Valannō

Valannō Lyore or Valannic is the language of Valanne, and lingua franca of the main lands and regions around the Holy Sanctuary of Ilarúnen.

Classification and Dialects
Valannic is an agglutinative, polysynthetic and highly inflected language. The classical form Valannō pertheä, which will be the main subject of this page, has many features that will seem familiar to those who have basic knowledge of the early Proto-Indo-European language and of Uralic/Altaic languages. It means that nouns and adjectives are inflected in up to eleven cases, nouns and verbs have four numbers, including a dual form, and verbs are conjugated for all grammatical verb-related features. There are rudimental traits of vowel harmony, which stem from the Proto-Valannic language. A few features from Bantu languages, mainly Kiswahili, may also occur, such as word classes and implementation of (in)direct object and preposition markers within the verbs.

With the passing of time, more vulgar and simplified variations have emerged, mainly the vernacular Low-Valannic tongue Valannō mangreä ( 'vulgar Valannic'), spoken in the valleys around Mēoran.

Consonants
Consonants in Valannic are regular and are always pronounced as given in the table below. Voiced consonants at the end of a word or syllable for instance, will not lose its voice, as is common in some languages. However, some consonants may undergo changes in conjugations or contraction of words. This depends heavily on the consonants that they interact with, or a probable shift of word accent. Mostly voiceless plosives may become aspirated or voiced in such cases.

Geminated consonants are pronounced longer than their single equivalents, but do not undergo other changes. The following consonants appear also in geminated form: mm, nn, ll, rr, pp, tt, cc, ss.

When two consonants are in the same box, they represent the voiceless (left) and voiced (right) variation of the same sound. The consonants marked with an asterisk * qualify as a voiceless alveolar fricative trill (hy) and the voiced equvalent (ry), respectively. The /rh/-sound is an aspirated version of the regular alveolar tap.

All of the above consonants are represented in the alphabet by one letter, geminated consonants will have a diacritical mark to identify them as geminated. Some consonants have a labialised equivalent, which do not qualify as an single sound, even though they are represented by a single letter. These consonants are: Note that in the latinised representation, /qu/ and /gu/ are written with a u and not a w.

Vowels
All vowels - except for ý an éa - have a short and a long equivalent. The long vowels carry a macron to indicate its lenghtened pronunciation. The length of the short vowels can be under the influence of its position before a stop or a liquid/sibilant consonant ,but so will their long equivalents.

All written vowels are pronounced. Lyore is pronounced with two syllables: Lyo - re. [LYO -ray].

Valannic has several diphthongs, these diphthongs can also appear in short and long variations, in which the lenghtening is expressed in the first part of the diphthong: In conjugations of nouns and verbs, and a few other words, one will sometimes find a tilde ~ over a letter. A tilde also lengthens a vowel sound, but slightly more melodical. These vowels or diphthongs are the result of contraction or ellipsis of phonemes when conjugated, e.g:

quenāin (inf. to grow) -> aorist equẽinan (I grew)

auvāin (inf. to wake (s.o. up)) -> aorist hãuvan (I woke)

laulõin (inf. to tell).

Phonotactics
- in progress

Writing System
The writing system of Valannic is an alphabet, consisting of 42 consonant sounds and 15 vowel sounds, so 57 in total. These do not only represent single letters, but also the vowel diphthongs and some of the consonant clusters, mentioned above. These letters also have adjustments for length by applying diacritical marks.

Grammar
Valannic grammar is rather regular and there are very few exceptions to the rules.

Nouns
Nouns are divided in a/e-class, o/u-class, and consonant classes. These classes do not qualify as genders, and there is no gender congruency with for instance adjectives. A noun can be declined in eleven different cases and in four numbers, so that a noun has 44 different forms.

Verbs
Verbs are conjugated for person, number, voice, mood, tense and aspect. A single verb can therefore take up to 624 forms, if all features are applicable (which is rarely the case).

Person and number
First of all there's person and number: Valannic recognizes a singular form, a dual and 2 plural forms, as well as a first person, a second person and third person animate and inanimate.

Verbs have three root-forms: a-stem, o-stem and consonant-stem. The consonant stem takes a e as conjugational vowel.

Below is the indicative active conjugation of the present tense of the verbs ' auvāin,'  laulõin, and phanein.

Not all of these forms are used regularly and iare mostly 'book language'. Especially the dual form will only be used in relation to specifically paired items such as eyes, ears, or hands. The more common plural form is plural 1, which is an aspecific plural. It just refers to multiple items of the singular form, whereas the plural 2 refers to a specific group or earlier mentioned group. One could argue that this is a 'definite' form, but plural 1 can be definite as well. Valannic has no definite articles, so context mostly determines if definition is appropriate in translation.

Since conjugation of verbs is fairly regular, in further examples only the first person singular will be given.

Tense and aspect
Then there's tense and aspect. Valannic has a present tense, a future and exact future tense, an imperfect tense, a perfect tense and a pluperfect tense. Furthermore there is the aorist aspect. The exact difference in aspect between imperfect, aorist and perfect is rather hard to make when taking a close look. In general one could state that imperfect refers to a state of being or an ongoing action in the past, the aorist more or less refers to single actions in the past (like a story-telling past (or present) would), and the perfect aspect refers to closed actions that took place in the past, that altered a state of being with an ongoing effect in the present. * ) note that the diaeresis splits the /ea/ vowel, making it two independent syllables.

Present, imperfect and future tense are formed from the present tense root.

Perfect, pluperfect and exact future tense are formed from the perfect tense root.

Aorist has its own root.

Voice and mood
Valannic has three voices: the active, the medium, and the passive voice. All three voices are formed synthetic, without the use of auxillary verbs, exept for the passive perfect tense.

Sometimes medium is also used to express reflexive verbs:

tastāin - to wash -> tastathein - to wash one's self, in conjugation mostly, but not obligatory, augmented bij a reflexive pronoun incorporated in the verb: tastathenar aliëm ýssē - they wash themselves with cold water.

The last feature according to which verbs can conjugate is mood. There are 5 moods, which are represented in different tenses: