Noigcalac

Noigcalac /nʷig̊ʷalʷakʷ/ is a language that I am developing for a friend's Dungeons & Dragons campaign, in which it is spoken by a class of witches and is used to cast spells. With that in mind, I am designing it to have a vaguely Celtic-inspired aesthetic, as my friend and I agreed that the Celtic aesthetic is what most readily comes to mind when thinking of witches; however, it is not a direct copy of Irish or any other Celtic language. I am also taking into consideration what grammatical features may be useful for witches.

This conlang may also later be adapted into my own conworld, Aysling.

Consonants
Noigcalac phonology is characterized by a form of consonant harmony, in which a given word may only contain consonants belonging to a single harmony group. This is similar to how many languages, such as Finnish or Turkish, require all of the vowels of a given word to be either front or back vowels. In Noigcalac, there are three such harmony groups, namely labialized consonants, palatalized consonants, and velarized consonants.

The below consonant table is representative of the most universal analysis of Noigcalac phonology. Most dialects of Noigcalac possess all of these phonemes, but their realizations may vary considerably from one region to another.

Vowels
In most dialects, Noigcalac's vowel inventory is the classic five-vowel system.

Writing System
Because of the nature of Noigcalac's consonant harmony system, the harmony group a word belongs to is indicated by an  or an  following the initial consonant of the word, or the absence of either. Words with  indicate words belonging to the palatal group; words with  belong to the labialized group; and those with neither belong to the velarized group. If a word begins in a vowel sound, the indicating  or  simply begins the word. Later in words,  and  indicate the semivowels /j/ and /w/. In cases of ambiguity, or sometimes for ease of reading,  and  may be topped with diaereses for clarity when indicating semivowels.

Grammar
Tentative grammar outline:


 * active-stative (fluid-S) alignment
 * aspect-heavy TAM system
 * wide variety of moods
 * evidentiality
 * head-initial, VSO word-order
 * telicity
 * noun class/animacy
 * possession marked on nouns via person-specific markers
 * classifiers