Ëkopion

Ëkopion (transcribed as @kopion when Ë is not available) is a click-based language spoken by Arthrowheels (atlojidl) from the radiated planet of Chelys (cëidli).

Phonology
Ëkopion phonology is based on click consonants, basic and nasal vowels.

Consonants
The glottal stop occurs between two vowels when there is no click connecting them. The glottal transition or fricative occurs mostly in loanwords and numerals, or the word /hi/ (and).

Note that the physiology of Arthrowheels allows them to speak velar clicks in basic conversations, whereas it is judged impossible to articulate by humans.

Vowels
All vowels have a nasalized version, as well as optionally one of four tones (high ˥, low ˩, falling ˥˩ and rising ˩˥), however minimal pairs are rare, making any word without known tone translatable by context. The speakers who utilize tones are considered highly educated, but it is not mandatory to be able to speak the tonal language.

The mid-central vowel occurs between two clicks and has a very weak, almost null release.

o and u can be unrounded in certain positions, such as after a dental consonant.

Writing system
Ëkopion uses a syllabary which includes 160 glyphs.



Standard Ëkopion Romanization system
The standard Ëkopion romanization system is used to transcribe Ëkopion script into Human languages. Most clicks are converted to the corresponding stop by place of articulation. @ is considered a valid substitute for Ë. From now on, the page will transcribe words using the standard Ëkopion romanization system.

Transcription of English names
Schwas and glottal stops can either be omitted or (usually for teaching) be represented by '.

 

Double letters and geminates are shortened to one character, as they do not occur in any word.

Approximants are written using the vowel they are equivalent to - that is j = i; w = u.

     

The name Evfnye Misx /'ɛfɲje mɪsz/ wouls be transcribed as  'Epn'i'e ën'itd.

 

Phonotactics
The structure of a word is very variable if schwas are ignored as true vowels and glottal stops are not counted. The structure of a 4-sound word can be realized as CVCV, ʔVCV, CVCə or CəCV just to list a few. A word, however, cannot start with a pure vowel or end with a click without a schwa following it, although the letter is close to silent.

Loanwords can have an even larger variety of word structure, as some clusters like Ptl at the beginning of a word (such as in Ptlanet) are a rare occurrence. They usually follow the transcription method of English (or of the original language) names (see above).

Grammar
Ëkopion is a highly inflected language. It used many affixes to generate various declesions and conjugations.

Verbs
Verbs are conjugated according to tense, mood, person and number.

Infinitive
The infinitive of a verb is made by adding -ci to the root of the verb. There are no base words that end with the same suffix, as to avoid confusion.

Imperative mood
The imperative mood is identical to the active future indicative, only with the postposition tag after the verb.

Nouns
Ëkopion has eight noun cases: Nominative, Accusative, Ablative, Allative, Genitive, Locative, Dative and Temporal (the latter can only be used on certain words related to time). They follow an agglutinative declesion pattern, that means the suffixes are simply attached to the end of the word. The plural form of words is created by adding a suffix -dë before the case suffix. Exceptions are made when the word ends in a consonant, in which case the plural form ends in -ëde. If a word happens to end in -d or -t, the this suffix is removed and replaced with -dë. Note that n is not considered a separate consonant and acts as a nasalizer.

Adjectives
Adjectives follow the same declesion pattern as nouns they refer to. Gampo and jin are put after the adjective and have value of "more" and "less", respectively. The word for "very" is ët'ipak, and is placed after the adjective as well.

Pronouns
Unlike nouns and adjectives, which have an agglutinative declesion pattern, pronouns are fusional, with all declesions differing from the base nominative.

Word order
Ëkopion does not follow a strict word order, due to the fact that the accusative suffix is different from the nominative one. The sentences are most often formatted as SOV or SVO, although all 6 combinations are grammatically correct. Adjectives are most commonly placed after the noun, but again there is no strict rule regarding this.

Vocabulary
See Ëkopion/Vocabulary.

Pikintla
The Pikintla dialect is spoken by Arthrowheels living in exposed star light in an equatorial colony. Its main difference from the standard pronunciation is that all front vowels shifted to central and palatal consonants are retroflex.