Eindo

Eindo is a highly agglutinating nominative-accusative language.

Setting
Eindo is spoken by the ConCulture in the ConCountry of Eino, which is located at about the latitude of Earth's Scandanavia.

Phonology
This page will use the convention that any character between brackets [ ] refers to the orthographic letter while any character between forward-slashes / / refers to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) pronunciation.

Consonants
The only consonant which has more than one possible pronunciation is [h]. Its differing pronunciations depend upon its context. When surrounded by vowels or immediately preceded by another consonant, it is pronounced as /h/. The letter [h] can only legally precede another consonant if the following consonant is a [p], [t], or [k]. If it does precede one of these three consonants, there are three additional possible pronunciations. If it is preceded by an [i] or [e], it is pronounced /ç/, by an [a] or [ä] as /ħ/, and by an [o], [ö], [u], or [y] as /ʍ/. Some speakers alternatively pronounce it always as /x/ except when preceded by [i] or [e] in which case they pronounce it as /ç/. This alternate pronunciation is mostly used by inhabitants of large cities, especially members of the lower class. Any time two identical consonants are adjacent, the consonant is geminated, meaning that the length of pronunciation is doubled. Geminated consonants cannot be at the beginning or end of a word, and cannot be a part of a consonant cluster.

Vowels
The only vowel which has more than one possible pronunciation is [e]. Officially it has only the one pronunciation, /e/, but in a syllable which contains a coda, especially in unstressed syllables, it can be pronounced /ɛ/. Nearly all speakers will use this alternate pronunciation.

Eindo contains a system of vowel harmony based on the frontness of vowels. The vowels [a], [o], and [u] are back vowels, and [ä], [ö], and [y] are front vowels. [i] and [e] are transparent neutral vowels, which means that they do not alter the frontness or backness of a word in any way and can be used in both instances. The vowel which determines the frontness of a word is the first non-neutral vowel in the root of the word. This also takes place with the semivowels, such that [j] is a neutral semivowel, [w] is a back semivowel, and [ẅ] is a front semivowel. If the entire root is neutral, the word acts as though it contained back vowels. The only time a word can contain both front and back vowels is when it is a compound word, which happens most often in place names.

When two different vowels are adjacent, in most cases a diphthong will be formed. All diphthongs are falling, which means that even when, for example, an [i] precedes an [a], the [i] is not pronounced as the semivowel /j/ as in English, but is in fact the dominant vowel in the diphthong with the sound falling into the [a] sound. There are 30 possible diphthongs: [ie], [ia], [iä], [io], [iö], [iu], [iy], [ei], [ea], [eä], [eu], [ey], [ai], [au], [äi], [äy], [oi], [oa], [ou], [öi], [öä], [öy], [ui], [ue], [ua], [uo], [yi], [ye], [yä], and [yö]. [eo], [oe], and [öe] are pronounced as two syllables. When three vowels are adjacent, the first two are pronounced as a diphthong (if legal) and the third is pronounced as a second syllable. If the first two cannot be legally pronounced as a diphthong, the second and third are, while the first vowel receives it's own syllable. If neither pair of vowels can be made into a diphthong, they are pronounced as three distinct syllables. In certain circumstances, a vowel pair which would normally be pronounced as a diphthong should not be. The most common example of this is when a root beginning with a vowel is prefixed. In such instances, in the Latin orthography the first vowel of the root should gain an acute accent or a macron if it already contains a diaeresis. Using the Eindo Runes, this is represented by a dot placed above the vowel. An example of this would be with the word naílpo (“colt,” or “young male horse”).

Any time two identical vowels are adjacent, the vowel is geminated, meaning that the length of pronunciation is doubled. A geminated vowel cannot make up any part of a diphthong.

Stress
The first syllable in a root is always stressed. This means that if the root begins the word, the first syllable of the word receives the main stress, while if it is prefixed it does not. The stress is only a light stress, but it is an important distinction which can cause confusion if done incorrectly. After the main stress, every second syllable receives secondary stress. If there are an odd number of syllables excluding prefixes, stress is moved from the third-to-last syllable to the second-to-last syllable and the final syllable is unstressed.