Ahtialan

Ahtialan language (ah. Aŝtialidai kíñau [ʹas̪͆tɪ̯ˌaɮʲɪ'dai ʹkiːn͈ˠɑ̃ũ]) or Aylláwai ['aɪ̆ɫɑ'waj] - central Mikui language of the Ahtialan family, official language in the Ahtialan Commonwealth of the conworld Haivööri, lingua franca in the Mikui continent; in the Commonwealth it is spoken by approximately 60% of the population and by minorities in Amultia and Makratia.

Ahtialan is one of the two oldest languages of RWHÔ, the second being Makratian, that were created about 1994 or 1995, when the author was only at the age of four. "Ancient" Makratian did not survive and was forgot in time. The complex alphabetic system was designed in about 1996 for Ahtialan language that helped the child's language to somehow last until the first major reform in 2005. Today it is a well developed a priori conlang with history, tradition, literature and ideology.

Name of the language written in Ahtialan script

=Name and rights= As the author is not a native English speaker, the name "Ahtialan" was derived directly from Polish name of this language, "ahtialański". In this form it is phonetically correct comparing to its name in the conlang itself, but (as usual) English pronunciation may be misleading. However, any separate name for English was never created, and the form "Ahtialan" is supported by the Polish conlangers. Originally, it is «ahtialedai» («ahtial-» + suffix for language names, «-edai»), from «Ahtiala» (name of the country), which originates from the common word «ahtiawume», meaning "armadillo", Ahtialan national animal (also depicted in state coat of arms).

However, «aŝtialidai» might be used for any Ahtialan language, and the standard version (made by the author) is called «aylláwai» ['ajɫɑwäi], transcribed in English as "aylawai". The etymology of this word is derived from old Ahtialan «ayllá» "scent" or "gust" + «wai» "flower", but as both "scent" and "flower" have other names, it is considered to be meaningless (apart from the language, state and nation).

The author says that Ahtialan language can be used as anyone wishes unless it is used for commercial purposes. It means that creating conlangs based either completely or partially on Ahtialan or borrowing to other conlangs any part of it are allowed. The only wish is to give an a priori name to any new conlang based on aylawai.



=Phonology= It was never planned, but in fact Ahtialan is almost always used as a whisper language. This resulted in severe changes in its phonology (which used to be quite regular in the past). As other languages focus on method (voiceless, voiced, etc.), Ahtialan focuses on power (fortis VS lenis, phonological phenomena combined, etc.). It currently includes phonetic features like vowel power, clicks and ejectives; consonants of a range from bilabial fricatives to epiglottal and glottal, dynamic~pitch stress, nasalisation and more.

Despite some opinions, Ahtialan phonology, no matter how unusual it may appear, is functional and allows to sing and speak very fast while used correctly.

Vowels
Usually Ahtialan is described as a non-tonal language. However, this opinion is not so easy to maintain as clear pitch-accent tendencies meet three basic vowel series. If it was to be described as tonal, its vowels would have two tones: weak and strong. These tones are, however, unlike those found in Chinese (contour, lexical) or Sesotho (pitch, grammatical), but like Burmese: vowels of different "tones" use more than one phonological phenomena combined (simultaneously). There are two tones (weak-strong) and three series (weak-strong-ablaut) of vowels:
 * weak vowels are short, pure, voiced, oral, may be high or low (depends on utterance melody);
 * strong vowels are +50% longer than weak ones, are produced with strong breathy-voice and with nasal cavity open (passive nasalization), are always either harshly falling or rising (depends on melody and decision on whether to make it sound good or bad);
 * ablaut usually these are forms of weak vowels (same characteristics and they have no strong form), represent weak vowels of place of articulation altered due to certain circumstances (mostly historical).

Alveolo-palatal (compressed) vowel «y»
Ahtialan language uses sounds which are compressed (unnaturally alveolo-palatal). They are broader described in consonants section. The vowel «y» is also made by having the tongue retracted right after the alveolar ridge and contracted with heavy tension, pressing the lateral teeth, but it makes a passage for the airstream. The place of articulation seems to be identical to that of [i], but due to tongue shape, it sounds much more like the vowel [y]; even if it is unrounded.

Cer, Car reductions
Some syllables beginning with a consonant and having -er or -ar after it have the vowel removed, and its function is taken over by [r], which is able then to bear the stress. This happens with frequently used words such as «ver» "more" (and its forms, particularly «verha» "all"), «var» or «vár» "I", «sar» "into", «kir» "but" and more. What is interesting about it is that such words with the letter "v" differ in pronunciation - in strong form, the consonant is nowadays [w] (or officially [β]) and the vowel remains, while in rapid speech the vowel vanishes, [r] becomes syllabic, and "v" consonant is pronounced as [v].

Nasal clusters
The most common adjectival ending is -ant (it may also be in other forms such as -int like in "kirilint", -ent "sertent" or -unt "nudunt"). While recently the pronunciation of this changed to, the official version is the same as it was in the past,. This is a borrowing from Polish nasal vowels system, which uses for nasal vowels, despite having neither  in any other position nor even  at all. The usage of cluster still seems normal, with  being slightly colloquial.

Stress
Ahtialan uses utterance melody rather than a normal stress. It used to have a dynamic stress like Polish, but this change appeared because of songs. Each word has its own inbuilt stress. It may be initial, medial, or final. While usually this is unpredictable, there are some patterns that help: In an utterance, the stress of the first word counts and enforces the melody order of all words that follow it. Usually this melody is like (pitch notation) HLHLLH, (stress notation) áaáaaá, (Potebnya’s stress patterns) 131321. First two syllables after the starting point are unlikely to change patterns, nevertheless, this might happen, especially if strong vowels or heavy nasalization appear. When the utterance - stream of sounds - meet a pause (longer than used to divide words), the melody breaks. The pitch differences between a high (stressed) and low (unstressed) vowels are not big, but distinguishable.
 * 1) if the word has two syllables of the same type, the higher stress is on the second one, strong vowels don't count (ala, kiñí)
 * 2) if the word has three syllables, usually there are two main-high stresses (no secondary), one on the beginning, the other on the end (kanama)
 * 3) if the word has more, it builds up melody according to rules stated below

Stress has almost no meaning in grammar and morphology, except for one conjugation pattern.

Ahtialan as a syllable-type language
Languages can be divided to stress-type and syllable-type. In the first group there are languages which use a very powerful syllable stress, which makes other vowels alter or vanish ("vowel reduction"). Examples of these include English: "banana" and Russian: "банана". The second group uses relatively weak stress and maintains other vowels in their shape, allowing long words and vowel chains to be pronounced without much effort. Two examples of that are from Japanese: "katakana" and Polish: "Antananarywa".

Ahtialan belongs to the second group and this is crucial to learning Ahtialan pronunciation. Aylláwai language allows long vowels chains, such as aeoı, which is a word for "government law system", which is pronounced.

Consonants
Consonants can also be divided into three groups, according to the source of airstream. These are pulmonic, velum-assisted, and velaric. All consonants are produced with an aerostream finding an unambiguous obstacle on its way, producing a sound, which usually can not bear stress (in Ahtialan, except for "r"). English, Polish and Russian all use only pulmonic sounds. These are created using the airstream generated in lungs by contracting rib muscles or the diaphragm. They use lung aistream in 100%.

Velaric sounds comprise implosives (ingressive), ejectives (egressive) and clicks (ingressive). Ahtialan used to have an implosive "g’", but it is obsolete, so now it has ejectives only. Ahtialan ejectives are strong and loud, made with easily audible glottal stop. Most ejectives appeared from doubled consonants (e.g. "tt" [tt] → [ʈ’]; "kk" [kk] → [c’]). An exception is [q’], being a much older phoneme, and morphonologically considered a click. Ahtialan has also clicks [ǀ] and [ǃ˞] in rounded and unrounded versions. They use velar airstream in 100%.

Velum-assisted ("pulmono-velaric", "weak ejectives") sounds are characteristic for Ahtialan and quite frequent. They emerged as a result of whispered speech, usually out of voiced consonants. These sounds are made with weaker airstream from lungs assisted with a quick move of the back of the tongue up, towards the velum. This movement is never fully completed (so it does not stop the airstream) and causes a rapid raise in airstream pressure and velocity in mouth cavity. While ejectives by definition can not be continuously pronounced (they are momental, even affricates [s’]), velum-assisted ones to some extent can be. If prolonged too much, the back of the tongue must go down in order for the move to continue, and the consonant starts sounding childishly sinusoidal. Ahtialan does not use any long velum-assisted consonants, but short ones are common. The airstream is 50% pulmonic and 50% velaric.

Division according to airstream mechanism:

N, M fortis and lenis
This is mainly applicable to "n", but recently may also be the case with "m". These two nasal consonants appear in two versions, weak and strong (lenis and fortis). Weak "n" is pronounced with nasal cavity open, but the back of the tongue directs the airstream in oral cavity. This is the weak nasalization. Only "n" is then nasal. If after it comes the high vowel [i], it turns into. N fortis is velarized, and most of the airstream falls onto the nasal cavity. This is the strong nasalization, which may spread throughout the utterance, weakly nasalizing all nearby vowels and consonants. There are some consonants which are better at stopping this process than others, for example, plosives. However, if an n fortis comes straight after a plosive consonant, like in tñae or pñasa, it nasalizes also them.

M fortis is relatively rare and does not have such influence n fortis has. It may alter some vowels, like in mual.

Clicks
Ahtialan is a click language. However, click occured naturally in it and are unlike those used in Khoisan languages - they are much more rare and have no variations (all are voiced and slightly nasal). These are [ǀ], [ǃ˞] and [ǃ˞ʷ].

Compressed sounds
Some sounds are produced with tongue compression. This organ hides right after the alveolar ridge, on the hard palate, and contracts (with heavy tension, pressing lateral teeth). If then it makes a full ejective, it forms a [ʈ’]. If it makes a click, it forms a [ǃ˞]. If a passage is created, it gives the vowel [i˞]. If this sound is lateral, it forms a [ɮʲ] (which others tried to transcribe as [ʎ͡ʑ] or similar).

These kind of sounds appeared certainly because of "l" and this process is known. At first, "l" was a normal [l]. Then it was altered to sound different, so it became monolateral: it was pronounced using either left or right side of mouth cavity. When a [lu] → [ly] mutation appeared, it had to face monolateral pronunciation of "l", so to maintain both features, the tongue retracted forming [ʎi˞]. This is also the modern pronunciation of "lu" (or spelled "ly") syllable. However, this tongue position remained in all other positions, there forming a [ɮʲ], [ɮ] or sometimes [ʎ]. After that, a [lˠ]~[l] sound was also added, and these are spelled with double l.

Ahtialan "R"
Unlike natural languages, Ahtialan "R" is always trilled, no matter how rapid the speech is, no matter what the fonetic context is. There are few exceptions, in which a tap is used (and no [r]). These are words in which "r" is between two vowels, the second of which bears the stress and is final in the word; like viru, ara, lare, etc. Trilled pronunciation is slightly different than it is in Polish. The vibration is caused by the very tip of the tongue, and the whole organ moving slowly to the back (single "r" is near-dental when it begins and alveolar when it ends, or alveolar to post-alveolar). This movement allows using trilled r in every position and velocity of speech. English ~ are not allowed and are considered to be a grave error when used in Ahtialan.

=Orthography= Ahtialan script is used. It has been invented in about 1996 and have a crucial importance in language's existence, it plays a big role in its ideology. Some letters were based on Latin script, like "A", or "O", most of them are not. Ahtialan script uses mostly sharp lines, with little curves. Characteristic are letters made of vertical lines, such as | being "i", || being "d", ||| being "n", |||| being "m" and ||||| being "w" (now obsolete). In about 2005 a system of minuscule graphemes was invented, and mediscule right after it. Ahtialan script is an alphabet (in its decorative forms it has a lot of letters for consonant clusters) mixed with ideographs.

When it is impossible to use it (e.g. on computers due to technological circumstances), Latin alphabet is used. This alphabet was composed the way it would be possible to write without any special software on GNU/Linux operating systems, using Polish keyboard layout as basic (where all keys have ALT + assigned values, including dead keys).

Vowels
Six basic letters are used:
 * A a - O o - E e - U u - I ı - Y y

and five diacritical marks to expand the number of available letters:
 * dot above (Polish: kropka ponad) - dot is put above the letter «I ı» to form «İ i»
 * tilde (Pl. tylda) - strong vowels are signed using a tilde: «Ã ã», «Ẽ ẽ», «Õ õ», «Ũ ũ» and «Ĩ ĩ». Strong series are vowels with complex phonological phenomena; simultaneously, nasal, breathy-voiced, longer for ±50% and with specific tone
 * acute (Pl. akcent ostry) - marks ablaut vowels. Used with "ı" «Í í» means the same as «İ i» but in longer form, under the main or secondary stress; and for «Á á», where means an irregular pronunciation [ɑ]
 * umlaut (Gr. diaeresis) - also marks ablaut vowels, marks those that in their history were centralized (towards "e"). This is the case mainly with «A a» and «O o», which are spelled «Ä ä» and «Ö ö» then. If the vowel in ablaut-like pronunciation was introduced in a new word (isn't historical), the letter «Ë ë» is used. All three letters - ä, ö, ë - are pronounced similarly. Not in all dialects this change has been completed, so differencing is neccessary.
 * circumflex (Pl. Odwrócony daszek) - notes weakening of the vowel to  and it is used only for this vowel.

Punctuation
In Latin script Ahtialan punctuation seems to be quite regular, with the exception of middle dot usage. This sign is used after the so called superparticles (see grammar), which in Ahtialan script are written with an ideograph instead of a phonetic writing system. For example, ne ("no" - denying, refusing) may be written as "ne" when negating one phrase, like in the following verb phrase: Varna yurtaŝ ẽt ne lu. "I don't chat with YOU" and as "ne·" when negating the whole utterance, like in the following sentence: Ne· varna yurtaŝ ẽt lu. "I don't chat with you (at all)."

=Syntax=

=Grammar=

=References=