EURPhon: Svan (Upper Bal)

Phylum: Kartvelian

Genus: Svan

Lat/lon: 43.0, 42.7

ISO code: sva

Consonants

Basic short series

	bilabial	labio-velar	dental	alveolar	postalveolar	palatal	velar	uvular	glottal
stop	pʰ, pʼ, b		t̪ʼ, t̪ʰ, d̪				kʰ, kʼ, g	qʰ, qʼ
trill				r
fricative				s, z	ʒ, ʃ			ʁ, χ	h
affricate				tsʼ, ts, dz	tʃʼ, tʃ, dʒ
nasal	m		n̪
approximant		w				j
lateral approximant				l

Vowels

Basic short series

	front	central	back
close	y, i		ɯ, u
open-mid	ɛ, œ		ɔ
near-open	æ
open		ä

Long series

	front	central	back
close	yː, iː		uː
open-mid	ɛː, œː		ɔː
near-open	æː
open		äː

Licit initial clusters

ʃd̪, Cg, Ckʰ, Ckʼ, Cw

Source: Tuite, Kevin. 1998. A short descriptive grammar of the Svan language. Université de Montréal.

Comments: Some other sources also record /e:/, /ɢ/, /ʔ/, /f/ and /v/ as separate phonemes. /ɯ/ might be realized as [ɤ], [ə] or [ɨ]. Although there are restirctions of initial clusters, heavy final clusters are tolerated (χɔsgwdʒ 'I ordered sb', äχɛqʰwsg 'you stole up on sb').