Cirtanian

General information
Cirtanian, known natively as Cirtaunians/Χιρταυνιανς <ʃiɾ'tawn.i.ans> or Ling Cirtaunie/Λινγ Χιρταυνιε ('liŋg ʃiɾt'aw.ni.e) is a Romance language native to the island of Cirtania east of Italy in the Mediterranean sea. It split off from late Classical/ early Vulgar Latin and retains some aspects of Latin lost in other languages such as nouns that decline to case in number (though the ablative, dative and genitive cases merged, and all of the declensions have merged into one pattern for masculine/neuter and one for feminine with a number of complications) Due to its proximity to Greece, it picked up several Greek loanwords as well as phonological and grammatical influences. There is even a way of writing the language in the Attic alphabet used mainly in Greece and taught in most schools in Cirtania.

Consonants
Some notes about the orthography
 * The rule about c and g is the same as Italian: c and g are pronounced  and  except before i, e and their long variants. Ch and gh are variants of c and g used to maintain the hard pronunciation even before i and e. The Attic variant instead uses the separate letters χ and ζ to represent the soft pronunciation.
 * Z is pronounced as ts if it derives from a t in Latin (i.e. nātiō > nauziu <'naw. ts i.u>) and dz if it derives from a d (persuādeō > persuauziu 
 * X is a similar story doctus > dox <'doks>, vagus > vax <'vagz>. However, when it derives from an x in Latin, it follows other rules demonstrated in the following words: exemplum > exemplăs <'eg.zem.pləs>, excelsus > excels  and ēx > eix <'ejks>. In other words, it is pronounced  when intervocalic,  before c and a front vowel, and  elsεwhere.
 * I and u represent  and  before another vowel.
 * The letter h is always silent and is not even represented in the Attic variant.
 * N and l have palatal allophones when followed by an unstressed front vowel and another vowel. In the Latin writing system, the Italian convention of gn and gl is used, whereas no special spelling is used in Greek since a similar allophony already exists in Greek.

Vowels
Greek borrowings usually use Greek spellings in the Attic variant even when they conflict with how Cirtanian is typically spelled. Thus anoits (stupid) is spelled ανοητσ instead of ανοιτσ, although it is not uncommon for native speakers to misspell these words.

Nouns
As stated previously, nouns decline in two major groups to four cases and two numbers. Below are some examples of declined nouns and adjectives.

Masculine

Feminine Neuter

Example text

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