Shataranjan

Shataranjan was the language of Shataranjans, inhabitants of the tidally-locked planet of Shataran, located around 500 light years from the Solar System.

There are two main descendants, the one spoken on the always bright side which eternally is illuminated by their star, and the other spoken in the darkness of the hemisphere facing against the star.

Consonants

 * /ɸ/ and /β/ are always bilabial, just like /m, p/ and /b/.
 * All alveolar non-sibilant sounds are laminal.
 * /ɮ~l/ varies between a fricative and an approximant, while /ɬ/ is always a fricative.
 * /x/ and /ɣ/ are slightly post-velar, realized as [χ] and [ʁ] in extremis by some speakers.
 * Word-final /t/ may be realized as [t͡s] with a small offglide.

Consonant harmony
In a prefix, consonant harmony influences the coda depending on the sound that follows. There are three general rules, the first changing an unvoiced sound into a voiced one before another voiced sound (e.g. tɣ > dɣ, km > gm), the second assimilating a nasal to the following sound by place of articulation (e.g. nɟ > ɲɟ, ŋm > mm), and the third turning sibilants into a fricative-stop cluster (e.g. sɸ > stɸ).

Vowels
Each vowel can be short or long.


 * [ɯᵝ] will be transcribed as /u/ for simplicity.

Diphtongs
All diphtongs are falling. Long vowels cannot have contrastive diphtongs, where a long vowel does diphtongize, it shortens.

Phonotactics
The phonotactics are moderately simple, with (C)V(N)(C(C)) being the most complex syllable allowed. Any consonant except for /ŋ/ can serve as onset, but there is a limitation on codas. Only /n, ŋ, t, s, k, nt, ns, ŋk/ can serve as a coda, although they experience many shifts because of consonant harmony.

English-based romanization
This romanization system is designed to be as intuitive as possible to English speakers.

Syntax
Shataranjan is a Verb-Subject-Object language. Unusually, this word order evolved because of the tendency of the speakers to highlight the action. Shataranjan is a split-ergative language, where all past verbs (aorist and imperfective past) and conditional verbs take ergative subjects.

Verbs
Verbs in Shataranjan exhibit polypersonal agreement. They also inflect for many tenses and moods. Shataranjan is highly prefixing and can have up to six affixes bound to a single root.

Voice
Shataranjan has an active, a passive and a causative voice.

Nominals
Nouns decline for several cases and have possessive affixes.

Adjectives can be placed either before or after the noun they modify, depending on how they are used lexically. For example, if there are multiple adjectives that form a list, adjectives come before the noun.

Affixes
Shataranjan is a mostly prefixing language. It is agglutinative, meaning that each affix has one lexical meaning.

Numerals
Shataranjan most commonly uses a base 8 system.