Kahaym

The Kahaym language (Kahaym grem, sometimes also called Nilgrem, language of men, Mehndeilgrem, language of Mehndeil, or Evriirgrem, language of the Empire) is spoken almost all over the continent of Kahaymah, but officially recognized as national language only in the territory of the Imperial Union of Kahaymah and in Hevera.

Classification and Dialects
The Kahaym language belongs to the Nil languages group (or human languages) and is part of the Central Neokahaymenian languages. It comes from the Ancient Kahaym and it is the most releated to this old language, now extinct.

As Kahaym is spoken everywhere in Kahaymah, it has been influenced by other languages spoken in the lands out of the Galedarvaar. So more and more dialects were born, and in some cases it is still evolving a new dialect. For example, when Kahaym spread across the land of Hakhiir, a new dialect set up and the Hakhiiric dialect has started setting up. The pronunciation is what has changed most: the Halkars (race of humanoid cats) cannot pronunce some sounds like /u/ or /l/, so the pronunciation of some words before and the alphabet then have changed a lot. Furthermore, some words of the native languages entered in the spoken Kahaym; for example, if we consider Heveranish dialect we can hear words like kasir, stronghold (vranastir in Kahaym) or holden, world (herdrain in Kahaym).

Phonology
These are the sounds which can be found in the Galedaric/Ylennil version of Kahaym. Other dialects could have different sounds, expecially for vowels.

Consonants

 * Some sounds are composed by a letter followed by "h". This letter alters the pronunciation of some consonants more than all the other letters. For example: vh /ʋ/; dh /ð/; th /θ̞/...

Vowels

 * Vowel "a" can change its pronunciation with letter "h". For example: ah /ɑ/ or /ə/. Kahaymah ['kɑaym'ɑ], Kahaymah.

Writing System
Kahaym language uses the same alphabet as English. In Ancient Kahaym, there were two different writing systems: the Vànthom and the Runic. They were completely different from the modern alphabet and they had a lot of characters (every sound had its own symbol). As the alphabet was deemed a holy thing so only priests and nobles were allowed to learn writing, at the end of the First Era some plebians started using an invented alphabet, which they called Mehayllerdrkon, the "people's voice" in Vulgar Ancient Kahaym (very similar to the modern Ovarnil alphabet). Soon it spread and at the beginning of the Second Era replaced the old alphabet.

Official Alphabet (Kahaymsyrdrin)
These are all the letters recognized by all Kahaym's dialects and all the letters belonging to the Galedaric/Ylennil dialect.
 * The letters C, J, Q, W, X, Z are not present in original Kahaym words. They appear just in foreign words.
 * When C is followed by H it sounds like /χ/ only in a few words from foreign languages or from Ancient Kahaym.
 * Some letters like B, D, F, G, H, P cannot get doubled like the others (C, J, Q, W, X, Z excluded).
 * Usually letters' pronunciation changes according to the specific word, like in English.
 * Diphthongs like AE, EA, OU, OO, EE... are always pronunced articulating each vowel. So, for example, AE is pronunced [aε] or [ae], OO is pronunced [oː] and not [uː].

Extended Alphabet (Kahaymalsyrin)
In addiction to the other letters, in some versions of Kahaym are used other letters for adapting certain sounds which are not present in the Kahaymsyrdrin or for summarizing some consonants' groups (for example: th becomes Þ).
 * These letters don't always substitute the groups of letters in "Replace" coliumn; they are more often used as "additional characters" for the original alphabet.

Grammar
In Kahaym there are two genders (common and neutral) and two numbers (singular and plural). Nouns don't change according to the context very much, because they aren't declined according to case.

Personal Pronouns
In Kahaym language, nouns are not declined according to case, except for personal pronouns. They conserve four of the ten cases in Ancient Kahaym (actually every pronoun is declined three times, because dative and accusative coincide).
 * In Kahaym, possessive adjectives are the same as the genitive of personal pronouns.
 * The generalized form can be used for everything, irrespective of the gender. They are frequently used in the spoken language for animals and things (for people, you have to use male/female and common pronouns). They are used especially in questions and riddles where you don't know what you are refering to.
 * Note: the 3rd singular person in the polite form, in nominative, it is not just the polite form of you, but it means also god/goddess in Kahaym.
 * In Kahaym language, if you want to say my self, you just use the dative case. Self is never used with pronouns, although there is a word, nilran, which has more or less the same meaning.

Nouns
Nouns decline according to the two numbers (singular and plural). If we want to build the plural, we have to put -ar at the end of the word in singular.