Quhtanese

General information
Quhtanese (natively e Lus Qhùtá /ǣ ɺɤ̄ʃ ī qʰɤ̂tʰɑ̌/; literally: “the speech (of) officials”) is a dialect continuum spoken across most of western, southcentral, and coastal Quhtan (i Sâiyu Cûis or Cûis). Because most Quhtanese dialects are found in the west, the group is also referred to as the "western dialect(s)". When the Quhtanese continuum is taken as one language, as is often done in academic literature, it has the secondmost native speakers (nearly a billion) of the languages on Aetho.

Consonants

 * A glottal stop appears epenthetically between two vowels in the standard variety. It is phonemic is some dialects.
 * The approximants tend to be fricativized when spoken emphatically.

Vowels

 * Allowable diphthongs are: /iæ/, /iɤ/, /iɑ/, /ɤi/, /æɤ/, /ɑɤ/, and /ɑi/

Phonotactics
(C)V(n, ŋ̟, k̟, s̻, ʃ, χ, ɻ)
 * Minimal syllable: è /æ̂/
 * Maximal syllable: tlùin /tɬʰɤ̂i̯n/

Parts of Speech

 * nouns and pronouns: tlex "stone"
 * verbs, adpositions, coverbs, and adjectives: dêg "help"
 * copulae: ay "is"
 * adjectival nouns: qìe "west"
 * articles, determiners, enclitics (inc. interrogative): we "the"
 * numbers: di "one"
 * particles: tlèx "very"
 * preverbs: ca- "association with water"
 * conjunctions: u "and"
 * interjections: Hìr "hello, pay attention"
 * ideophones: rîus "glass breaking"

Gender
Grammatical Gender is only expressed in indefinite and definite articles and in the pronouns. Some derivational affixes can change the gender of a word.

Sentence word order
Verb-Subject-Object

Nouns can be moved before the verb for emphasis.

Numbers
Nàu nûx cùs è díu su. [nɑ̂ɤ̯ nɤ᷈χ k̟ʰɤ̂ʃ æ̂ tǐɤ̯ ʃɤ̄]