Alitalia

General information
Lingua Alitalia (English: Alitalian Language), or Alitalia for short, is the official language of Federa de'es Respublika Alitalia(Federation of Alitalian Republics), an intergalactic federation. The language comes from Proto-Indo-European language, mixed with Turkic loan words, but has been adapted to the local people's customs for a clearer pronunciation and shorter written form. Modern Alitalia still has conjugations and declensions, but they are highly regular and simpler than ancient Alitalia.

History
It is said the ancestors of the Alitalian people were emigrated from the Earth to a habitable planet several thousand years ago, under the guide of an unknown "divine" power. It is also said that the Noah's Ark is actually describing this event, i.e. a salvage operation to preserve the sentient beings when a catastrophic climate change may destroy the indigenous humans on Earth. They then evolved into a human-like race and over 3,000 hybrid races around 1400 BC. After a series of clashes and wars, these races are united into the current regime. Following the Code of Enlightenment left by a somewhat advanced unknown species, they invented rockets, satellites and spaceships, settled on adjacent planets, and found the Earth (their legendary origin) around 1st Century A. D. Their first contact with humans on Earth is in 2031, and an equal treaty of cooperation is signed in 2049.

The language itself is based heavily on Proto-Indo-European Language (PIE) and Old Turkic Language, as they were the language of the humans being transported to the new world. The language they speak forms the basis of today's Alitalia, although it has undergone many changes. In 1924 A.D., The Grand Federal Congress (of FAR) regulated the Spelling Reform Act of (1924) (abbr. SRA/1924), but reserved the right to make it compulsory to the Minister of Culture. SRA/1924 is officially adopted in 1927 A.D.

It is worth mentioning that, among the Group in Exile, the old version of spelling (referred as Old Standard Orthography, OSO) is used, since they arrived at the Earth in 1913 A.D. and refused to adopt all the acts from FAR. This article, however, will only talk about spellings and grammar regulated in SRA/1924.

Phonology
The phonology below is used by humans on Capital Planet of Alitalia. Pronunciation may vary among human sub-groups and other non-human species.

Alphabet
Alitalia use Des Litera Baronika ("Baronic Letters", but the meaning of Baron is now missing)as its writing system. During the discovery of Earth, the Alitalia people found the link between Baronic alphabet to several writing systems on Earth, especially the Kartvelian Asomtavruli letters (Although Asomtavruli did not appear at that time, since the Noah's Ark is believed to came to rest at Mts. Ararat, this is quite probably not a coincidence). As they observed another popular writing system known as Latin or Roman alphabet, they decided to invent a transcription system for it.



To keep texts simple and easy to read, this article, along with any article relevant to Alitalia and written on Earth, uses Latin transliteration instead of Baronic alphabet.

Alitalia uses 24 letters, with upper and lower cases. They are listed by order as follows:

Aa Bb Gg Kk Dd Ee Ff Hh

Ii Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Rr Ss

Cc Tt Ww Uu Vv Yy Zz Xx

Pronunciation
Since Alitalia is an interstellar language being spoken by quite a lot of species, the pronunciation varies from planet to planet, from place to place. The following pronunciation guide is the most widely adapted version among humans (of different nationalities).

B, K, F, L, M, N, P, S, T, V, SH and CH are pronounced as in English.

Letter G never goes soft. It always pronounces /g/.

Letter H, when not used in DH, SH, CH, always pronounces /h/ or /x/.

Letter R is always trilled when not used in AR, AUR, ER, EUR, IR and OR. Alternatively, if trilling is hard for a speaker, /ʒ/ is recommended.

Letter C is pronounced /ts/.

Letter W is recommended to be pronounced /β/. /w/ is also accepted.

Letter Y, when used as a consonant, or in IY, is pronounced /j/. However, when used as a vowel, it pronounces /y/.

Letter Z can be pronounced as /z/ or /dz/.

Letter X is pronounced /ɕ/ (like in Chinese).

DH is pronounced /dʒ/, DX is pronounced /dʑ/.

TX or CX are pronounced /tɕ/.

A is always pronounced /a/.

The pronunciation for E is complicated: When not stressed and at the end of a word, or used in ER, EUR, /ə/; When stressed and after B, L, M, N, X, but not before A, F, H, I, N, O, U, /ɛ/; Otherwise, /e/.

I is pronounced /i/, but sometimes, before another vowel, it will change to consonant /j/.

O is always pronounced /o/ or / ɔ /, based on user's own preference.

U is pronounced /u/, but sometimes, before another vowel, it will change to consonant /w/. And, when used in OUR, it is silent.

EU is pronounced /ɔy/.

In non-trilled accents, AR, AUR, ER, IR, OR, EUR are pronounced /a:, au ə ,  ə,  i ə ,  ɔ:,  (y)ə /, respectively, while letter R is silent. Trilled R is also acceptable.

Stress
Stress is mostly on the first syllable after prefixes and pseudo-prefixes. Exceptions will be marked with stress symbol (`) in dictionaries. e.g. Ni`hon (Japan), but not in common written form.

Most Alitalia Dictionary will have a Prefix Table. It lists all prefixes and pseudo-prefixes. So, a learner may quickly pronounce a very complicated word correctly as long as he/she/it figures out the structure of this word.

Phonotactics
Currently, the following constraints exist in Alitalia(note that these constraints may not apply to loan words and foreign words):
 * 1) All syllables must have a nucleus.
 * 2) No geminates or long vowels.
 * "x", "dx" and "tx" don't appear in the coda.
 * 1) No affricates in complex onsets.
 * 2) if "h" is voiced in the coda, it must be a /x/.
 * 3) Onset "ng" exists only in foreign words.
 * 4) Onset /ʒ/ exists only in some dialects (as letter R).
 * 5) The first consonant in a complex obstruent must be an obstruent.
 * 6) In codas, two neighbouring consonants must be or not be voicing together.

Nouns
There are proper nouns and common nouns in Alitalia as in other languages.

There is a simple declension for nouns (see below). Nouns in genitive form can also be attributive, but unlike adjectives, they must be placed after the head.

Nouns had three genders: neuter, masculine, feminine. Masculine words always end with -ius; feminine words always end with -ina. However, according to SRA/1924, semantically neutral words must not end with -ius or -ina except loan words. Despite this new rule, there are quite a few exceptions. For example, chemical elements are all ended with -ius, but they are neuter words.

Declension
Nouns in Alitalia have three cases: Nominative, Genitive and Prepositional. The Prepositional case is exclusively used  if usage of different prepositions won't matter the meaning of the context. Otherwise, preposition is not ignorable. For example, domum (prepositional case of dom, "house") may indicate "in/on/about/with the house". However, if one must say "in the house", he should say en das dom.

Declension in Alitalia is relatively simpler than most Roman languages, as it only depends on the ending of the word.

The declension table is: “+es” means: add "es" directly after the entire word. "+um" is the same.

Proper Nouns
Proper nouns are capitalised (on the first letter); when indicating names, locations and unique localised objects, the spelling will be as close as the localised pronunciation on most occasions. This may differ from common names used on the Earth. For example, Moskva (not Moskow or Moskov), Nihon or Yamato (not Japan). Exceptions include Kataiy (not China or Zhongguo, because this is a loan word) and Kuumat (not Egypt in English, or Misr/Masr in Arabic, because that's in Ancient Egyptian language).

Names of days, months, scientific names (of biological, chemical, astronomial, or other names with a naming system) are also capitalised.

Honourifics, such as Sur (neutral, for both "Mr. " and "Ms. "), Fratius ("brother") and Fratina ("sister"), are always capitalised.

The Articles
The article, das, which comes from Deutsch in late 19th Century A.D., is used for neutral words. Masculine words use der, and feminine words use die.

Since nouns have no plural forms, if plural must be emphasized, use the article des.

When indicating indefinite meaning, use an (numeric "One") or bia (indefinite "One") instead. They are not articles.

Verbs
Nearly all verbs are ended with letter "i", with only a handful of exceptions.

Verbs can be transformed into "disposal" verbs, which can loosely mean "to make somebody do". This transformation is only available when the original verb does not have a "disposal" meaning. Disposal verbs are never passive.

Conjugation
A verb generally has 12 forms, with non-past (present and future) and past tenses, active and passive voices, simple, progressive and perfect aspects. It doesn't use perfect-progressive aspect.

To form a future tense, use a proper form of verb wil before an simple aspect verb.

It is recommended, when not causing confusion, to use simple aspect, present tense and active voice.

The conjugation table is as follows (showing each aspect's end): For disposal verbs, the conjugation table is a bit different: However, copula es is never passive, thus it has its own conjugation rule: Auxiliary verb wil, which indicates future tenses, conjugates as follows: The verb di (English: do, act, perform), conjugates as follows: Its conjugation is irregular for the conflict with numeric word du (2) if using standard conjugation table.

Adjectives and Adverbs
Adjectives have various endings, of which -ik, -(i)an, -al are the most common. Derived adverbs always end with -o.

Adjectives, when used as a modifier, are put before the head. A genitive noun can also be a modifier, but is placed after the head.

Adjectives and adverbs have comparative and superlative forms. Suffixes are added then.

Pronouns
Pronouns are declined by person, gender and number. They can be listed in the table below: Note that pronunciation of A and O should be led by a glottal stop /ʔ /. To express reflective meaning, use genitive pronoun plus noun aut to form a phrase (also led by a glottal stop if following a vowel). The genitive form of a reflective pronoun is a genitive pronoun plus autes (genitive of aut).

Related Words
For a new learner, being familiar with related words is important. Related words are mostly pronouns and adverbs, divided into five groups, representing assertive, universal, demonstrative, interrogative and negative meanings. These words are initially regulated in 1376 A.D. for language simplification purpose, and finally re-confirmed in the 1924 A.D. Act. See as follows:

Numbers
Unlike decimal system on Earth, Alitalia people use hexadecimal system. The numbers are shown as follows:

Giant Numbers
For giant numbers, there is a naming system for every exponent. If the exponent can be divided by 8, use the quotient and add a suffix -(i)yon. if the exponent can be divided by 4 but not 8, use the quotient when divided by 8 and add a suffix -(i)yard.

16^8 = 2^32 = 4294967296 = an miyon

16^12 = 2^48 = an miyard

16^16 = (16^8)^2 = an duiyon

16^20 = an duiyard

16^24 = (16^8)^3 = an triyon

...

16^32 = (16^8)^4 = an kuardiyon

Structure
The basic structure of Alitalia is SVO.