Gikamlig

General information
Gikamlig (Known by its native speakers as Beris Zgorig ['beˑɾis 'zgoˑɾiˑg], literally, "Main Speech") is the last living Salvaaic ([sæɫ'veɪ.ɪk]) language whose population equates to roughly 160 000 speakers. It's English rendering comes from the language's word for "friend" or "companion". Due to famine, disease, and a mass genocide of the Salvaaic peoples, its remaining speakers now only live on a remote island in complete isolation from the mainland. High amounts of distrust and overall hostility towards foreigners, combined with an advanced defence system as well as being the the only people familiar with the island's locations, makes any communication, and therefore learning the language, virtually impossible. Knowledge of the language comes from criminals exiled from the island and onto the mainland and then enslaved by nearby kingdoms.

Phonology
Gikamlig possesses a relatively simplistic vowel system, just five plus two allophones, balanced by a rich consonantal inventory, with a total of 36 consonants, 40 if allophones are included. Unique in its inventory for a Salvaaic language is the inclusion of ejectives.

Consonants

 * * /v/, /ð/, /ŋ/, and /ɣ/ are allophones of /b/, /d/, /n/, and /g/, respectively.
 * /r/ exists as a vowel only.
 * /m/, /n/, and /l/ may also be used as vowels.

Vowels
* /u/ and /ʌ/ become /ɨ/ and /ə/ after labialized consonants.

Case
Gikamlig nouns decline fairly heavily, at least when compared to English. There are seven cases, which are stated below: The first two of the row are Gikamlig's primary genders: animate and inanimate. These are the strong variants of nouns. The other two are weak variants, stemming from either verbs (the second-to-last column) or adjectives (the last column). The most prevalent difference between the strong and weak nouns is the fusional-agglutinative contrast; weak nouns are declined by adding a suffix after the infinitive (for verbs) and the inanimate form (for adjectives), while strong nouns decline in their own way while weak nouns borrow their inflections from their determiners and prepositions.

Tense
Just as the nouns, Gikamlig verbs possess strong and weak variants, the latter of which occurs when nouns or adjectives are treated as verbs [For example: noun: ''Karig (hand) > Kariçe (I/we will hold/will be holding). ''Weak verbs stemming from adjectives are more predictable in there definitions. For example: ilefus (better) > ilefiçe (I/we will improve/will be improving)]. Strong verbs are more fusional than their weak counterparts, which are primarily agglutinated.

The following table features the past and future tenses of strong and weak verbs. Technically speaking, Gikamlig has no conjugation that strictly identifies any present tense. Discussing current events requires expressing one of three tenses of day: "morning tense", "noon tense", and "evening tense" (italicized with quotations because these are not their correct names. In fact, I have no idea if there even is one).

Using whichever "day tense", depending on the time of day it is used, could be referring to an action that occurred in the past, present, or future of the day the discussion occurs. For example, if one were to use the noon tense during noon or afternoon, it would be rendered as the present tense; however, if it is used and it is the evening, then it is rendered as an action in the past, specifically the afternoon. Likewise, if it is the afternoon or morning and the evening tense is used, it is rendered as an action that will occur during the evening.

Mood
The following conjugations regard mood, of which Gikamlig inflects for three: subjunctive, imperative, interrogative, the latter of which will be discussed firstly. The interrogative mood for weak verbs is naturally simple: just add the suffix "s" after the appropriate tense. Strong verbs are more colourful in conjugation, although just as straightforward; to conjugate for the interrogative, these verbs switch the positions of the last two vowels. Following is the imperative mood, which has its own inflections, albeit of a much smaller variety. Just as in English, the imperative can be considered rude or offensive depending on circumstance, and as such a sort of "Interrogative-Imperative" merging occurs (again, I have no idea if there is an actual name for this). The interrogative-imperative turns the imperative into a question, and as a result it inflects exactly as the interrogative. The subjunctive has by far the simplest conjugation. In fact, it removes any conjugation at all for either strong or weak verbs. For example: "Milwafkis tuķ su karrda" "It was necessary that he build." Literally: "He had necessary build." So the rule is to just drop the infinitive (Tuķes ---> Tuķ); however, if the verb has two consonants before the conjugation, such as "Lostes" (To cut), the infinitive is replaced with -il, turning the verb to "Lostil".

Syntax
Gikamlig's most basic word order is OVS, unless the subject is a pronoun, in which case it is OSV. Sentence structure can be rather flexible. For example, adjectives and adverbs can be found before or after their respective noun or verb, so that "Cute little dog" can be stated as either "Butis lilis zolig", "Zolig butis lilis", "Lilis zolig butis", and etc.