Buthrotan

Phonology
The Buthrotan language has a relatively european-sounding phonology, comprised of six basic vowel sounds and twenty-six different consonant sounds (although some other consonants appear in allophonic positions), and many regular consonants also appear as allophones of others.

Vowels
As said previously, Buthrotan has six vowels - ones that are often found in typical European languages.

The Buthrotan vowel system is unusal as it contains no basic vowel /a/, instead it contains the open back vowel /ɑ/ (like the pronounciation of English "ah!") and the near-open front vowel /æ/ (like the pronunciation of English "cat"). In word-final position, all non-close vowels /ɛ/, /æ/, /ɑ/ and /ɒ/ become a reduced central schwa sound [ə], so the word "burovo" sounds as if it is written "burova". In contrast, the close vowels /i/, /y/ and /u/ all become their longer counterparts /iː/, /yː/ and /uː/.

Buthrotan does not employ any aspect of vowel harmony or distinguishing vowel length, although vowel length can be allophonic (as mentioned above). In stressed syllables, vowels usually become allophonically lengthened in speech, although this is neither crucial nor phonemic.

Buthrotan has no dipthongs. It historically did have one /oʊ/ (like "oh!" in some dialects of English), but this later merged with /u/ (although it is still orthographically represented by the letter "ou").

Consonants
Where symbols for consonants appear in pairs, the one to the left represents a voiceless consonant, whereas the one on the right represents a voiced consonant. The consonant /h/ can become the glide [j] or [w] when found in an intervocalic position. So for example lhuha is pronounced [ɮuwə].

Consonant Clusters
Buthrotan permits several consonant clusters, although many of the ones containing alveolar consonants have been simplified (see the section postalveolar assimilation). The majority of them are voiceless, and as such are easily pronounced by native english speakers. There are however some that are unusual, such as [pt] (represented by "bt"), for example btahs "god" and [ɮt] (represented by "lht"), for example lhtu "cup", whose word-initial locations can be difficult for speakers of English.

H-Dropping
The consonant /h/ is dropped in many cases. It becomes the glides [j] and [w] between vowels, or is deleted altogether. For example, slrohoumb becomes pronounced as [ʃɹo.umb] - as if it was spelt šroümb.

Postalveolar Assimilation
Both alveolar and palatal consonants become postalvelar (like the sounds in "cheese", "shop" and "judge") through reaction with other postalveolar consonants and the r sound.

The languages only rhotic consonant /ɾ/ becomes the alveolar approximant [ɹ] (the "r" sound in English) in consonant clusters. In consonant clusters involving alveolar consonants (tr, dr, str, cr, sr, slr, slhr, sfr, svr, sqhr and zr), this sound has the effect of postalveolarising the entire consonant cluster, as seen in the table below.

The palatal plosive /c/ (represented by the letter "q"), and the palatal fricative /ç/ (represented by the letter ) also assimilate into postalveolar consonants if followed by the rhotic [ɹ].

Finally, you seldom ever find /s/, /z/ and /ts/ in the same word as /ʃ/ and /ʒ/, /tʃ/ and /dʒ/. In a word, they either all alveolar or all postalveolar. In most words this is indicated, for example in words such as ševešešum "you're welcome" (from historical ševesesum), however, in some words it is simply a matter of memory, such as sqhrucela "flower" (pronounced [ʃɹutʃɛlə]), where the "c" is pronounced as "č", because of assimilation with the cluster "sqhr" which represents the same sound as "š".

Final Vowel Reduction
All non-close vowels (i.e. a, aa, e and o) become severely reduced to [ə] at the end of a word. This means that the words mura, murah, mure and muro would all be pronounced as [muɾə] - the only way of distinguishing between them would be via orthography.

Final Vowel Lengthening
All close vowels (i, y and u) experience lengthening when placed at the end of a word. So the pronunciation of mny ("what?") is [mnyː]. When a word root ending in -i, -u and -y has a suffix attatched to the end of it, the vowel is shortened (as it is no longer in word-final position), for example ntosi [n.tɒsiː] "four" into ntosisqh [n.tɒsiç] "quarter".

Orthography
Buthrotan Orthography is easier for the reader than the writer, as many letters and letter sequences represent the same sound, whereas very few letter sequences represent more than one sound.

Alphabet
The Buthrotan Alphabet consists of numerous letters. It contains all the basic letters of the latin alphabet (although "w" is only seen in foreign words), as well as several digraphs and the letters 'č' and 'š' and 'ž'. All of these are treated as letters of their own, and are collated as such in dictionaries.

Digraphs
The digraphs gn, lh, ph, qh and th are treated as letters in their own right, and have their own place in collation order, so the word tugnoumb "house" comes before thabtu "stomach". There are other letter combinations (such as ct and cd that represent seperate sounds), but these are often incidental pronunciations and are too uncommon to be treated as seperate letters on a par with the five main digraphs, so they are instead treated as sequences of two (or more) letters.

Diacritics
The three letters with a caron ('č', 'š' and ž) are treated undisputedly as letters of their own, as they represent consonantal sounds quite different from their corresponding non-caron letters. They have their own place in collation order, and their own section in dictionaries etc. However, Buthrotan also uses a number of other diacritics to aid in pronunciation and etymology of the language's words. These letters with diacritics are not treated as letters in their own right, rather as modifications of their parent letters.
 * The Grave Accent is used on the letters a and e to diffrentiate between words that would otherwise be spelt the same. For example between ne (inanimate definate article) and nè (not, no). For example "nè, ne spestror a nè ne quthourspou" ("no, the plates are not on the countertop").
 * The Circumflex is used on all the vowel letters to show abbreviation and contraction of words. Buthrotan is a very heavily contracting and abbreviating language even in formal writing, and a circumflex indicates a lost sound or even a lost word ending. For example the word samphrimoun ("friend") is often shortened to sampî, the word fegunalor "people" is often shortened to fôr etc. See the section on abbreviation and contraction for much more in-depth information.
 * Lastly, the Diaeresis is seen on the letter u to show that a cluster 'ou' is pronounced as a sequence of 'o' followed by a 'u', rather than /u/ as the letter ou represents. For example koüm "horse".

Animacy
Buthrotan makes grammatical distinction between animate and inanimate nouns. The distinction between animate and inanimate behaves similarly to the distinction between masculine and feminine nouns in many european languages. Animate and inanimate have different declension endings, different articles etc.

Animate nouns include organic things such people and animals, for example slreto "woman" and unka "pig". In addition, movable machinery is included in the animate section, for example sporano "aeroplane". Plants, although living, are not included in the animate section. Inanimate nouns are everything else, inanimate objects such as platu "table", srothum "chair" and thuqha "carpet".

Articles
Buthrotan uses the definate, indefinate and negative article, each with a seperate form for the animate and inanimate nouns.

The negative articles mpu and feše can be also used together with the verb "to be" to indicate the verb "devoid". For example če ahtru a-mpu fôr "this place is devoid of people".

Case
There are several cases in Buthrotan, the majority of them being locative cases. These are indicated by means of an enclitic attatched to the end of the word. There are different endings depending on whether the noun is animate or inanimate.

Number
Buthrotan employs two grammatical numbers, singular and plural. The singular form is unmarked, but the plural form is indicated by the addition of a suffix. The plural suffix of animate objects is -or, and the plural suffix of inanimate objects is -er.

Personal Pronouns
Personal pronouns are quite simple, each grammatical person taking seperate forms for animate and inanimate, and plural and singular. Personal pronouns follow the same basic declension as regular nouns, following the same animate/inanimate distinction.

There is no specific 1st or 2nd Person Inanimate pronouns, should they be needed for whatever reason, the animate counterparts are used.

Because of the VSO nature of Buthrotan, often two personal pronouns will be placed adjacent to eachother. Often, the two pronouns elide into eachother. For example, in the sentence "I told you", rather than "spunud e aum", it is common to reduce it to "spunud jâum"', where the word jâum indicates the exact pronunciation of the word, and the use of the symbol "â" indicates that it is the contraction of two words, resulting in the loss of the vowel 'e'. See the section on abbreviation and contraction for much more information on the contraction of personal pronouns.

Demonstrative Pronouns
Buthrotan makes a distinction between "this/these" and "that/those". The word for "this" is 'če', and the word for "that" is 'či'. For example "če ntoum" "this house", "či ntoum" "that house".

Interrogative Pronouns
Buthrotan uses similar interrogative pronouns to english: Note how in almost every case, the verb "is" is omitted altogether when following an interrogative pronoun, as it is often seen as superfluous.

Verbs
Verbs are fairly simple in Buthrotan, rather than following a suffix-based system as in the nouns, verbs tend to take a much more prepositional method of conjugation.

Tenses
There are three tenses: the past, present and future. The past tense is indicated by the suffix ud', as in fulud ûmb' "I did". The present tense is unmarked, as in "ful ûmb" "I do", and the future tense is indicated by the suffix inour, as in "fulinour ûmb" "I will do".

Aspect
Buthrotan is rich in grammatical aspect, and these are formed by prepositions placed before the verb word itself.

Voice
Buthrotan distinguishes between the active and passive voice. This is done by the preposition è (the grave accent is used to distinguish it from the Animate 1st Person Pronoun e), which is placed both before the verb and before the object. So for example, "I was eaten by the monster" is written è nungud (was eaten) e (I) è no goulum (by the monster) (è nungud e è no goulum).

Supine
Buthrotan uses the grammatical supine, which is a verbal noun with the use similar to that of "to sleep" in the sentence "I upstairs to sleep". It indicates an intended action, referring to the action as if it were a noun. In Buthrotan, the supine is notified by the addition of the suffix -sylu. So the sentence "I went upstairs to sleep" is written ''"Thodud e šupagrunda zyršulsylu". ''This sentence then also has the possible meanings of "I went upstairs for sleep", "I went upstairs with the intention of sleeping there", "I went upstairs because I intended to sleep there" etc.

Abbreviation and Contraction
Buthrotan uses abbreviation and contraction in several ways, often dramatically shortening a sentence. Contraction is employed to such an extent that sometimes entire sentences can be "squashed" into just a single word. Only certain aspects of abbreviation and contraction are acceptable in formal speech and writing.

Use of the Circumflex
The circumflex is used on all vowel letters, resulting in â, ê, î, ô, û and ŷ. The use of the circumflex is to show that a vowel or consonant sound has been lost as a result of contraction or abbreviation. For example, the sequence e o "I am" is contracted to a simple ô, with the circumflex above the letter 'o' showing that the e-sound has been lost as a result of this contraction.

Contraction of Adjacent Words
The most common type of contraction is that of two words right next to eachother. A common example of this is in the verb 'to be', which is explained in the section below. In addition, because two pronouns often occur adjacently to eachother (because of the VSO nature of the Buthrotan language), these two pronouns elide into eachother, resulting in a new word which represents both the subject and object of the verb.

Pronouns as the object and subject of Verbs
For example, "I love you" is written velhu êdum, with êdum standing for "I~you".

The Verb 'To Be'
The basic form of the verb 'to be' is o. However, due to elision and contraction of common sequences such as e o "I am", the verb 'to be' can be quite difficult to predict.

Using the basic present tense, many pronouns have contracted together with the verb "to be" into new shortened words, which are almost exclusively used as opposed to their non-shortened counterparts, even in formal speech and text. The past tense of 'to be' is oüd ("was"), but in the case of the newer contracted forms, the suffix -d is simply added to the end of it. For example srôd ("we were"), ôd ("I was").