Kontavian

Kontavian (kontavá) is an Indo-European language and spoken by about 2.5 million people, with most of them being Kontavs. It is spoken in Kontavia, a country located in Eastern Europe between Turkey and Romania. It is a synthetic language with nouns and verbs mostly declined. Nouns are declined according to case and number, but not for gender. Verbs decline for person, number, tense and mood. Phonology is entirely regular, but there are some slight irregularities with the grammar.

Phonotactics
The maximum syllable structure of Kontavian is (C¹ (C² (C³) ) ) (S¹) V (S²) (C⁴ (C⁵ (C⁶))) (where C denotes a consonant, V denotes a vowel and S denotes a semivowel. Brackets denote optional parts.).

Kontavian's syllable structure consists of an optional syllable onset consisting up to 3 consonants, an obligatory syllable nucleus consisting of a vowel preceded or followed by an optional semivowel (sometimes both), and an optional syllable coda consisting of one, two or three consonants. The following constraints apply:


 * Onset
 * Consonant (C¹) Can be any consonant. (If the onset has two consonants, then it must not have the same manner of articulation as the second consonant, if it has three, it should be only an denti-alveolar fricative other than /θ/ or /ð/.)
 * Consonant (C²) (Cannot have the same manner of articulation as the first one, if the onset has three consonants, then it should be only a plosive)
 * Consonant (C³) (Can only be a liquid.)
 * Nucleus
 * Semivowel (S¹)
 * Vowel (V)
 * Semivowel (S²)
 * Coda
 * Consonant (C⁴)
 * Consonant (C⁵)
 * Consonant (C⁶)

Prosody
Instead of having a phonemic stress accent, Kontavian uses a pitch accent, which is an increase of tone in the syllable. In terms of intonation, the tonal structure of a Kontavian word is typically (L +) H (where H is a high tone and L is a low tone), e.g. vylkús /vɪl.kús/. In monosyllabic words, the syllable is generally low e.g. sva /sva/, except in conjunctions and interrogatives, where it is high e.g. či /tʃí/. The last accent is usually accompanied by a low boundary tone e.g. vylkí belí.

Orthography
Kontavian is written with a version of a Latin alphabet minus Q, W and X (these are only found in loanwords), with 15 modified letters to satisfy the phonology of the language. The native names of the letters are relatively simple, the vowels are named the same way they are pronounced, and the consonants are based of the pronunciation of the Dutch alphabet (excluding diacritics).

Grammar
Kontavian is a fusional language, with nouns and verbs being highly synthetic.

Cases
Out of all the eight cases of PIE, only one was lost - the ablative, which merged with the locative. Kontavian thus has seven cases, nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental, locative, vocative.