Arusian Phonotactics in a Nutshell

The Arusian language is restrictive concerning syllable structure, as it only allows a fixed set of syllables to be used in building new words.

Arusian syllables in general never end with /e/, /ow/ or /i/; they never begin with a vowel (even if they do seem to begin with a vowel, there is a glottal stop there); and they can end with /f/, /m/, /p/, /d/, /s/, /ʃ/, /z/, /ʒ/, /g/ and with /t/ and /k/ (which can alternate with /ʔ/ in faster or lazy speech). The following syllables are impossible in Arusian: bi, be, be, big, mig, vi, si, se, etc.

The language does seem to be rich in diphthongs (like lei, bai, fai, nau) and triphthongs (like leyek, layem, leyem, nayek, duwek), which are very common in many words. Also, Arusian doesn’t allow hiatuses, so it inserts the semivowels /j/ and /w/ to break them and turn them into diphthongs or triphthongs. In case the first vowel of the hiatus is /ɜ/, /ʁ/ is inserted to break the hiatus.

Historically, many medial consonants underwent lenition, which turned them into hiatuses, leading to the abundance of diphthongs and triphthongs Arusian has today. Even today, consonants in the middle of words are usually deleted and/or replaced by semivowels. The only consonants that didn’t undergo lenition in the middle of morphemes were fricatives. It is common for many consonant clusters to lenite toward a uvular consonant or a voiced fricative like /ʒ/. /f/ and /ʒ/ only appear in that position for 0.5% of words each.

Stressed /ei/ sometimes was lengthened to /eye/, like in *deik > deyek.

One of the few permitted consonant clusters in the onset is /fn/, like in fna (land). Arusian usually doesn’t allow consonant clusters in the onset, except for the one mentioned above, but it depends on the speaker, because some might insert a schwa there to break the cluster.

Examples from Old Arusian:
*mandei ⇒ ma/r/ei ⇒ ma/ʁ/ei
*paday ⇒ pa/r/ay ⇒ pa:/ʁ/ai
*pavay ⇒ pauvay ⇒ pau/w/ai
*azad ⇒ ayad

Examples from borrowings:

lálaj (in Rezenderu) `to smile` ⇒ layai (in Arusian)
sacou (Portuguese) `to get, to understand` ⇒ sa/k/au => sa/x/au ⇒ sa/ʁ/au

You can also see a chart with all the possible syllables in Arusian right here!