Slakomian

Introduction
Slakomian (  Itomaslakomawa  in Slakomian) is a Northern Leshnethosian language spoke by the Slakom people on the planet Leshnethos. There is about a hundred Slakomians in the entirety of Leshnethos (More about why there is so few of them in the next section) and around 150 Slakomian speakers (a few foreigners learned it too). Slakomians live on flying ships, and so their language got influenced by other languages of port cities. The language has been simplified over the years by Slakomians in order to allow the merchants to learn it easily. In fact, Slakomians are deeply involved in the Great market (in Slakomian  Yetakasmokongawahiukhtawa) where they trade their knowledge (they got plenty of it) and a rare material on Leshnethos'', Plowa, for goods.

Slakoma and the Slakomians
The Slakomians, the people of Slakom, are the people of the wind on Leshnethos. They live in the sky by making deals with merchants in port cities. In the past, they lived on the mountains of the north with the people of the fire whom they call Poulakaphawahi (more details on the Kafi coming soon). Slakoma and Kafi once formed an alliance, but Kafi chose to betray and expel Slakoma a while ago. The Slakomians had no choice but using their wind power to fly away in the skies. Because there wasn' t a lot of survivors, the flying ships do not have a lot of people on them, and Slakomians usually know everyone really well.

More about the Slakomian ships, they fly thanks to the strange physics of Leshnethos 's solar system and a rare meteor rock found on the same planet (named "Plowa"). In fact, Plowa is a strange material that reacts to Leshnethos 's clouds by being repelled by them. With the point to which Leshnethos 's atmosphere is condensed with clouds, any fragment of Plowa could hardly get down, since it would float on top of all the clouds. It is believed that there's only one single hole in the cloud layer, and that it is thanks to it that Slakomians came to get Plowa and use it to get up in the sky. Actually, it's the only way it could possibly have happened since Plowa is unable to get through Leshnethos 's clouds, making it so that most of the Plowa on this planet is situated above the clouds, only available to Slakomians or space travelers from the Earth.

In Slakomian culture, names are something important and they don't usually use them casually. That's why a special case marker evolved with names and got mixed with the vocative one (al-). Slakomian names usually don't come from a word, because in their culture that would limit the individual to his name. Because of that, Slakomians usually have rather original names. I will put more detail about names in Slakomian in another section.

Evolution
The earliest form of Slakomian, and the language from which it evolved, is Proto-Slakomian. A less earlier form is Old Slakomian, the last step before modern Slakomian. Slakomian has a bunch of similarities with the Kafi language, since the Slakomians and the Kafis were both in the northern mountains. In fact, the Slakomians and the Kafis were originally just one people, the Northern Leshnethosians, but this was a long ago. This people also spoke its own language from which Slakomian and Kafi evolved; Proto-Northern-Leshnethosian. The Slakomian language evolved in very strange and unique way, since its speakers have made intentional changes to it. Being able to change the language effectively because of the very small number of speakers, they adapted the language in order for it to match their goals. That's why we could call Slakomian a  half conlang .

The Slakomian alphabet evolved from the Proto-Slakomian one, with the influence of the latin alphabet used by merchants. Also, it got simplified in order to need less letters and be easy to write. This simplification pretty much saved it, since the southern merchants' Latin alphabet would have made a great replacement otherwise.

Consonants
Notes:


 * Consonant length isn't phonemic in Slakomian.
 * /n/, /t/ and /l/ can be pronounced both as dental and alveolar consonants, and the difference isn't phonemic.
 * Technically, their is a glottal stop (/ʔ/) in front of words starting with a vowel in Slakomian, but it isn't phonemic. Also, an old way of talking in Slakomian is pronouncing vowel starting words as if they started with a glottal fricative (/h/).
 * /w/ could be more precisely described as a labiovelar approximant.

Vowels
Notes:


 * There are no tones in Slakomian.
 * Vowel length isn't phonemic in Slakomian.
 * /ɛ/, /œ/ and /o/ could be more precisely described as /ɛ̝/, /œ̝/ and /o̞/.
 * The open front unrounded vowel (/a/) could be more precisely described as /ä/, or an open central unrounded vowel.
 * In an old form of Slakomian, endings are pronounced with a creaky voice ( /ḭ/, /o̰/ and /a̰/ ). These endings are  -awa ,  -aw  ,  -a  ,  -ina  ,  -ikha  ,  -o  and  -ong  . To see how it is marked in writing, look in the writing system section.

Phonotactics
In Slakomian, the syllable structure is like the following: (C)(C)V(C).


 * A stop followed by a fricative or an approximant is considered like a sole consonant (Ex.: ps, ksh).
 * A vowel cannot be followed by another vowel, except for a semi vowel (y and w).
 * If a word starts with a nasal, there can't be another consonant next to it, except for a semi vowel (y and w).
 * There can't be a double sound, since the length of a sound isn't phonemic in Slakomian.

Stress
Stress is not defined in Slakomian, and depending of the dialect or even person, it can change completely. It can also be used differently during special circumstances, when singing for example.

Writing System
The Slakomian alphabet is the alphabet used for writing in Slakomian. It is an unicameral alphabet, which means there are no capital and lowercase letters. There are some diagraphs and there is also a punctuation system.

Scripts
Slakomian is normally used with the alphabet I will show next, but the romanization can also be used. On the fictional planet of Leshnethos, the Slakomian alphabet is the most common one to be used by Slakomians, but in trading the romanization is more popular since the merchants of the south use the latin alphabet.

Letters
Note: The names of letters are written in the lexicon
 * Words are written as they sound in Slakomian, so spelling is no problem.
 * i and ï sometimes loose their dots and resemble ı in the handwritten version of the alphabet.
 * Letters with upper strokes have the later over the letters around them. (These letters are т, г, Ր and Ꞁ )

Punctuation

 * A light point is used to end any group of words that isn't a sentence or after someone's name or title. If it is used after a name in the middle of a sentence, we just put [ '' ] without the [:]

Nouns
Nouns are used to represent objects, living beings, ideas, etc. Also, there are no articles in Slakomian. There is no grammatical gender in Slakomian, and every noun ends in a . In order to specify the biological gender of someone, a noun ends in -ikha for masculine and -ina for feminine. A noun becomes plural when hi is added at the end of the it (for example apwa becomes apwahi in the plural form). There are also some grammatical cases, which I will show in the following table.

If you want to see examples of nouns in Slakomian, go to the lexicon at the end of this page.

Cases
Notes:


 * The dative becomes genitive if placed after the noun, since indirect objects are always before the subject.
 * The genitive is sometimes used as possessive.
 * Locative also indicates direction with a motion verb.
 * Other participle verbs have a role similar to a case marker, but there are too much of them for covering them here.
 * Names always have the vocative prefix, so in order to differentiate vocative names from normal names we use the  hal-  prefix (Ex.:  Althepwa  becomes  Halthepwa  in the vocative form). However, this doesn't apply to foreign names.
 * Case markers are stuck to the noun. If the noun starts with a vowel and the case marker ends in a vowel, h is added between them because there can' t be two vowels following each other in Slakomian.

Adjectives
Adjectives describe nouns in multiple ways. They are placed after the noun and are not declined with the noun. Every adjective ends in -aw. Adjectives can be put with a noun to form a compound word. This is used mainly for making emphasis on the importance of the adjective. For example, if we want to talk about a delicious apple, we will take the word for apple (  apwa  ) and the word for delicious (  khalasaw  ) and stick them together with the -a ending. This will get us the word  apwakhalasawa  : a delicious apple. More details about compound words are in another section.

If you want to see examples of adjectives in Slakomian, go to the lexicon at the end of this page.

Verbs
Slakomian verbs are only used in the participle form and the infinitive form (except for the verb  to be  ). Every active voice verb ends in  ong  (and passive ones with  eyth , more about that later). Basically, a verb is formed by: the subject, the verb in the participle form and the conjugation of the verb to be that corresponds to the subject. If the subject is a pronoun, it can be removed since every person has its own conjugation. The only verbs that are conjugated are the verb to be and the verb not to be, so here they are: Notes:


 * To make the infinitive form of a verb, we simply add the word  tal  in front of it.
 * For the imperative mood, the word  ka  is put in front of the verb.
 * For the conditional mood, the word  si  is put in front of the verb.
 * It is common to remove the  y  that starts the auxiliary verb  to be  for making it shorter and easier to pronounce. In that case, the auxiliary verb will be stuck to the verb or adjective (for example: Thakong yeko (I know) → Thakongeko).
 * The active voice (-ong) is used when the subject is doing the action. On the other hand, the passive voice (-eyth) is used when the subject is receiving the action. For example:  Shkong yen  (He eats) is active, and  Shkeyth yen  (He gets eaten) is passive.
 * The passive voice is most used in upper speech. Instead of saying that we do something, in upper speech we say we are causing it to be done. It's also used for more respectful speech, when asking for something for example.
 * In Slakomian, there is no difference between the perfect and imperfect aspects.

Negation
In order to negate a verb, we use the verb Itong (Not being) instead of Yong (Being).

Note: When the word preceding this verb ends with a vowel, we can take away the  i  at the beginning of  itong  and stick the verb to the preceding word.  Apwa iten  ("It's not an apple") could become  Apwaten .

Adverbs
Adverbs describe how the action in the sentence is done. For exemple, it can describe the time, the place, the manner, etc. Impure adverbs are made of other words, usually a verb in the participe and a noun. Here are some exemples of impure adverbs:


 * Ouyanakhamawa: Never (Locative marker (ou) + Moment (yana) + None (khamawa))
 * Shtenyapayongawahaphong: Using a pencil (Pencil (Shtenyapayongawa) + Consonant connector (h) + Using (Aphong))
 * Outhoma: In a country (Locative marker (ou) + Country (thoma))

The other type of adverbs in Slakomian is of course the pure adverbs. They are words on their own or a single word derived and they all end in o . Here are a few examples to clarify:


 * Hksyo: Snowy (From  Hksya  meaning snow)
 * Lapho: Well (From  Laphaw  meaning good)
 * Katho: Tomorrow

Note: Pure adverbs can of course also be derived themselves, for example  Katho  meaning  tomorrow  becomes  Kathohakatho  (After tomorrow, literally '' Tomorrow's tomorrow).

If you want to see examples of adverbs in Slakomian, go to the lexicon at the end of this page.

Conjunctions
Conjunctions are used for connecting two parts of speech. In Slakomian, they can be placed either in the middle of a sentence (between the two parts) or at the start of a sentence (the other part being in the sentence before the conjunction's sentence). Slakomian conjunctions either end in fricatives, nasals or approximants. Here are a few conjunctions in Slakomian along with their meaning:


 * Tey: "And"
 * Phel: "Or"
 * Tsin: "If"
 * Makh: "Because"
 * Ophang: "For", "So that"
 * Apang: "But"

Numbers
Slakomian use a decimal number system, exactly like us, and they took it from the southern merchants. In ancient times, they used to use their own numeral system which was duodecimal (twelve numbers instead of ten) (More about this on the Proto-Slakomian page). Here are the name of the ten figures and other numbers in Slakomian:


 * 0: Hikyou
 * 1: Honiu
 * 2: Twa
 * 3: Tekhi
 * 4: Ngwa
 * 5: Winiu
 * 6: Ski
 * 7: Shepthe
 * 8: Psho
 * 9: Nani
 * 10: Ngeth
 * 100: Pkhekh
 * 1000: Tokh

Note: They become ordinal when the suffix  -haw '' is added to them. For example,  Third  would be  Tekhihaw  in Slakomian.''

Examples
15: Ngeth winiu (Ten and five)

32: Tekhingeth tey twa (Three ten and Two)

9999: Nanitokh nanipkhekh naningeth tey nani (Nine thousand nine hundred nine ten and nine)


 * A number like ten, a hundred or a thousand and the amount of it form a compound word, for example six thousand is Skitokh and not Ski tokh
 * If there is a figure that is worth less than ten at the end, we put the word for and (Tey) between it and the rest of the number. For example, thirteen is literally Ten and three (Ngeth tey tekhi )

Using numbers
In order to specify how much there is of a said thing, we add the wanted number after the noun (and the adjective, if there is one). For example,  Three pretty cats  would be  Kita enyaw tekhi  (Literraly: Cat pretty three). Notice that the noun isn't in the plural form; that's because in Slakomian we don't mark plural when there is a cardinal number since it already marks that the said noun is in the plural form.

Now for the ordinal numbers, we use they as adjectives and they end in  -haw , as I wrote earlier. Also, if the number is more than a word long, we just add the ordinal ending without changing anything. For example,  The nine hundred and ninety ninth guy  would be  Ikha nanipkhekh naningeth tey nanihaw .

Word order
The Slakomian word order is generally really simple, with its SOV pattern (Actually: complement, indirect object, subject, object and verb). Also, adjectives come after nouns and adverbs after verbs.

Notes:


 * If there are more than one adjective ore adverb, the speaker is free to chose their order.
 * If a word is constituted of multiple other words stuck together, they have to follow the order presented ahead.

Questions
The first type of question is the yes/no questions. They are answered by yes or no. For a yes/no question, we take the statement which we want to ask a question about and add the word  Sko at the start of the sentence. By the way, in order to respond to this type of question we need the words Nen (meaning yes) and Sta (meaning no). Here is an example of a yes/no question and it' s answer.


 * 1) - Sko ahoush toumong yen lapho? (Are you doing well?) (Literally: [Question marker] to you (it) feeling is well?)
 * 2) - Nen! Ahoko toumong yen lapho. (Yes! I'm fine.) (Literally: Yes! To me (it) feeling is well.)

The other type of question is used to ask about multiple things and is answered by something else than yes or no. They are called complex questions. We can ask about when something happened, where it happened, what happened, etc. To make a question of this type, we need to choose what we want as an answer and add the interrogative adjective Shkaw  (Literally meaning which) after it. Please note that the word order doesn' t change in either type of question.

Now, let 's do an example of a complex question. Let's say we want to ask in which country someone lives. First, we will use the word Thoma for country, and then add the interrogative adjective Shkaw next to it. Thoma shkaw. Then, we add the locative marker for precising that the person lives in the country;  Outhoma shkaw . Finally, we add the verb meaning  to live in  and the appropriate conjugation of the verb to be:  Kasong yesh  (Literally '' You are living in). It makes us the question sentence '' Outhoma shkaw kasong yesh? '' : In which country do you live?. The answer would be  Ou[Name of the country in Slakomian] kasong yeko  : I live in (Name of the country).

Relative clauses
To make a Slakomian relative clause, the noun takes the adjective Yetshkaw and then we can add the subordinate clause. If there is no noun, we can add one fitting the subject to the relative adjective.

Exemple sentence containing a relative clause:

Oko shkongephako, kosa yetshkaw ots stalongephan.

Meaning: I ate, which annoyed him.

Literally: I was eating, thing which him was annoying.

Exclamative sentences
In Slakomian, exclamative sentences are marked by the adverb  Hmo . Exclamative sentences end with an exclamation point '' ! '' . In the spoken language, the exclamative marker may be forgotten and the exclamativeness will only be marked by tone or the way one speaks.

The adverb "Hmo" is also said when we want to surprise someone. Imagine hiding in a room and, when the surprisee comes in, screaming "Hmo!" out loud. (Okay, I guess they will be most surprised by how odd this is but anyways.)

Compound words
In Slakomian, we can combine words into a compound word. We can do it with nouns and adjectives, verbs and adverbs, or even more. Using compound words is optional in Slakomian, but speakers usually do it a lot. We'll see what we can do in the following sections:

Noun-Adjective compound words
These compound words are made from a noun, an adjective and the ending  -a . They can be written with a capital letter at the start of the noun and the adjective, but since this only affects the romanization it is only rarely done. Let's see a few examples:

The Slakomian language:  Itoma  (Language) +  Slakomaw   (Slakomian) +  A   (Noun ending) = Itoma slakomaw a

A stupid person:  Poula  (Person) +  Soutaw   (Stupid) +  A   (Noun ending) = Poula soutaw a

The Province of Quebec :  Kestakhawa  (Province) +  Kwephekaw   (Quebecker) +  A   (Noun ending) = Kestakhawa kwephekaw a

Verb-Adverb compound words
Verb-adverb compound words are made like noun-adjective ones, but with a verb and an adverb. They also end in another -ong or -eyth depending on the verb (with and "h" before since else there would be two vowels next to each other). They can be used with the infinitive, passive and active forms of a verb. Here are examples of this:

Eating quickly:  Shkong  (Eating) +  Iklo   (Quickly) +  (H)Ong   (Verb ending) = Shkong iklo hong

Being bored badly:  Staleyth  (Being bored) +  Sako   (Badly) +  (H)Eyth   (Verb ending) = Staleyth sako heyth

To think well:  Talsapsong  (To think) +  Lapho   (Well) +  (H)Ong   (Verb ending) = Talsapsong lapho hong

Names
As I previously specified, Slakomian names are never based on words already having a meaning (If there is a matching with sounds, it is purely unintentional). Even though there are a lot of possibilities, Slakomians usually keep already existing names, mostly from parents or other relatives. Their complete name is constituted of three parts: a first name, a middle name and a last name. Normally, only the middle name is used. We put the prefix -al before Slakomian names (If there are multiple names, we only put -al once at the beginning). Also, in writing, we put a light point after names (not for each, just at the very end). If the name is in the middle of a sentence, we use [  ], and if it is alone or at the end we use [  :]

Since every name ends in a, marking someone's sex is somewhat complicated in Slakomian. It is marked by the consonant before the ending  a . Here's a table showing which consonants are used for each sex:

First names
First names are determined by the order in which people are born. There is a first name for first born children, second, third and fourth. If there is more than four children, the order restarts. For example, the sixth child will have the second possible name, since we restart after 4, so 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2. Another example would be the ninth child, who would get the first possible name since 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1. Here are the four possible first names: Actually, there are more first names than that. When someone has a child, their name is replaced by Mastikha (Father) if they're a man and Mastina (Mother) if they' re a woman. Then, they keep this first name even if they become grandparent.

Middle names
Middle names are the most used in Slakomian, since they are the only ones to be more unique to their bearers (even though it is possible that two Slakomians have the same, in which case the first and last names can make the difference). They are chosen by the parents at birth and stay the same until their bearer reaches eighteen, after which they must choose a new one. The name used before eighteen is called a Child name and the one used after Adult name. In Slakomian culture, using an adult' s child name is viewed as an insult. Changing middle names at eighteen is something very important to Slakomians, as it represents partly the transition from childhood to adulthood.

Last names
Last names correspond to their bearer's clan's name. There are seven Slakomian clans, exactly one per flying ship. In fact, there are only seven Slakomian ships on Leshnethos. So, logically, there would exist only seven last names for Slakomians. But actually, no, since there is a variant for men and women. The name is made like this: [Word for man or woman]+[Clan name as an adjective]+[Noun terminaison]. You can see the pattern in the following chart: Some Slakomians are called by a last name that doesn 't represent their clan but rather a characteristic of theirs. For example, if one family are great cooks, then their last name would be Ikhahetsakoustongawa or Inahetsakoustongawa, meaning cook in the masculine and feminine form respectively.

Foreign names
If someone hasn 't a Slakomian name, there name is treated differently in Slakomian. We don't put al before the name and the name can end in another sound than a. However, the name must still be adapted in Slakomian sounds so that Slakomians can still pronounce it. This is a relief since trying to translate a foreign name in Slakomian is really hard and will most probable result in a rather different name than the original one.

Lexicon
Since it would take too much space, I put the Slakomian lexicon on an external page: https://pastebin.com/rMM0qaaC

Note: The words are in the Slakomian alphabetical order (As I showed in the writing system section, it is as the following: a, p, k, t, e, ph & kh, th, i, y, m, n, o, ng, l, w, s, h and finally sh)

Example texts
In this section there is first a few sentences that really explain how the language works, and then a paragraph of normal Slakomian text will follow up.

Explanative text
Oko siu itoma slakomawa itomong eko.

''I speak Slakomian. (Literally: I [accusative] language Slakomian speaking (I) am )''

Ska siu kos tawa thakong yesh ?

''Do you know that? (Literally: [question] [accusative] thing this know (you) are )''

Siu khalasawa nitong eko.

''I want tasty food. (Literally: [accusative] tasty food wanting (I) am )''

Regular text
oJı' nomւաuւաкoJաmաнı' omւoкա кաuoՐcJı тcı uımꞀınաւoкoՐաнı oJıաm unꞀoՐcJı: uımгաкա нımluтաm nouoՐcJı тcı кւıԵաmcJı: nւաкmաнoJıաmա uımԵcтluա oJıաm гoՐ uımкouաкcւաmա' ԵաıJաuoՐ ւաlno' тcı uımՐmcuաнı oJıաm' ՐmcuաıcԵnաւաmա тcı ՐmcuաJcıւաmա' monuoՐcԵ:

Romanization

Omi, poulaslakomawahi, ouloka kasongemi tey siushipalokongahi omyaw spshongemi. Siuthaka hiukhtaw posongemi tey klinawemi. Plakwahomyawa siunetkha omyaw thong siukosakelawa, naymasong lapho, tey siungwesahi omyaw, ngwesayenpalawa tey ngwesamaylawa, wopsongen.

Word for word

We, slakomians, [locative]-sky living-(we)are and [accusative]-ships-flying our driving-(we)are. [accusative]-knowledge great having-(we)are and sage-(we)are. Flag-our [accusative]-habit our concerning [accusative]-thing-some, calculating well, and [accusative]-colors our, color-purple and color-orange, representing-(it)is.

Translation

We Slakomians live in the skies and drive our flying ships. We have great knowledge and are sage. Our flag represents our habit of well calculating things and our two colors: purple and orange.

Feedback
If you have anything to tell me about my conlang, you can message me on Discord via this username: Kebekulo#7989