Létë

Setting
Tintaletya is a language spoken a humanoid alien race in another galaxy. They are beyond what any human could dream of - tall, slender, beautiful eyes and flowing hair. In fact they love nature and delight in all its beauty, and this is reflected in their language. When they first became civilised, they were experimenting with all sorts of sound they could make, taking delight from being able to speak and sing. As their civilisation evolved, so too did their language, moulding around their specific aesthetic taste. Thus producing Tintaletya ("joyous words, joyous speaking, speaking in delight"). This had evolved from Old Tintaletya, which evolved from Tit-letjâ. This ancient language was among five daughter languages - Deyhâ, Ledrê, Tit-letjâ, Dlêdê, and Upavî - that evolved from the most primitive and ancient language, Detegh.

Consonants
Notes

 1.  n is always pronounced as in never except when before g, in which case it is pronounced as in English anger. However, it is always spelt “n”.

 2.  hl is just voiceless l as in lamp; hw is just voiceless w as in some English dialects which, white; hy is just voiceless y as at the start of the word, before pronouncing the vowel, hue; and hr is just a voiceless alveolar tap (explained below).

 3.  d, b, and g cannot exist by themselves in words; they are only present in consonant clusters such as nd, mb, ng

 4.  r is pronounced as an alveolar flap or tap, as in Japanese ri, some English dialects in words like better and ladder, where tt and dd are pronounced pretty much the same. Hr is just a voiceless version of this. When geminated (lengthened) it will appear as rr in which case it is pronounced as an alveolar trill, which is just an alveolar tap repeated several time quickly, as in many European languages.

Vowels
Notes

 1.<span style="font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman"; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;">  i is pronounced as in bit, when it is between two consonants, but even then it is still pronounced closer to see than bit. When at the start of a word, in a diphthong, or next to a vowel which it is not in a diphthong with, it is pronounced see but shorter.

<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt 36pt; text-indent: -18pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> 2.<span style="font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman"; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;">  Long o and e, when pronounced correctly, are not only longer, but “closer” than their short counterparts.

Diphthongs are au, iu, eu, ai, ui, oi, are pronounced as [au, iu, eu, ai, ui, oi] respectively. Any other group of two sequential vowels cannot form a diphthong. These vowels consequently always belong to separate syllables.

Orthography
While it has its own script, this is for the romanised version. Consonants and vowels appear as above. E has a diaeresis when at the end of a word to show it is pronounced, and when with a or o to show they are pronounced separately. However, when in proper names and this e would be capitalised, the diaeresis moves to the a or o. E.g. enë, harëa, Eönwë. This diaeresis has no effect on the pronounciation. "Qu" is used to represent a "cw" sound, and "x" is used to represent a "cs" sound.

Phonotactics
Tintaletya has a strict set of phonological rules. It is restriected to a fixed set of cosonant and vowel clusters that are allowed, and if a conjugation or declension would violate those rules, the consonants or verbs would have to change.

Vowels can never be three in a row; ie, you could not have a word like laio. Diphthongs and long vowels can never end a word, nor can they ever precede a consonant cluster (note, this does not include ly, ny, ry, ty).

Consonants are confined to a strict set of consonant clusters. Note that while the semi-vowels y and w are consonants and never vowels, when preceded by one consonant, the consonant cluster does not act as a cluster for the clusters with y, when applying the rules for stress. The following consonants (and clusters) may start a word:&nbsp c, f, h, hl, hr, hw, hy, l, ly, m, n, nw, ny, p, qu, r, ry, s, t, ty, th, v, w, y.

Hl and hr can only be found at the starts of a word, never anywhere else, and hy, hw, and th are single consonants, not consonant clusters (dh isn't either, but that is only found in the middle of a word).

These are the only consonants that can be found on the end of a word: l, n, r, s, t, and the two consonant clusters in the genetive plural -rn, and genetive dual -nt.

Certain consonants can be geminated (lengthened): ll, mm, nn, rr, ss, tt. These count as consonant clusters.

Allowable consonant clusters are: x (cs), ht, lc, ld, lf, ll, lm, lp, lqu, lt, lty, lw, ly, mb, mm, mn, mp, nc, nd, ng, nn, nqu, nt, nty, nw, ny, ps, rc, rd, rm, rn, rqu, rr, rt, rty, rw, ry, ss, st, ts, tt, tw, ty. In the cluster ht the h is fully realised; that is, it is pronounced full before the t.

As can be seen, there is quite a limited set of allowable clusters and strict rules for word formation. When adding suffixes, words change in order to comply with these rules. For example, the word nés "person" with the locative ending -llo would supposedly be nésllo but this is completely wrong. Firstly, long vowels cannot precede consonant clusters so we have nesllo, which is still wrong as sll is not a viable cluster. So, s assimilates with the locative ending, which results in nello "in/on/at a person".

As noted above the consonants b, d, and g cannot exist by themselves. They are only found in the following clusters: mb, ld, nd, rd, ng.

Stress
Stress is always regular. To know which syllable to stress, the length of a syllable must be understood.

The syllable is long if it contains: So the stress is as follows: Some examples (stressed is bold):
 * a long vowel
 * a diphthong
 * a short vowel followed by a consonant cluster
 * a monosyllabic word is stressed on that syllable
 * a disyllabic word is stressed on the first syllable
 * a word with more than two syllables is stressed on the penultimate syllable if it is long, but if it is short, the syllable before it is stressed

The penultimate syllable is short:

The penultimate syllable is long: The special consonant clusters ly, ny, ry, ty are considered consonant clusters when determining stress: These rules also imply that it is not always a syllable with long vowel that is stressed:
 * harëa "a fight" > ha-rë-a
 * lintulë "will chant" > lin-tu-lë
 * Nenálë "Shimmering Halls (their capital city) > Ne-ná-lë
 * anára "failing (adjective)" > a-ná-ra
 * lavalya "most beautiful" > la-va-lya
 * allassë "upon a leaf" > al-las-së

Number
Tintaletya has three numbers: single, plural, and dual. Single is used for a single thing, plural is used for two or more things, and dual is used for a natural pair. When talking about two things, dual is more often used than plural (with the number two as a postposition).

Nouns in singular form are unchanged.

Nouns in plural form take the ending -ië if they end in a consonant, and -n if they end in a vowel.

Nouns in dual take the ending -u, no matter if anding in a vowel or consonant. If ending in a vowel however, the u replaces the last vowel. If this would result in a diphthong, the ending -t is used.