Tixistani

General Information
Tixistani (natively Yelað Tikkŕista /jelʌθ tikːristʌ/) is the native language of the alien Cittus, specifically the Tixist people in Tixistan, a large country on Cittus-V.

Consonants

 * /h/ before a consonant, word-finally, and geminate /hː/ are all allophonically realized as voiceless bidental fricatives [h̪͆].

Vowels
Diphthongs: /ɯi̯/, /ɛi̯/, /ɛʌ̯/, and /ʌi̯/

Phonotactics

 * (C)V(C)(C)
 * Geminate consonants count as two consonants, can occur before before another (non-geminate) consonant, and cannot occur on a word boundary.
 * Clusters of more than three consonants are not allowed.
 * Words must begin in a consonant.
 * Vowel hiatuses are broken up by glottal stops

Stress
Stress is not phonemic. It is on the first syllable if the word ends in a vowel, or on the second if the word ends in a consonant, ex. gehhu /ɣéhːu/ vs ’eruz /ʔeɹúz/. Words ending in a diphthong can be stressed on either. Long words of over three or four syllables like Yektaððtaisuz "special district" will tend to break this pattern and be stressed on the third or fourth syllable, though this is not considered proper.

Basics
Tixistani is written in a semi-syllabary called ’Urshef or Rallisata. It has many interesting features:
 * The glottal stop is written as an accent mark on the preceding letter. It is not written at the beginning of a word in the native script.
 * L, Ð, and Ŕ are written as R, S, and H plus a variation mark.
 * Z and V are written as S and F with a voice mark.
 * The letters for high vowels pull double-duty as consonants (U with G and I with Y). When two are next to each other, it must be inferred from context which are consonants.
 * Stop consonants are written as syllable blocks with each vowel. The variation mark reverses a stop-vowel syllable block. If a stop is followed by a consonant the syllable block chosen would be the one with the same vowel as the previous syllable, with the variation mark attached (so the common name Hakre is effectively written as Haakre, sat as saat). If a stop is not adjacent to any vowel, then the syllable block chosen would be one with a vowel from an adjacent side, and no variation mark (so Sulksay is written as Sulkusay/Sulkasay).
 * Geminate consonants are not written doubly, but with a lengthener accent mark.
 * Letter names are not arbitrary. ex. F is feskuŕ "skin", R ralli "cloud", and S sat "eye"
 * The script is written in downward columns which move from the left to the right.
 * Words are separated by a small punctuation mark.

Native collation
r, l, s, z, ð, h, ŕ, f, v, u/g, e, a, i/y, ku, ke, ka, ki, tu, te, ta, ti

Syntax
VSO; purely right branching

Nouns
Nouns decline for case and number. The general suffixes are below, but nouns are highly irregular. Case uses: ex. sat "eye" ex. herkuz "wanderer, traveler, tourist" ex. gehhu "water"
 * Absolutive: absolutive
 * Ergative: ergative, ablative, instrumental, vocative
 * Dative: dative, genitive
 * Oblique: prepositional, comitative, locative

Vocabulary
Because of differences in anatomy and physiology, many categories of words are very different from their Earthly counterparts.

Numbers
The Cittus typically crawl on all six limbs, but they do use their first two pairs of limbs for manipulation. On each foot they have three clawlike fingers and a clawlike thumb. Their counting base is twelve, achieved by counting the fingers of their manipulative limbs, not counting the thumbs, which the second set of limbs only possess less dexterous remnants of.