Saldren

Saldren (native: Salrên /salrən/) is a romance language with Eastern Algonquian substrata; it is a distance relative of the Gallo-Romance languages though it split off from the other romances during the proto-Gallo-Romance era, between the year 800 and 1000 c.e.

Phonology
Subject to change.

Consonants
Salrên has a relatively small consonant inventory; notably it has no voiced stops and only one voiced fricatives.

Diphthongs
The diphthongs in Saldrên are /jV/ /wV/ /au̠/

Phonotactics
The Saldrên syllable is very simple: (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C).

The following consonant clusters are permitted in the syllable onset where S is any stop, L is any liquid.


 * sSr
 * SL
 * SS

Any consonant may appear in the syllable coda; but only a word's final syllable may have two syllables in the coda.

Stress is preserved from Latin; this causes stress to be somewhat irregular in modern Salrên as it has lost phonetic vowel length.

Sandhi
Salrên has a few instances of sandhi affecting word boundaries. When a word that ends in a vowel ends in a vowel is followed by a word beginning in a vowel, one of three things often happens.


 * 1) If the two vowels are identical, they coalesce into one vowel and they are pronounced as part of the second word.
 * 2) If the following word begins with a front vowel, /j/ is inserted between the vowels.
 * 3) If the following word begins with a back vowel or /ə/, w/ is inserted between the vowels.

Writing System
The following letters have different pronunciations depending on their location in the word


 *  is pronounced as /k/ before a consonant or /a, ə, o, u/ and /ʃ/ before /i, e/ as a result of palatalization.
 *  is pronounced as /j/ before a vowel.
 * is pronounced as /w/ before a vowel.

In addition to the letters listed above, Salrên uses the following digraphs


 *  represents the diphthong /au/
 *  represents /tʃ/
 *  represents ɲ
 *  represents the diphthong /jV/
 *  represents /k/ before /i, e/
 *  represents /ʃ/
 *  represents the diphthong/wV/

Grammar
The grammar of Salrên is mostly similar to the grammar of other romance languages; however, it has retained more of Latin's inflections than most romance languages.

Nouns
Unlike most romance languages, Salrên maintained both the neuter gender and elements of Latin's case system. Adjectives agree in number, gender, and case with the nouns they modify. The gender of words borrowed into Salr̂en is derived from the animate - inanimate system. Inanimate nouns become neuter nouns with no exceptions; animate nouns usually become masculine or feminine depending on phonetics and biological sex.

Salrên nouns are divided into 4 declensions; however, gender usually cannot be determined from declension alone and in many cases must be memorized. Salrên nouns decline for the nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive cases. In general, the singular forms of nouns show less inflection than the plural forms; however, in all declensions, the nominative and accusative merged together.

Due to sound changes, Salrên's case system has become more irregular than Latin's case system.

1st Declension Nouns
1st declension nouns are derived form Latin's first declension nouns; they are usually feminine but contain some masculine nouns. In the first declension, the nominative and accusative cases merged for both singular and plural nouns. The dative and genitive cases also merged for singular nouns, but remain distinct for plural nouns.

Example noun: tsula (tablet)

Nouns whose nominative forms end in -ha have an irregular singular dative/genitive ending and an irregular plural genitive ending.

Example: roha (wheel) Nouns whose nominative forms end in -ca are regular phonetically but have irregular spelling

Example: aca (water)

2nd Declension Nouns
2nd declension nouns are derived form Latin's second declension. It contains masculine and neuter nouns.

Example noun: cheros (circle)