Gjudiyl

=Writing System= Gjudiyl employs a variation of the Latin Alphabet, productively using 25 of the 26 basic letters, as well as adding in 8 letters with diacritics and 7 digraphs.

Diacritics
There are two different diacritics used in the Gjudiyl alphabet, the ogonek (on a, e and u) and the breve (on a, e, i, o and u).

Ogonek
The ogonek (known in Gjudiyl as the kjų) is placed on the letters 'a', 'e' and 'u' to indicate that that particular vowel is long.
 * ą - the letter 'ą' represents the long vowel /aː/, similar to the 'ar' sound in "car".
 * ę - represents the diphthong /eɪ/ as in the word "café", or simply a longer version of the vowel /ɛ/, depending on your preferred prononciation.
 * ų - represents the long vowel /uː/, as in English "loot". It is found usually at the end of a word.

The three letters with ogoneks are treated as separate letters, coming after their parent letter in alphabetical order. So for example the word ază would come before ąbeltĕ.

Breve
The breve is placed over all of the vowel letters to indicate a short, reduced sound or a semivowel sound.
 * ă and ĕ both represent the very short reduced neutral vowel /ə/. Whether the ă or ĕ is used depends on which vowel (a or e) the short vowel sound is reduced from. So for example kuvă (copper) and kuvĕ (sheet) are both pronounced identically.
 * ĭ represent the semivowel /j/ in a diphthong. Both ĭ and j have the same phonetic value in Gjudiyl, but 'ĭ' always appears after a vowel, and 'j' elsewhere.
 * ŏ represents the diphthong /oɪ/, similar to the sound in "boy". In Gjudiyl this sound is pronounced much shorter than in English.
 * ŭ represents the semivowel /w/ in a diphthong, for example in the words aŭtobus and yeŭ.

Digraphs
There are seven digraphs in Gjudiyl. These each represent different phonemes from their component letters and are each treated as a separate letter in collation and dictionaries, so for example the word gzovn would come before gjullă
 * cz represents the affricate /tʃ/, like the first sound in "cheese".
 * gj represents the sound /ɟ/. This sound does not appear in English, however it is relatively similar to the first sounds in "judge" or "duty".
 * kj represents the sound /c/, the voiceless counterpart of the letter gj. It is similar to the first sound in "cheat" or "tune".
 * ll represents the sound /ʎ/, the palatal equivalent of /l/. Often in speech the letter is pronounced /j/, as in the letters ĭ and j. This effectively means that often the sound /j/ is represented by three completely different letters, making learning the spelling of some Gjudiyl words very difficult.
 * nj represents the sound /ɲ/ similar to the sound in English "onion".
 * sz represents the common sound /ʃ/, the sound in English "sheep". In most written Gjudiyl texts, sz is the most common digraph letter.
 * zc represents the sound /ʒ/, the sound in English "television".

Double Letters
Double vowels are rare in Gjudiyl, and are usually found in compound words, for example in ucelĕĕczrett which means photograph. The double vowel ĕĕ is only there because ucelĕ "light" and ĕczrett "picture" both have the same vowel at the end and beginning respectively. There are no non-compound words with double vowels in Gjudiyl - vowel length is represented by the breve or ogonek diacritic marks.

Double consonants on the other hand are very common. A double fricative consonant, for example /ff/ or /ss/ means that the consonant is pronounced longer or "geminated". If a stop consonant - for example /tt/ or /kk/ is doubled it has no effect on the pronunciation of that word, it is pronounced exactly how it would be if it were represented by a single letter. So for example kos and koss are pronounced differently, whereas lag and lagg are pronounced identically. An important double consonant however is the letter ll. This double-consonant digraph is regarded as a single letter in the Gjudiyl Alphabet, and represents a completely different sound from a single l. The letter ll represents the sounds /ʎ/ or /j/.

Triple Letters
Occasionally, someone might encounter a triple consonant in Gjudiyl. These are the results of compound words being formed with words that contain double consonants at the beginning or end. For example the word tefffek means "wooden spoon" - being formed from the words teff meaning "spoon" and fek meaning "wood".

=Basic Grammar=

Nouns
Gjudiyl nouns are fairly complicated, with each noun having several different forms depending on which case is used, and which number.

Articles
Articles (as in English "the" and "a") in Gjudiyl are Enclitic. This means that they are attached as a suffix onto the noun which they are describing. To add a definate article onto a noun, you add the suffix -vad. To add an indefinite article onto a noun, you add the suffix -ugj. For example, take the noun hazan meaning "house". Using the suffixes mentioned above, you can turn the word into hazanvad meaning "the house", or hazanugj meaning "a house".

Case
There are several different noun cases in Gjudiyl. Different suffixes are added to nouns to determine possession, location and several other things. The table below is intended to simplify them as much as possible, using the word "hazanvad" meaning "the house".

Examples:
 * găsztĕ guldd hazanvadoczĕ - "it is older than the house"
 * qasztĕ numerăvad hazanvaddąr? - "what is the house number?" (literally "what is the number of the house?")

This system of adding suffixes to add to a noun's meaning means that entire sentences in English can be represented in Gjudiyl with just one or two (really long) words.

Note that the article always has to be attached to the noun it is describing, unless the possessor of the noun is mentioned - see section: "Possession".

Possession
The possessor of a noun has a major effect on the noun's form. Each personal pronoun has a specific suffix which must be added to the noun in order to indicate who is possessing that object.

The table below helps to simplify this, using the word hazan meaning "house":

By combining these possessive suffixes with the case suffixes from above, you can create more specific words, for example hazanęvderkųlpĕ meaning "outside their house".

Note that the possessive suffix always comes straight after the noun (and its pluralising suffix if it has one), and before anything else. It takes the place of an article.

Number
There are two numbers in Gjudiyl, singular and plural. There are three ways in which to pluralise a noun, depending on the letter that they end with.


 * If the word ends in a, the plural is formed by adding an ĭ. Eg seka (tree) > sekaĭ (trees).
 * If the word ends in ă, the ă is scrapped and the ending aĭ is added. Eg udă (table) > udaĭ (tables).
 * If the word ends in ą, e, ę, ĕ, i, ĭ, o, ŏ, u, ų or ŭ, you add k. Eg. llų (shoe) > llųk (shoes).
 * If the word ends in a consonant, the ending -ek is added. Eg. hazan (house) > hazanek (houses).

The pluralising suffix always comes straight after the noun, before anything else. For example in hazanekan meaning "my houses", the noun comes first (hazan - house), then its pluralising suffix (-ek), and then the possessive (-an).

Verbs
Gjudiyl has a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) word order, as in English, however the subject, verb and object are all "squashed" into a single word.

Subject Prefix
Most verbs start with a subject prefix, which is the Gjudiyl equivalent of the "I" in "I love you". There are different subject prefixes depending on the personal pronoun needed.

Take the base verb gazakj meaning "to hate".

The prefixes are the same in almost every verb.

Object Suffix
Next you need an object suffix, like the "you" in "I love you". Still using the base verb gazakj

Forming a SVO Verb
Using a prefix, a base verb and a suffix, you can form words that represent entire English sentences. Once you know all the prefixes and suffixes, forming a verb is easy. For example szesgazakjes means "she hates it", being formed from szes "she" + gazakj "hate(s)" + es "it".

Negation
You can negate a verb by adding a further suffix to the end of the completed verb. This suffix is -nă, so the word szesgazakjes "she hates it" can be transformed into "she doesn't hate it" by creating the word szesgazakjesnă.

Other Situations
In situations when the Object is a Proper Noun or an inanimate object, there is no object suffix added, and instead the noun is put after the subject+verb. So for example "I like my house" would be anslę hazanan (an (I) + slę (like)). In "I like Jane", it would be anslę Janĕ.

Negation is the same as in verbs involving personal pronouns. So "I don't like Jane" would be anslęnă Janĕ.

Adjectives
Adjectives are probably the easiest part of the Gjudiyl language. Each comes in three forms - the normal, comparative, and superlative.

To make the comparative (nice > nicer), you add the suffix -add. To make the superlative (nice > nicest), you add the circumfix lem ~ add.

Examples

Numbers
=Dictionary= ...

=Example text=