Ezosha

Setting
The Ezosha language is spoken by semi-nomadic people who live along the Ezosha River – which flows through a gigantic Siberia-like land – and along its tributary, the C’irio. It is not known to be related to any other language and its speakers have been living in this area for many centuries. Ezosha is a predominantly verb subject object language.



Consonants
There are 30 consonants, 4 of them are ejectives.


 * 1) Often realised as voiceless [h]
 * 2) Often becomes an alveolar tap [ɾ] when it is not the first letter of a word

Vowels

 * At the end of a word 'a' always pronounced as [a:]
 * At the end of a word 'e' always becomes a schwa, [ə]
 * At the end of a word 'o' always pronounced as [o:]

Phonotactics
The syllable structure of Ezosha is (C)V(N) where C is any consonant, V any vowel (must always be present) and N one of the 3 nasal consonants.

Articles
Articles are placed before the noun. The indefinite article is only used for the singular form.
 * hē is the definite article for inanimate nouns: hē žim (the house)
 * oa is the definite article for animate nouns: oa ccani (the cat)
 * ne is the indefinite article for both type nouns: ne žim (a house) and ne ccani (a cat)
 * k’ē is the negative article: k’ē žim (no house) and k’ē ccani (no cat)

Nouns
Nouns can be divided into two classes: animate or inanimate. Animate includes all living things as people, animals and plants, but also certain sacred natural phenomena/forces and objects. Concrete, no living things fall into the inanimate category. There is no grammatical gender.

Number
Although there is not much declension in Ezosha language, nouns are declined for number as with English. There are three numbers: singular, dual (for indicating two objects) and plural. The following endings are used:
 * hē žim (the house)
 * hē žimzi'i (the two houses)
 * hē žimze (the houses)
 * oa ccani (the cat)
 * oa ccanizā'a (the two cats)
 * oa ccaniza (the cats)

Cases
While many synthetic languages use inflection to mark words for case, in Ezosha ‘case-particles’ are used. These particles are short postpositions, which mean they come after the noun they modify. For both animate and inanimate nouns the same particle is used.

Nominative and accusative
The subject of a sentence is always in the nominative case, the direct-object in the accusative case. The nominative is also used for the object of prepositions (in English accusative is used; ‘to me’ instead of ‘to I’.
 * kalymy wei im hē žimze i (I have found the houses)