Quhtanese

General information
Quhtanese (natively we Lus Qhùtá /ʁæ̀ ɺɤ̄ʃ qʰɤ̂tʰɑ̌/; literally: “the speech (of) officials”) is a dialect continuum spoken across most of western, southcentral, and coastal Quhtan (we Sâiyu Cûis or Cûis). Because most Quhtanese dialects are found in the west, the group is also referred to as we lus qìe or "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/. All are falling.

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

Parts of Speech

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

Gender and Articles
Grammatical Gender is only expressed in indefinite and definite articles and in the pronouns. Some derivational affixes can change the gender of a word.
 * The definite articles lose their initial consonant if the previous syllable ends in a consonant. ex. Dêg â i nàu nûx. "Help the old man."

Sentence word order
Verb-Subject-Object

Cùs su nàu tún nûx gu díu dá èn tu.

[k̟ʰɤ̂ʃ ʃɤ̀ nɑ̂ɤ̯ tʰɤ̌n nɤ᷈χ k̟ɤ̀ tǐɤ̯ tɑ̌ æ̂n tʰɤ̀]

eat perf man year indef.n cream sweet belong 1

"Some kid ate my ice cream."

Nouns can be moved before the verb for emphasis.

Noun phrases
Preposition-Article-Noun-Adjectival noun

Numbers
Because Aethos have only four fingers per hand, they count in base 8. 101326 8-myriad 8-3-hundred 2-8-6 xâháis xârúnàuz zàxâzàlu