Sicaron

Sicaron is intended to be a simplified form of Russian, and it serves as the national language of the fictitious Social Republic of Sicaro, in Slayermoon's novel in progress Freedom America, which takes place in a future North America, long after the United States of America has ceased to exist. Sicaro is a nation located in the northwestern former United States, with Krasnograd (formerly Olympia, Washington) as its national capital, and is named for its three major mountain ranges: the Sierra Nevadas, the Cascade Ranges and the Rocky Mountains. Sicarons are a peace-loving and self-reliant lot who work hard to maintain not only a sustainable lifestyle for themselves but also to keep other nations from getting in the way of those aims.

Orthography
Although derived from Russian, Sicaron is written in the Latin script. The Sicaron alphabet lacks the letters V and X, using these only as Roman numerals, and also uses no letters not also used in English. There are 24 letters, named and pronounced as follows:
 * A a — aza [a] as in taco
 * B b – buka [b] as in birch
 * C c – craco [ɡ] like g in green
 * D d – dobir [d] as in dark
 * E e – ege [ɛ] as in smell
 * F f – fertu [f] as in finch
 * G g – giwo [ʒ] like si in lesion
 * H h – harwi [ʃ] like sh in short
 * I i – ygi [i] as in liter, replaced by y at the beginning of a word so that its uppercase form won’t be mistaken for lowercase l
 * J j – jeri [j] like y in yellow, never appears adjacent in a word to i or word-initial y
 * K k – kako [k] as in kitsch, aspirated [kʰ] before j, l, r, w or a vowel except after h or s
 * L l – luda [l] as in lemon, more like the British dialect sound
 * M m – misla [m] as in mine
 * N n – nagi [n] as in north
 * O o – ono [ɔ] like aw in British raw but short
 * P p – poki [p] as in pinch, aspirated [pʰ] before j, l, r or a vowel except after h or s
 * Q q – qoru [x] like ch in Scottish loch
 * R r – rytsu [r] as in Spanish roja
 * S s – slowa [s] as in south
 * T t – turto [t] as in torch, aspirated [tʰ] before r, w or a vowel except after h or s
 * U u – uku [u] as in truth
 * V v – romsko pethek used only as a Roman numeral 5
 * W w – wige [v] like v in vine
 * X x – romsko disathek used only as a Roman numeral 10
 * Y y – yry [i] like i at the beginning of a word, [ɯ] like u in Japanese tsunami elsewhere
 * Z z – zemy [z] as in zone

Phonology
Slavic languages tend to have notoriously liberal phonotactic rules when it comes to consonant clusters. For a Slavic language, however, Sicaron is relatively conservative in this aspect. Every vowel in Sicaron (a e i o u y) forms the core of its own syllable, and stress is always on the first syllable of a word. The following consonant clusters are permitted at the beginning of a syllable before the vowel: - b bj bl br c cj cl cr cw d dr dw f fj fl fr g gl gm gn gr gw h hl hm hn hr ht hw j k kj kl kr kw l m mj n p pj pl pr q ql qr qw r s sk skj skl skr skw sl sm smj sn sp spj spl spr sr st str sw t th ts w wj wl wr z zl zm zn zr zw

Nouns
Sicaron nouns are declined only by number, as are their English counterparts, and have natural gender. While English has four genders — epicene (with they as its 3rd-singular pronoun), feminine (pronoun: she), masculine (pronoun: he) and neuter (pronoun: it) — Sicaron has only two of these: the epicene and the neuter.

Adjectives
Adjectives are, for all practical purposes, treated as nouns in Sicaron. (Japanese treats them as verbs.)

Adverbs
Adverbs may be derived from adjectives or may have independent forms.

Verbs
Verbs aren’t conjugated according to tense, instead using special modal verbs to these ends.