Yechevic

Yechevic (working title) is a constructed language. Originally created for a fantasy novel in late 2014, Yechevic has become far more fusional and complex. Originally drawing influences from languages such as Irish, Spanish, Cherokee, Japanese, Hawaiian, and Hindi, Yechevic changed both sound-wise and grammar-wise; having initially been an English-like language with little inflection (perhaps even less than English itself), throughout its development numerous things, such as gender, case, and verbal inflection, have been added.

Yechevic is now a heavily-inflected, generally fusional language (with a few instances of other types of inflection) with a VSO word order; nouns are inflected for gender (masculine or feminine, depending on the noun's beginning), noun class, case (common, genitive, dative, and ablative), count (mass or count) and number (singular, dual, and plural). Verbs are inflected for aspect (simple, continuous, habitual, and perfect), tense (present, past, imperfect, and future), mood (indicative, subjunctive/conditional, and imperative), person (first, second, and third), and number (singular, dual, and plural). Adjectives are inflected for number (singular, dual, and plural), and sometimes gender.

(Please excuse this article while it's under construction.)

Classification and Dialects
Yechevic is a constructed language with just one speaker (its own creator), and thus technically a language isolate. It has generally only a standard language, with little variation.

Writing System
Yechevic is written with the Latin alphabet. It consists of 24 letters (the English letters minus q and w). In addition, the five vowel letters (a e i o u) can be written with an accute accent, a grave accent, or in the case of u, the diaresis.

The accute accent (Yechevic: jahi) is used roughly once every five or six words in Yechevic. It serves multiple important purposes:

- Distinguishing homophones, such as o "not" and ó "without" or ta "you (informal)" and tá "new (masculine)".

- Indicating a strong (stressed) vowel; in most Yechevic words, stress is variable, while it is fixed in words with jahi.

- Indicating that two adjacent vowels are not pronounced together as a diphthong; this results in the vowel without the jahi being weak as well. For example, tais "square" is pronounced /t̪ajs/ while táis "same" is pronounced /t̪a:ɪs/.

The grave accent (Yechevic: jahi òt) is far less common than the accute accent, usually used in a handful of common words that have it. It serves a couple of purposes:

- Distinguishing a homophone if there is already a form of the word without a jahi and with a jahi. For example, se "(he/she/it) pays", sé "(he/she/it) is (subj.)", and sè "annoying (fem.)".

The diaresis on the u (Yechevic: na ù ázh táp) is added to write /ʊ/. For example, nüshda "food" is pronounced /n̪ʊʃda/.

Number
Yechevic nouns inflect for three grammatical numbers: singular, dual, and plural (dual is not present in English).

Generally, the dual and plural suffixes of nouns (in the common case) are predictable; dual suffixes are based off the stems -an- and -in- for masculine and feminine nouns, respectively, while plural suffixes are based off the stems -st- and -zd- for masculine and feminine nouns, respectively. However, a large number of nouns have irregular suffixes, as will be discussed below.

The standard suffixes are as follows:  The suffixes elide in some cases: However, a number of nouns, predominantly feminine ones, have irregular plural forms, with a couple having irregular dual forms as well. The two most common trends are:
 * For feminine nouns ending in -i and masculine nouns ending in -a, the vowel of the suffix is taken off. For example, sunei > sunein "girl" and tastá > tastán "journal".
 * The consonants of the plural suffixes are affected by sibilant phonological rules in Yechevic: the -s- in masculine nouns is elided in nouns ending in -s, -z, -sh, -zh, or -hl, while the -z- in feminine nouns is elided in all of the same but -s (where the -s itself is elided, such as in shéas > shéazdi "interest")

Feminine plurals ending in -a: fána, moila, mára, natara

Feminine plurals ending in -ím: náním, aíním, thaterím

Masculine plurals ending in -an: kanarán, tabhan

Two nouns have an fully irregular dual, as well as a fully irregular plural: yexev > hevni > ayastoula, meaning “person”, and shabh > shaubhán > zhebhól, meaning “life”.

English loanwords have the dual and plural suffix -’s. For example, adiktión > adiktión 's.

Gender
Yechevic nouns have two genders: feminine, and masculine. While feminine nouns make up approximately 51% of the dictionary, in written text, the number is higher as many of the most important nouns are feminine.

Unlike European languages, in Yechevic, the gender of a noun is determined by its beginning, rather than its end. Although the tendency is for "soft" sounds to be feminine and the rest masculine, there are a few rules: The gender of each beginning is:
 * Vowels tend to be somewhat irregular. While most nouns beginning in i- or u- are feminine and almost all beginning in o- are masculine, a and e are unpredictable.
 * Very few nouns begin in h, but it does have an unusual system of assigning gender: nouns beginning in ha- or ho- are masculine, while those that begin in he-, hi-, or hu- are feminine. Thus, hán is masculine while hizh and hiá are feminine.
 * Quite a few nouns (mostly feminine) have a gender that is contrary to its initial sound. Most of them are common words: da "thing" and aín "eye" are feminine, while miskith "fish", mathíl "size", and ghoma "car" are masculine.
 * A few nouns can take either gender - some (mostly referring to animals) take a specific gender in each usage depending on the gender of its subject.

Masculine: bh-, b-, p-, t-, g-, k-, l-, r-, c-, j-, ha-, ho-, ç-, tl-, o-

Feminine: m-, v-, f-, z-, s-, dh-, th-, gh-, x-, n-, sh-, zh-, he-, hi-, hu-, y-, hl-, i-, u-

Case
Yechevic features four functioning noun cases: common (essentially the merger of the nominative and accusative), genitive, dative, and ablative; in addition, a vocative case can be invoked with particles. With the exception of the common singular, which is the uninflected plain form of the noun, suffixes are always present on the noun to indicate number, case, and gender.
 * The common case is used for the subject and direct object of a sentence, as well as the object of most prepositions and the default form of the noun.

The genitive suffix is a bit of a messy affair that changes depending on the noun’s gender, number, and ending. Especially confusing are nouns ending in a vowel: the final vowel either has an accent added (or taken away if there already is one), and then it is followed by -n.
 * The genitive case is used to show either possession of an object or to form an adjective-like noun, usually for compound words. A small few verbs take their object in the genitive case.

The suffixes are as follows: * Some nouns have an irregular genitive form, such as bene > bené, shabh > shaubhi, and yexev > yexebhi.

The genitive case in Yechevic has two main jobs: to mark possession, and create an adjective-like form of the noun.

With possession, the genitive suffix is put on the noun that possesses or owns the other object, with the possessed object (which can be in any case) coming after. Oftentimes, both nouns will have an article.

Sén sha suneín no aínin sílov. The girl’s eyes are blue.

Ajúra an Janesi natraváied ila. He told Janice’s friend that.

Sometimes, the possessed noun is genitive itself, possessing another noun:

Mav sha háne sha dhen na zóthe. It’s the end of the semester. (lit. "is the year's the half's the end")

With the adjectivial form, the genitive is also used where in English, a plain form of the noun would be used. In Yechevic, nouns can be used as adjectives (such as in “football player”, “photo album”, or “movie theater”), but they are put in the genitive case:

San Paul fútboli türneixev. Paul is a football player. (lit. "football's player")

Amua stí thaskrat album’s. I have many photo albums. (lit. "photos' albums")

Yé sout simaxat hanaked. He went to the movie theater. (lit. "movies' theater")

A few verbs take their object in the genitive case, as well:

Mánka ila shalxán eó. It happened to that city a lot. (lit. "happened that city's often")

Verbs
(Coming soon.)

Yechevic verbs are conjugated for person, number, mood, tense, and aspect. They are divided into four conjugation groups, depending on the 3rd person singular form's ending, which are each marked with a distinctive -ga suffix (which acts as the infinitive, plain form of the verb, as well as the gerund in some cases.)

-ega verbs are most verbs that end in a consonant.

-siga verbs are most verbs that end in a vowel.

-oga verbs are most verbs that end in -hl or -s.

-iga verbs are most verbs that end in -ra, -re, -c, -r, as well as a few outliers.