Li̬o̬a 'e Gweû phonology

Consonants

Because mermaids' mouths and respiratory systems are not connected, they cannot make voiceless or nasal sounds.

	Labial	Coronal	Dorsal	Glottal
Stop	/b/ ‹b›	/d/ ‹d›	/ɡ/ ‹g›, /ɡʷ/ ‹gw›	/ʔ/ ‹'›
Approximant	/ʋ/ ‹v›	/ɹ̪/ ‹l›, /ɻ/ ‹r›, /ɹʲ/ ‹y›	/w/ ‹w›

Or, in words:

b	Bilabial stop (normal)
d	Denti-alveolar stop (fairly normal)
g	Velar stop, a bit farther forward than normal
gw	Labialized (rounded) velar stop, a bit farther back
'	Glottal stop (normal)
v	Labiodental approximant
l	Dental approximant
r	Retroflex approximant
y	Alveolo-palatal approximant (like a combination between r and y)
w	Labialized velar approximant (normal)

Or, in audio:

Vowels

The monophthongs are an ordinary five-vowel system:

	Front	Central	Back
High	/i/ ‹i›		/u/ ‹u›
Mid	/ɛ/ ‹e›		/ɔ/ ‹o›
Low		/a/ ‹a›

Vowels can be any of three lengths. Vowels of any length can be monophthongs; medium and long vowels can be diphthongs, and long vowels can be triphthongs.

The sequences /ia/, /ai/, /ua/, /au/ (i.e., skipping from high to low) are not allowed as diphthongs nor as adjacent sounds in triphthongs. However, triphthongs like /iea/ (with a mid vowel in between) are allowed.
Triphthongs cannot have the same sound twice in a row; those would just be long diphthongs. (Things like /iie/ vs. /iee/ are not distinguished.)
These pairs of triphthongs are not distinct: /ieu/-/iou/, /uei/-/uoi/, /eio/-/euo/, /oie/-/oue/, /iue/-/ioe/, /eui/-/eoi/, /uio/-/ueo/, /oiu/-/oeu/. The actual pronunciation is somewhere in between.

Tone

Li̬o̬a 'e Gweû has three pure tones, high, medium, and low. Medium and long vowels can also have contour tones between adjacent tones, and long vowels can have rise-fall or fall-rise contour tones between adjacent vowels or contours from high to low or low to high. There is also creaky voice, which is rarer; creaky voice vowels don't distinguish tone.

There are two different romanizations for tones, one of which is easier for me to type, the other of which is easier for me to read:

High tone	á	â
Medium tone	a	a
Low tone	à	a̬
Creaky voice	ä	ä

Phonotactics and allophony

Syllable structure is CV(V)(V). Any consonants can appear in the onset.

Syllables with creaky voice cannot have diphthongs or tone contours.
These sounds can't occur before rounded vowels (/o/, /u/): /ɡ/ (only /ɡʷ/ can), /ʋ/, /w/. (/ɡʷ/ is romanized as ‹g› before rounded vowels.)
/ɻi/ cannot occur.
/a/ is pronounced as a back vowel after /ɻ/ and /w/.