Ekeðin

Consonants
Notes:
 * 1) /l/ is a velarised laminal [ɫ] after back vowels /ɔ, oː/, /ɑ, ɑː/, /ʊ, uː/.
 * /n, t, d/ are laminal [n̻, t̻].
 * 1) /s/ is a dentalised laminal alveolar [s̪]
 * 2) /ɾ/ is a voiced apical alveolar flap [ɾ̺]. It is a trill [r] in clusters ⟨rr⟩ and in emphatic speech.
 * /p, t, k/ are unaspirated fully voiceless [p˭, t˭, k˭], whereas /pʰ, tʰ, kʰ/ are aspirated, and fully voiceless [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ]. After /s/ within the same syllable, only unaspirated voiceless stops occur.
 * /ŋ, k, ɡ/ are velar, whereas /j/ is palatal and /ɕ/ is alveolo-palatal.
 * 1) /h/ is usually a voiceless fricative. The friction is normally glottal [h], but sometimes it is dorsal: palatal [ç] when near front vowels and velar [x] near back vowels.
 * 2) /ʋ/ may be a voiced bilabial fricative /v/ in some dialects.
 * /ɳ, ʈ, ʂ/ are retroflex mutations of the sequence of /ɾ/ + /n, t, s/ and only occur word-medially.
 * 1) /θː/ and /rː/ are always geminated.

Vowel Harmony
Ekeðin, like many other agglutinative languages, has the phenomenon called vowel harmony, which restricts the cooccurrence in a word of vowels belonging to different articulatory subgroups. Vowels within a word "harmonize" to be either all front or all back. In particular, no native noncompound word can contain vowels from the group {a, o, u} together with vowels from the group {æ, ø, y}. Vowel harmony affects inflectional suffixes and derivational suffixes, which have two forms, one for use with back vowels, and the other with front vowels. Compare, for example, the following pair of abstract nouns: hallitus 'government' (from hallita, 'to reign') versus helvys 'health' (from helvisk, healthy).

There are exceptions to the constraint of vowel harmony. For one, there are two front vowels that lack back counterparts: /i/ and /e/. Therefore, words like kello 'clock' (with a front vowel in a non-final syllable) and tuli 'wind' (with a front vowel in the final syllable), which contain /i/ or /e/ together with a back vowel, count as back vowel words; /i/ and /e/ are effectively neutral in regard to vowel harmony in such words. Kello and tuli yield the inflectional forms kellonna 'in a clock' and tuulenna 'in a wind'. In words containing only neutral vowels, front vowel harmony is used, e.g. vei – veillæ ('road' – 'on the road').

Accent
Ekeðin is a stress-accent language, but has elements of pitch accent, with two distinct pitch patterns. They are used to differentiate polysyllabic words with otherwise identical pronunciation (such as anðinn/anðinn). For example, in most Ekeðin dialects, the word anðinn ('the duck') is pronounced using tone 1 (/ˈɑ̀nðɪnː/), while anðinn ('the spirit') uses tone 2 (/ˈɑ̂nðɪnː/).

Pulmonic ingressive
The words ja ('yes') and æi ('no') are sometimes pronounced with inhaled breath (pulmonic ingressive) in Ekeðin. The same phenomenon occurs across the Scandinavian languages, and can also be found in German, French and Finnish, to name a few.

Writing System
Ekeðin Futhark Alphabet (ᛇᚴᛇᚠᛁᛦᛋᚴ ᚹᚢᚦᛆᚱᚴᛁᛦᛇᛦ ᛆᛚᚴᚮᛋᛋᛇᛁ Ekeðinsk Vuþarkinen Alkossei)

Native Letters Native Digraphs Non-Native Letters

Grammar
Ekeðin is an inflected language with 13 cases. It does not have grammatical gender. Nouns, adjectives and pronouns are declined in thirteen cases and two numbers, singular and plural.

Morphology
Ekeðin morphology is typical of rich agglutinative systems found in the Finno-Ugric and Turkic languages and can become rather complicated. Nouns and adjectives are declined for case, number, and definiteness.

Ekeðin possesses a definite article, but not an indefinite one. The definite article is a suffix added to the noun -inn. Verbs are conjugated for tense, mood, person, number and voice. There are four voices: active, passive, causative and adjutative. There are three simple tenses, present, preterite and imperfect along with a periphrastic future and perfect tenses. There are three moods, conditional, presumptive and potential. There also exists a present continuous tense analogous to English "to be doing" as well as a variety of participles and an interrogative suffix, which is not in itself considered a stand-alone interrogative mood.

Nouns
The Ekeðin language does not distinguish gender in nouns or even in personal pronouns: hæn is 'he', 'she' or 'they' (singular, indeterminate) depending on the referent. There is only one article, the definite article, which is a suffix -inn appended to nouns only.

Cases
Ekeðin has thirteen noun cases: six grammatical cases (seven in some Eastern dialects), three lative cases, two essive cases, and two additional cases. In some Eastern dialects, the partitive* is the seventh grammatical case. It is nowadays obsolete in Modern Ekeðin and is almost exclusively found in a few fossilised forms and is therefore not usually considered a living noun case. The suffix is -a / -æ. Its meaning is partiality, some common examples being:


 * With nouns of indefinite number or substance nouns (the partitive object):
 * "havatko kirjo|j|a?" = "do you have any books ?"
 * "villun vett|æ" = "I want some water"

* NB: the vocative and partitive case suffixes are vowels so when in the plural, a /j/ glide must replace the /i/ of the diphthongs ei, æi, øi, oi, ai and then followed by the -i ending of the vocative and the -a/æ ending of the partitive.

Pronouns
Personal pronouns are used to refer to human beings and inanimate objects. The personal pronouns in Ekeðin in the nominative case are listed in the following table:

Personal pronouns
Because verbs are inflected for person and number, in the Ekeðin standard language subject pronouns are not required, and the first and second-person pronouns are usually omitted except when used for emphasis.