Undique

General information
Native pronunciation: / 'un.di.kwe/  (OON-dee-kway), from  undi 'our' and  kwela  'power, knowledge'

Undique is widely known in Mygith as the Sorcerer's Tongue. It is the language of the Ancients who once dwellt in the Mage City (Undiquitus) of Masecraeia on the Eruscan Sea, where word-magic has been studied, developed, and taught since prehistory.

This is the language in which sorcery is conducted, written, and read; it has two written forms, which are sometimes used together. The first is an alphabet, which is used for most purposes, especially for all non-magical purposes; the second form is ideographic, and is used for alchemy, and sometimes in scrolls and enchantments.

Linguistically, Undique is a fusional language roughly resembling Indo-European languages. It has 26 consonants with voicing distinction, including labiovelars and two uvular sounds, and nine vowels plus length distinction. There are six cases - ergative, absolutive, accusitive, genitive, dative, and instrumental, (as well as reflexive particles and anaphora in the pronominal paradigm), and three animacy states. It has five tenses, two aspects, and marks for evidentiality, and optionally for subject volition. It is a pro-drop language.

Alphabet
Undique is written in two different native writing systems - the first being alphabetic, and the second ideographic.

Here it will be written in an IPA-based Romanization, with a few non-IPA exceptions (such as thorn in place of theta, a in place of ash). Also, the forms "c" and "ʒ" will be used to denote postalveolar affricates - [tš] and [dž] respectively - although these are in fact entirely-predictable palatalized allophones of /k/ and /g/.

Grammar Overview
As a cased language, Undique has relatively free word order, but in subordinate clauses the main constituents appear as VSO. Modifiers preceed their complement.

Undique has six cases: ergative, absolutive, accusitive, genitive, dative, and instrumental. The ergative is the subject of transitive verbs (a verb with both subject and object), whereas the absolutive is the subject of intransitive verbs (where there is no object). The accusative is the direct object, the dative the indirect; genitive is a possessor, and an instrumental is a tool used in the completion of an action.

The case system is generally simplified to a system of two (active/ passive) or three (ergative, absolutive/accusative, oblique) cases on words other than pronouns or nouns (e.g. on verbal agreement and numbers).

There are also three genders (more accurately states of animacy). These are šarna or animate (people and animals), módɛm or moderate (fluids, plants, and magic), and qekwɛm or inanimate.

Nouns
In progress

Verbs
In progress

Modifiers
In progress