:
cobr spider
i gobr the spider
i cybr the spiders
Notice how cobr spider mutated to gobr for the singular following i, but remained cybr spiders for the plural following i.
gorod mountain
i gorod the mountain
i ngeryd the mountains
Notice this time that the singular gorod did not mutate after i, but the plural nasally mutated to ngeryd (from geryd mountains) after i.
The soft mutation (SM) is a form of lenition (from Latin lenis “soft”) which causes a consonant to become more sonorous (which means becoming phonetically more vowel-like). The Quebric SM is almost identical to that found in Welsh because Quebric and Welsh have very similar phonologies. The mutations are (IPA between slashes, Quebric spelling in square brackets):
/k/ [c] becomes /g/ [g]
/t/ [t] becomes /d/ [d]
/p/ [p] becomes /b/ [b]
/g/ [g] disappears
/d/ [d] becomes /ð/ [dh]
/b/ [b] becomes /v/ [v]
/ɬ/ [lh] becomes /l/ [l]
/r̥/ [rh] becomes /r/ [r]
The nasal mutation (NM) causes consonants to become nasalised. This mutation is exactly the same as the Welsh NM.
/k/ [c] becomes /ŋ̊/ [ngh]
/t/ [t] becomes /n̥/ [nh]
/p/ [p] becomes /m̥/ [mh]
/g/ [g] becomes /ŋ/ [ng]
/d/ [d] becomes /n/ [n]
/b/ [b] becomes /m/ [m]
The aspirate mutation (AM) causes consonants to become fricatives:
/k/ [c] becomes /x/ [ch]
/t/ [t] becomes /θ/ [th]
/p/ [p] becomes /f/ [ph]
/l/ [l] becomes /ɬ/ [lh]
AM also causes vowel-initial words to become h initial, a process called h-prothesis. So the word iaur language would become hiaur language under AM.
The hard mutation (HM) is not inspired by Welsh, but rather Cornish. The HM is a form of fortition (from Latin fortis “hard”). HM can be thought of as the opposite of SM.
/g/ [g] becomes /k/ [c]
/d/ [d] becomes /t/ [t]
/b/ [b] becomes /p/ [p]
/gw/ [gw] beomes /kw/ [qu]*
/v/ [v] becomes /f/ [f]
/ð/ [dh] becomes /d/ [d]
/θ/ [th] becomes /t/ [t]
* The cluster gw will HM to qu, but qu itself is immune to all mutations. This is why the cluster /kw/ is not written as the expected [cw] but as [qu].
The HM is the least encountered. It has only two triggers: ryn our and tei if.
The SM is the only mutation which has grammatical triggers as opposed to proximity triggers. Proximity triggers are words which cause mutations in following words. The SM can be triggered by some grammatical role the word is playing within a sentence (like when the subject and object of a sentence are not separated by anything, as Quebric is a VSO language, then the object receives SM).
