Vikula

Vikula is a language that is heavily influenced by Arabic and African languages.

Classification and Dialects
Vikula is a Semitic language, meaning that it mostly borrows roots from languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. It has two dialects, northern and southern. The northern dialect, aka Standard Vikula, is the most spoken (with more than 2 million speakers), in which is considered by some people the language of the gods, while the colloquial southern dialect is mostly used by non-Vikulan people, with the loss of noun declensions.

Syllable structure
Vikula syllable structure can be summarized as follows, in which parentheses enclose optional components:


 * (C1) (S1) V (S2) (C2 (C3))

Vikula syllable structure consists of an optional syllable onset, consisting of one or two consonants; an obligatory syllable nucleus, consisting of a vowel optionally preceded by and/or followed by a semivowel; and an optional syllable coda, consisting of one or two consonants. The following restrictions apply:


 * Onset
 * First consonant (C1): Can be any consonant, including a liquid (/l, r, ɬ/). (Onset is composed only of one consonant; consonant clusters are only found in loanwords, sometimes an epenthetic /a/ is inserted between consonants.)
 * Nucleus
 * Semivowel (S1)
 * Vowel (V)
 * Semivowel (S2)
 * Coda
 * First consonant (C2): Can be any consonant.
 * Second consonant (C3): Can also be any consonant.

Geminate consonants are also phonemic in Vikula. When two identical consonants appear each other, they become assimilated and become one consonant.

Syllable hierarchy
In determining stress, Vikula distinguishes three types of syllables:


 * Light syllables:
 * open syllables containing a short vowel (CV) e.g. /ˈʋə/ (and)
 * Heavy syllables:
 * open syllables containing a long vowel (CVV) e.g. /ˈkəi/ (if)
 * closed syllables containing a short vowel (CVC) e.g. /ˈkat/ (cat)
 * Extra heavy syllables
 * closed syllables containing a long vowel followed by one consonant (CVVC) e.g. /ˈbajt/ (house)
 * closed syllables containing a vowel of any length followed by two consonants (CVCC, CVVCC) e.g. /ˈbint/ (girl), /ˈmaːɗː/ (stretching).

Stress
Stress in Vikula is not contrastive. The following stress rules in Vikula are applied:


 * Word stress falls into the penultimate syllable of the word.
 * If the syllable is open, then it falls into the antepenultimate syllable.
 * Given this restriction, a syllable of heavy type (heavy, extra-heavy) may not be stressed.
 * If the penultimate syllable is extra-heavy, then it may fall instead into the ultimate syllable.

Orthography
The orthography of Vikula is used with the Wikulan alphabet, which features all Latin letters minus j and o. It also features some extra letters with diacritics. The table of the alphabet is shown below:

Case
Nouns in Vikula have four cases, nominative, accusative, dative and genitive.


 * The nominative is used for:
 * subjects of a verbal sentence
 * subjects and predicates of an equational (non-verbal) sentence
 * adverbs which retain the nominative marker.
 * The accusative is used for:
 * objects of a verbal sentence
 * objects of an equational sentence
 * object of a transitive verb
 * most adverbs.
 * The genitive is used for:
 * objects of most prepositions
 * all, but not necessarily the first member of an iļafāh (genitive construction)
 * the object of a locative adverb
 * the object of a verbal noun.
 * The dative is used for:
 * objects of the prepositions e'il (to) and min (of)
 * indirect objects of a verbal sentence
 * indirect objects of a ditransitive verb.

All nouns are inflected in the way they are affixed.

State
Vikula nouns also inflect in three states, indefinite, definite and construct.