Czalatian

Consonants
Czalatian uses 27 consonant sounds, many of which are present either in English or in other European languages. It features several palatal consonants (nj, q, gj, qj and lj) - none of which are productively used in English. Uvular, pharyngeal and retroflex consonants are virtually unheard of in the language.

Vowels
Czalatian has ten vowel monopthongs and three dipthongs. The distinction between the sounds /a/ and /ɐ/ is often ambiguous and is becoming less and less distinct. /ɐ/ appears only between consonants, whereas /a/ can appear anywhere.

Alphabet
The Czalatian alphabet

Digraphs
The digraphs cz, dz, gj, nj, qj, sz, tz and zc are all treated as letters in their own right, and represent their own sounds different to their component letters. If, for example, the consonant cluster [gj] is required, the silent auxilliary 'seperation sign' ï is inserted in between the g and the j, resulting in gïj, to avoid it being pronounced as the letter gj which represents the sound /ɟ/. This is the same for all digraphs, for example the cluster cïz represents the consonant cluster [tsz]. All these digraph letters have their own place in alphabetical order, placed after their first component letter.

Trigraph
The trigraph dzc represents the voiced postalveolar affricate, like the sound in general. Although it represents a unique sound, it is usually considered a cluster of the letters d and zc, although future updates to the language may change this.

Front C vs Back TZ
The letters c and tz both represent the same sound - namely the voiceless alveolar affricate /ts/, pronounced identically to the ending of the english word cats. Which one to use depends on a few simple rules: c is used before the vowels i and e only, whereas tz is used before all other vowels, all consonants and word-finally. The only exception is in the word ac meaning "this", which allows for it to be distinguished from the identically-pronounced atz meaning "next to/adjacent to".

Letter Ë
As a rule of thumb, the umlaut/trema/double-dot diacritic mark is used not to show frontness (as in Germanic, Turkic and Ugric languages), rather to show a very reduced vowel which is similar to the one represented by its plain letter. The letter ë represents the schwa-sound /ə/, which is a phoneme in its own right in Czalatian. Although its most common position is word finally, it is also seen word initially (ëlekriak "electricity"), within words (vën "mountain") and on its own (ë "never").

Letter Ï
The letter ï has a relatively complicated usage. When I first started constructing Czalatian, it represented the sound /ɨ/ (like the reduced 'e' sound of roses), however after this sound was scrapped, the character was recycled for other uses. In the seldom used Czalatian cyrillic alphabet, the letter ï is represented by the 'Hard Sign' ъ, and the name of the letter is i stų ("short i").
 * It's most common usage is to seperate consonant clusters when they would orthographically be identical to digraph letters (cz, dz, gj, lj, nj, qj, sz, tz and zc), for example in the word mezïci "although", the ï seperates the z and the c to show that they are pronounced seperately as a /z/ followed by a /ts/, rather than the sound /ʒ/ that the digraph letter zc produces, resulting in the pronunciation [mɛz.tsi] as opposed to [mɛ.ʒi]. In this case it has absolutely no phonetic value.
 * Secondly, and rarely, ï replaces the letter i if the use of i would result in a dipthong when a diaeresis would be needed. For example, zeïzų "woman" is pronounced [zɛ.ji.zu] rather than [zeɪ.zu] which the spelling without the ï would suggest.

Letter Ų
The u with ogonek ų represents the vowel /u/ when found at the end of a word. It represents the same sound as u with ring ů, and the reason that they are both retained is that ų represents the loss of the word-final cluster /ug/ into simple /u/, whereas ů continues from the old vowel /u/ which has always been present in the language (which was never seen word-finally).

Nouns
Czalatian declines nouns for a few cases, article and number, and many nouns can be conjoined to other nouns to produce compounds (for example njiak "house" + szyri "wife" = njiakszyri "housewife".

Numbers
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Article and Number
Indicators of article and number are both added to the end of the noun. The plural marker is -i. The endings to use are shown in the

So for example, the word myzcak "beer" can take on the following forms: myzcak "beer", myzcaki "beers", myzcakkų "two beers", myzcakëgj "the beer", myzcakëgji "the beers", myzcakagjų "the two beers", myzcakën "a beer", myzcakëni "some beers", myzcakanų "some/any two beers".

Case
There exist only five cases in Czalatian: the Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Genitive and Prepositional. Other cases are shown by prepositions coupled with the noun taking on it's prepositional case form.


 * The Nominative Case (gjårond nomynatyczi) is used to show the agent of an intransitive verb, or a subject of a transitive verb. In Czalatian, like many other languages, the Nominative Case is the unmarked dictionary form.
 * The Accusative Case (gjårond akusatyczi) is used to show the subject of a transitive verb. The accusative case has the ending -eszë.
 * The Dative Case (gjårond datyczi) is used to show an indirect object of a transitve verb. For example "I gave the book to you". The dative case ending is -otzë.
 * The Genitive Case (gjårond dzcenityczi) is used to show possession, for example "He gave me back my book". The genitive ending is -äszk.
 * The Prepositional Case (gjårond pryzcgjyzcgyczi) is used to show that a noun is being modified by a preposition. For example "next to the book". The prepositional ending is -(ë)käqj.

Case endings are placed after article and plural endings. So for example the word myzcakëgjiäszk "of the beer" is formed by the noun myzcak "beer" + the definate marker -ëgj + the plural marker -i + the genitive "of" marker -äszk.

Using the above information, the below table shows the regular declension of the noun huno "man".

Compounds
Czalatian nouns can be compounded both with other nouns, as well as certain adjectives. For example, bůczip "second" is added to tzůn "day" to form bůcziptzůn "Tuesday" (second day). negjegj "nothing" can be added to feizgot "doer" to become negjegjfeizgot "nothing-doer" (i.e. someone who does nothing), and then negjegjfeizgot to zmyngot "maker" to make negjegjfeizgotzmyngot "nothing-doer-maker" (i.e. someone who causes people to do nothing), and then eventually negjegjfeizotzmyngotzmyngot "nothing-doer-maker-maker" (i.e. someone who turns people into people who do nothing). Although such a word is quite obscure, someone could theoretically write the sentence si szufiak oj negjegjfeizotzmyngotënëkäqj "this tiredness makes (me) want to do nothing" (literally "this tiredness is a nothing-doer-maker"), although the much less cryptic si szufiak czurak dzi ge dze'zmyn negjegj "this tiredness makes me want to do nothing" (with almost the exact same word order as english).