Slakomian

Introduction
Slakomian (  Itomaslakomawa  in Slakomian) is a language spoke by the Slakom people in the world of Leshnethosa. Slakomians live on flying ships, and so their language got influenced by other languages of port cities. The language has been simplified over the years by Slakomians in order to allow the merchants to learn it easily. In fact, Slakomians are deeply involved in the Great market (in Slakomian '' Kasmokongayetahiukhtawa) where they trade their knowledge (they got plenty of it) for goods.

Slakoma and the Slakomians
The Slakomians, the people of Slakom, are the people of the wind in Leshnethosa. They live in the sky by stealing from merchants in port cities. In the past, they lived on the mountains of the north with the people of the fire whom they call Poulakaphawahi (more details on the Kapha coming soon). Slakoma and Kapha once formed an alliance, but Kapha chose to betray and expel Slakoma a while ago. The Slakomians got no choice but using their wind power to fly away in the skies. Because there wasn' t a lot of survivors, the flying ships do not have a lot of people on them, and Slakomians usually know everyone really well.

In Slakomian culture, names are something important and they don't usually use them casually. That's why a special case marker evolved with names and got mixed with the vocative one (al-). Slakomian names usually don't come from a word, because in their culture that would limit the individual to his name. Because of that, they usually have rather original names. Also, thanks to their original names, they usually don't need a family name (although southern merchants didn't waste time creating them surnames that would fit their needs).

Evolution
Slakomian was previously adapted for life on the mountains and the cold, and kept a big enough vocabulary from the Kapha language. Since Kapha people tend to use many consonant clusters, Slakomians aren't afraid of these and tend to also use them a lot in their words. The earliest form of Slakomian, and the language from which it evolved, is Proto-Slakomian (coming soon).

The Slakomian alphabet evolved from the Proto-Slakomian one, with the influence of the latin alphabet used by merchants. Also, it got simplified in order to need less letters and be easy to write. This simplification pretty much saved it, since the southern merchants' Latin alphabet would have made a great replacement otherwise.

Vowels
Note: There are no tones in Slakomian.

Phonotactics
In Slakomian, the syllable structure is like the following: (C)(C)V(C).


 * A stop followed by a fricative or an approximant is considered like a sole consonant (Ex.: ps, ksh).
 * A vowel cannot be followed by another vowel, except for a semi vowel (y and w).
 * If a word starts with a nasal, there can't be another consonant next to it.
 * There can't be a double sound

Stress
Stress is not defined in Slakomian, and depending of the dialect or even person, it can change completely.

Writing System
The Slakomian alphabet is the alphabet used for writing in Slakomian. It is an unicameral alphabet, which means there are no capital and lowercase letters. There are some diagraphs and there is also a punctuation system.

Scripts
Slakomian is normally used with the alphabet I will show next, but the romanization can also be used. In the fictional world of Leshnethosa, the Slakomian alphabet is the most common one to be used by Slakomians, but in trading the romanization is more popular since the merchants of the south use the latin alphabet.

Letters

 * Words are written as they sound in Slakomian, so spelling is no problem.
 * i and ï sometimes loose their dots and resemble ı in the handwritten version of the alphabet. Note: The names of letters are written in the lexicon

Punctuation

 * A light point is used to end any group of words that aren't a sentence.

Nouns
Nouns are used to represent objects, living beings, ideas, etc. Also, there are no articles in Slakomian. There is no grammatical gender in Slakomian, and every noun ends in a . In order to specify the biological gender of someone, a noun ends in -ikha for masculine and -ina for feminine. A noun becomes plural when hi is added at the end of the it (for example apwa becomes apwahi in the plural form). There are also some cases, which I will show in the following table.

If you want to see examples of nouns in Slakomian, go to the lexicon at the end of this page.

Cases
Notes:


 * The dative is also used for marking the owner of something.
 * Locative also indicates direction with a motion verb.
 * Other participle verbs have a role similar to a case marker, but there are too much of them for covering them here.
 * Names always have the vocative prefix, so in order to differentiate vocative names from normal names we use the  hal-  prefix (Ex.:  Aldekkvin  becomes  Haldekkvin  in the vocative form)
 * Case markers are stuck to the noun. If the noun starts with a vowel, h is added between them because there can' t be two vowels following each other in Slakomian.

Adjectives
Adjectives describe nouns in multiple ways. They are placed after the noun and are not declined with the noun. Every adjective ends in -aw. Adjectives can be put with a noun to form a compound word. This is used mainly for making emphasis on the importance of the adjective. For example, if we want to talk about a delicious apple, we will take the word for apple (  apwa  ) and the word for delicious (  khalasaw  ) and stick them together with the -a ending. This will get us the word  apwakhalasawa  : a delicious apple.

If you want to see examples of adjectives in Slakomian, go to the lexicon at the end of this page.

Verbs
Slakomian verbs are only used in the participle form and the infinitive form (except for the verb  to be  ). Every active voice verb ends in  ong  (and passive ones with  eyth , more about that later). Basically, a verb is formed by: the subject, the verb in the participle form and the conjugation of the verb to be that corresponds to the subject. If the subject is a pronoun, it can be removed since every person has its own conjugation. The only verb that is conjugated is the verb to be, so here it is: Notes:


 * To make the infinitive form of a verb, we simply add the word  tal  in front of it.
 * For the imperative mood, the word  ka  is put in front of the verb.
 * For the conditional mood, the word  si  is put in front of the verb.
 * It is common to remove the  y  that starts the auxiliary verb  to be  for making it shorter and easier to pronounce. In that case, the auxiliary verb will be stuck to the verb or adjective (for example: Thakong yeko (I know) → Thakongeko).
 * The active voice (-ong) is used when the subject is doing the action. On the other hand, the passive voice (-eyth) is used when the subject is receiving the action. For example:  Shkong yen  (He eats) is active, and  Shkeyth yen  (He gets eaten) is passive.

Adverbs
Adverbs describe how the action in the sentence is done. For exemple, it can describe the time, the place, the manner, etc. Impure adverbs are made of other words, usually a verb in the participe and a noun. Here are some exemples of impure adverbs:


 * Ouyanakhamawa: Never (Locative marker (ou) + Moment (yana) + None (khamawa))
 * Aphongshtenyapaya: Using a pencil (Using (aphong) + Pencil (shtenyapaya))
 * Outhoma: In a country (Locative marker (ou) + Country (thoma))

The other type of adverbs in Slakomian is of course the pure adverbs. They are words on their own or a single word derived and they all end in o . Here are a few examples to clarify:


 * To: Not (Negation marker)
 * Lapho: Well (From  Laphaw  meaning good)
 * Katho: Tomorrow

Note: Pure adverbs can of course also be derived themselves, for example  Katho  meaning  tomorrow  becomes  Kathohakatho  (After tomorrow, literally '' Tomorrow's tomorrow).

If you want to see examples of adverbs in Slakomian, go to the lexicon at the end of this page.

Word order
The Slakomian word order is generally really simple, with its SOV pattern (Actually: complement, indirect object, subject, object and verb). Also, adjectives come after nouns and adverbs after verbs.

Notes:


 * If there are more than one adjective ore adverb, the speaker is free to chose their order.
 * If a word is constituted of multiple other words stuck together, they have to follow the order presented ahead.

Questions
The first type of question is the yes/no questions. They are answered by yes or no. For a yes/no question, we take the statement which we want to ask a question about and add the word  Ska at the start of the sentence. By the way, in order to respond to this type of question we need the words Nen (meaning yes) and Sta (meaning no). Here is an example of a yes/no question and it' s answer.


 * 1) - Ska ahoush toumong yen lapho? (Are you doing well?) (Literally: [Question marker] to you (it) feeling is well?)
 * 2) - Nen! Ahoko toumong yen lapho. (Yes! I'm fine.) (Literally: Yes! To me (it) feeling is well.)

The other type of question is used to ask about multiple things and is answered by something else than yes or no. They are called complex questions. We can ask about when something happened, where it happened, what happened, etc. To make a question of this type, we need to choose what we want as an answer and add the interrogative adjective Shkaw  (Literally meaning which) after it. Please note that the word order doesn' t change in either type of question.

Now, let 's do an example of a complex question. Let's say we want to ask in which country someone lives. First, we will use the word Thoma for country, and then add the interrogative adjective Shkaw next to it. Thoma shkaw. Then, we add the locative marker for precising that the person lives in the country;  Outhoma shkaw . Finally, we add the verb meaning  to live in  and the appropriate conjugation of the verb to be:  Kasong yesh  (Literally '' You are living in). It makes us the question sentence '' Outhoma shkaw kasong yesh? '' : In which country do you live?. The answer would be  Ou[Name of the country in Slakomian] kasong yeko  : I live in (Name of the country).

Relative clauses
To make a Slakomian relative clause, the noun takes the adjective Yetshkaw and then we can add the subordinate clause. If there is no noun, we can add one fitting the subject to the relative adjective.

Exemple sentence containing a relative clause:

Oko shkongephako, kosa yetshkaw ots stalongephan.

Meaning: I ate, which annoyed him.

Literally: I was eating, thing which him was annoying.

Lexicon
Since it would take too much space, I put the Slakomian lexicon on an external page: https://pastebin.com/rMM0qaaC

Note: The words are in the Slakomian alphabetical order (As I showed in the writing system section, it is as the following: a, p, k, t, e, ph & kh, th, i, y, m, n, o, ng, l, w, s, h and finally sh)

Example texts
In this section there is first a few sentences that really explain how the language works, and then a paragraph of normal Slakomian text will follow up.

 Explanative text 

Oko siu itoma slakomawa itomong eko.

''I speak Slakomian. (Literally: I [accusative] language Slakomian speaking (I) am )''

Ska siu kos tawa thakong yesh ?

''Do you know that? (Literally: [question] [accusative] thing this know (you) are )''

Siu khalasawa nitong eko.

''I want tasty food. (Literally: [accusative] tasty food wanting (I) am )''

Regular text

oJı' nomւաuւաкoJաmաнı' omւoкա кաuoՐcJı тcı uımꞀınաւoкoՐաнı oJաm unꞀoՐcJı: uımгաкա нımluтաm nouoՐcJı тcı кւıԵաmcJı: nւաкoJաmա uımԵcтluա oJաm гoՐ uımкouաкcւաmա' ԵաıJաuoՐ ւաlno' тcı uımՐmcuաнı oJաm' ՐmcuաıcԵnաւաmա тcı ՐmcuաJcıւաmա' monuoՐcԵ:

Romanization

Omi, poulaslakomawahi, ouloka kasongemi tey siushipalokongahi omaw spshongemi. Siuthaka hiukhtaw posongemi tey klinawemi. Plakwomawa siunetkha omaw thong siukosakelawa, naymasong lapho, tey siungwesahi omaw, ngwesayenpalawa tey ngwesamaylawa, wopsongen.

Word for word

We, slakomians, [locative]-sky living-(we)are and [accusative]-ships-flying our driving-(we)are. [accusative]-knowledge great having-(we)are and sage-(we)are. Flag-our [accusative]-habit our concerning [accusative]-thing-some, calculating well, and [accusative]-colors our, color-purple and color-orange, representing-(it)is.

Translation

We Slakomians live in the skies and drive our flying ships. We have great knowledge and are sage. Our flag represents our habit of well calculating things and our two colors: purple and orange.

Feedback
If you have anything to tell me about my conlang, you can message me on Discord via this username: Kebekulo#7989