Tensakutan

Tensakutan is the basic language of Tensakutans, the ancient magic-using people of Tensakuto. Tensakutans have something of a cultural affinity for self-expression and "putting one's own spin on things," and that tendency shows up in their language, which leaves itself open for personalization in a variety of ways.

Dialects
With the passage of time, dialects of Tensakutan have begun to die out, leaving the Central Tensakuto dialect as the most prominent one and the one this page focuses on. Recently, a special sort of quasi-programming language called Tekunan has surfaced that takes Tensakutan and alters its focus to feeding commands into technological systems. In many ways, it is a sort of restructured version of the Tensakutan language; it contains grammatical constructs needed for the systems it is used to operate, but also contains room for personalization.

Phonology
Tensakutan is pronounced similarly to Japanese and has a similar structure to its words. However, it does have distinct Ls and Rs.

Pronunciation Key - Vowels

Pronunciation Key - Consonants

Grammar
Tensakutan follows an SVO structure. One of the language's complexities is that it relies on hyphenated suffixes to carry across certain parts of meaning, such as verb tense. Also very important are the Personalization Suffixes, which allow the speaker to express how they feel about a topic or something being done. Currently the Personalization Suffixes focus on feelings and expressing tone (which is helpful when one is being sarcastic or being whimsical about something that would look dark at first glance); more may be added as the language develops and more ways to personalize languages come up.

First, the verb-specific suffixes: Some sample words with the word yan, to run:

yan-a: It runs

yan-e: It will run

yan-i: It was running

The noun form turns verbs into nouns- gerunds, basically. To turn a verb into a noun, you add the suffix -n to it. So, to say "Running is a sport" in Tensakutan, you would say "yan-n se shun." Notice the lack of articles; Tensakutan does not use a, an, or the as English does.