Kontavian

Kontavian (kontavá) is an Indo-European language and spoken by about 2.5 million people, with most of them being Kontavs. It is spoken in Kontavia, a country located in Eastern Europe between Turkey and Romania. It is a synthetic language with nouns and verbs mostly declined. Nouns are declined according to case and number, but not for gender. Verbs decline for person, number, tense and mood. Phonology is entirely regular, but there are some slight irregularities with the grammar.

Phonotactics
The maximum syllable structure of Kontavian is (C¹ (C² (C³) ) ) (S¹) V (S²) (C⁴ (C⁵ (C⁶))) (where C denotes a consonant, V denotes a vowel and S denotes a semivowel. Brackets denote optional parts.).

Kontavian's syllable structure consists of an optional syllable onset consisting up to 3 consonants, an obligatory syllable nucleus consisting of a vowel preceded or followed by an optional semivowel (sometimes both), and an optional syllable coda consisting of one, two or three consonants. The following constraints apply:


 * Onset
 * Consonant (C¹) Can be any consonant. (If the onset has two consonants, then it must not have the same manner of articulation as the second consonant (other than /sl/), if it has three, it should be only an denti-alveolar consonant other than /θ/ or /ð/.)
 * Consonant (C²) (Cannot have the same manner of articulation as the first one, if the onset has three consonants, then it should be only a plosive)
 * Consonant (C³) (Can only be a liquid.)
 * Nucleus
 * Semivowel (S¹)
 * Vowel (V)
 * Semivowel (S²)
 * Coda
 * Consonant (C⁴)
 * Consonant (C⁵)
 * Consonant (C⁶)

Prosody
There is no stress accent in Kontavian, instead, there is a tonal accent in which the vowel is pronounced with a rising tone /á/. The following rules apply:


 * Usually, the tone accent is accented on the final syllable (ultima).
 * If the ultima ends in /ə/ or /ɨ/, it shifts into the first instead.
 * Clitics, pronouns and the article are never toned.

Orthography
Kontavian is written with a version of a Latin alphabet minus Q, W and X (these are only found in loanwords), with 13 modified letters to satisfy the phonology of the language. The native names of the letters are relatively simple, the vowels are named the same way they are pronounced, and the consonants are based of the pronunciation of the Dutch alphabet (excluding diacritics).