Atráve

Atráve /at̪ɾaβe/ (formerly known as Yechevic) is a constructed language. Originally created for a fantasy novel in late 2014, Atráve has become far more fusional and complex. Originally drawing influences from languages such as Irish, Spanish, Cherokee, Japanese, Hawaiian, and Hindi, Atráve 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.

Atráve 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 often gender.

Classification and Dialects
Atráve 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.

Atráve is not based on a fictional culture or nation (although previously it was the language of a fictional, European-Asian-hybrid-like culture in a fantasy novel), but would hypothetically be spoken by humans and lacks any serious unrealistic differences from natural human languages, containing inflection, a fully-developed syntax, and irregularity (although, in practice, it has too small of a vocabulary to be used realistically by an advanced civilization). Although it (roughly) grammatically resembles the Indo-European languages (especially the Celtic languages, which share Atráve's VSO word order and mutated adjectives), its vocabulary shows no particular resemblance to any existing language. If it were classified as a real language, it would certainly be classified as an isolate.

Phonology
Atráve features a somewhat complicated consonant system, with about 30 consonants total. There is considerable allophony in Atráve, especially with the palatal and velar-uvular consonants. The consonant y is notoriously unpredictable: it can either be pronounced /j/ as in yexev /jɛχev/ "person" or / ʝ/ as in yelesat /ʝel̪ɛsat̪/.

Shown below are the consonants. If a sound's orthography does not match with its IPA symbol, then the way it is written is shown in italics below. Two phonemes are also listed in parentheses, as they are marginal consonants:

- /ŋ/ is not a distinct phoneme, and does not occur in native Atráve words. Whenever nk and ng occur, the two consonants are pronounced on different syllables. For example, mánka "used to happen" is pronounced /man̪ka/.

- The uvular fricative /χ/ or /ʁ/ occurs marginally in various cases in Atráve. /χ/ is sometimes used in place of /x/ for x, as well as gh word-finally in some cases (such as talágh "group" or "union", which is usually pronounced /t̪əl̪aɣ/ but sometimes /t̪əl̪aχ/). Meanwhile, /ʁ/ is often used as an allophone of /ɾ/ in non-carefully-pronounced speech, usually after a plosive. For example, matraya "direction" can be pronounced /mət̪ɾaja/ (standard) or as /mət̪ʁaja/.

Vowel Strength
Atráve features a system of vowel strength. The vowels a, e, and i all have "strong" and "weak" forms:

/a/ (strong); /ə/ (weak)

/e/ (strong); /ɛ/ (weak)

/i/ (strong); /ɪ/ (weak)

The vowels o, u, and ü are not affected by vowel strength.

Although the strength of a vowel is variable in many cases, there are a few rules that dictate when a vowel is strong:

- If a vowel has an accent mark, such as in éra /eɾə/ "true" or imíd /ɪmid̪/ "rain"

- If a vowel is part of an unaccented diphthong, such as in solua /sol̪wa/ "(I) see"

Writing System
Atráve 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.

An important note is that /w/ and /j/ are written as u and variably y and i, respectively. They occur only in diphthongs without jahi.

The accute accent (Atráve: jahi) is used roughly once every five or six words in Atráve. 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 Atráve 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/.

- Breaking up a diphthong with /j/ or /w/. For example, io /jo/ "type" and ío /i:o/ "ethnicity".

The grave accent (Atráve: 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 (Atráve: na ù ázh táp) is added to write /ʊ/. For example, nüshda "food" is pronounced /n̪ʊʃda/.

Pronouns
Atráve personal pronouns are complex, inflecting for gender, number, person, and case. As the subject of a sentence, they can be dropped, as verbs inflect for the person and number of the verb's subject. Although they may seem complex at first, many (especially the dative and ablative) pronouns are predictably derived and are rarely used.

First Person Pronouns

Note: the pronoun la/be is the only remaining word in Atráve that distinguishes between the nominative and accusative. This stems from the fact that be is also the first person singular reflexive pronoun, as will be discussed down below.

Second person pronouns distinguish between two levels of formality, represented by the basic pronouns ta "you" (informal) and esenu "you" (formal).
 * Ta /t̪a/ is used with friends, family members of the same generation or younger, and children. It is considered an insult to purposefully use ta with a person of higher authority.
 * Esenu / esɛn̪u/ is used with strangers, people of higher authority (such as parents, bosses, or officials), and the elderly. It is also always used in formal or business settings, unless the speaker and the addressee know each other well.

Third Person Human Pronouns

Third person pronouns are by far the most complex. When referring to mixed groups with they, the gender of the pronoun should match up with the majority of the group's gender: saizh if most or all of the group is female, and taizh if most or all is male. If the group is about half-and-half, saizh is more appropriate.

Non-human nouns tend to have less complex and more regular inflection. They are divided into two categories: animal pronouns are used for animals only (animals are never referred to using human pronouns, like in English), while inanimate pronouns are used for plant, physical, and abstract nouns.

It is worth noting that the animal pronoun nou inflects like a feminine pronoun, but is technically genderless (as the default conjugation form in Atráve is the feminine). However, inanimate pronouns inflect for gender (masculine or feminine), depending on the object's gender.

Number
Atráve 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: 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 Atráve: 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
Atráve 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 Atráve, 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 general 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 kradha "tomato" 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-

Gender affects numerous things in Atráve, many of which will be discussed later:
 * The gendered form of adjectives. Each adjective beginning in a consonant has a distinct masculine and feminine form, with consonants forming in gendered pairs. For example, tór "big" is the masculine form, while sór is the feminine form.
 * The articles. Most notably, sa is the basic masculine definite article, while na is the feminine.
 * The case inflections. For example, the feminine dative suffix is -id, while the masculine is -ed.
 * Some determiners inflect for gender as well, such as esdi (masc.) and azdi (fem.), meaning "this". Some, such as ila "that", don't change based on gender.

Case
Atráve 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:

The genitive case in Atráve 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.

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 Atráve, 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")
 * The dative case is used to show both the indirect object of sentences, as well as marking a general movement toward the noun.

Verbs
(Coming soon.)

Atráve 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.

Overall, Atráve verbs have 8 tenses. Examples given are panega "to emphasize", sesiga "to pay", ahloga "to think", and miriga "to say through writing", four short regular verbs from each class. Only the third-person singular forms are given below; these tenses also inflect for person and number. * Exceptions are -iga verbs with vowel-final roots, such as páiga "to stand" - its imperative form is páe "stand!", with the -e suffix.
 * The basic present, marked by the verb without the -ga suffix (pan, se, ahl, mir)
 * The preterite, marked by plain verb with a -ra or -ta suffix (panra, sera, ahlta, mirta)
 * The future, marked with a -s or -(dh)ez suffix (pans, ses, ahlez, mirez)
 * The imperfect past, marked by a -ka suffix (panka, seka, ahlka, mirka)
 * The present/future conditional, marked by a -(n)ai suffix (panai, senai, ahlai, mirai)
 * The present/future subjunctive, marked by a -é suffix (pané, seê, ahlé, miré)
 * The past subjunctive/conditional, marked by an -í suffix (paní, seí, ahlí, mirí)
 * The imperative, marked by an -e on verbs ending with a consonant (pane, se, ahle, mire)*

With the exception of the basic present, personal conjugations may be dropped in cases where the subject is clear, and especially if a pronoun is present:

Shiemta(m) (la) d'óhl dhém sha óhle ''romano. ''I got the mail from the mailbox.

''Xasakai(v) (saizh) ila hashé sé dozh. ''They would buy it if it were red.

In addition, Atráve verbs have a number of impersonal forms:
 * The -ga form (panega, sesiga, ahloga), which acts as the infinitive, the verbal noun, and takes auxiliary verbs to form aspects
 * The past participle, marked with an -(a)t suffix (panat, set, ahlat), which also acts as the perfect tense, passive form, and verbal adjective
 * The present participle, marked with an -(a)r suffix (panar, ser, ahlar), which also acts as a verbal adjective (but is used more sparingly in Atráve than in English)

Adjectives
In Atráve, adjectives have either three forms (if they begin with a vowel) or six (if they begin with a consonant). Adjectives inflect for gender (at its beginning) and number (at its end). It is a strict rule that adjectives always follow the nouns or verbs that they describe:

Na nán sór "the big house" (lit. "the house big")

Trá lal cif "the cold water" (lit. "the water cold")

Most adjectives have two distinct gender forms. With the exception of adjectives with a masculine form beginning in l or r, the feminine form is used as the default form of the adjective. Each consonant comes in gender pairs: For example:

''Mav aleta xaci. ''"It is a hot day." (feminine)

''Mav lazhoula kaci. ''"It is a hot night." (masculine)

Mav aleta adar. "It is an important day." (feminine, but gender isn't shown because the adjective begins with a vowel.)

Mav lazhoula adar. "It is an important night." (masculine)

In addition, adjectives, regardless of their ending, inflect for number that agrees with the noun. An orthographical note: if an adjective ends in -o, then the dual suffix is just -v, while if it ends in -i, then its plural suffix is just -tam:

Na thevúl asolo "the common version", no thevúlin asolov "the (two) common versions"

Na salfat vini "the yellow shirt", sout salfatzdim vinitam "the yellow shirts"

Adjectives remain the same both attributively (this tasty pizza) and predicatively (this pizza is tasty). Because the subject is often dropped in Atráve and the copula occurs before both the subject and the object, oftentimes the two forms are indistinguishable.

San madua xadh. "Music (in general) is bad."

San madua xadh. "(It) is bad music."

Usually, the difference can be determined by a combination of common sense (who really thinks that all music is bad?), context (i.e. is the speaker currently listening to bad music?), and in intonation (predicative adjectives tend to be pronounced with different tones, while attributive ones are intoned roughly the same).

A small group of four adjectives are irregular: sú "good", éra "true", nakobu "different", and inako "different". While sú is outright irregular, éra and inako each have distinct gendered forms despite beginning in vowels, while nakobu does not.

sú "good"

In its singular forms, sú and tou are only irregular thanks to orthography (in Middle Atráve, u and ou were once separate vowels, but are now both pronounced /u/). However, in their dual and plural forms, a t is present between the stems and the suffixes (in Middle Atráve, the singular forms had the now-dropped final t - sut and tout.) The irregularity is likely due to its nature as the most common adjective in the language.

éra "true" The adjective éra is a bit odd - despite having a distinct feminine singular form, in its dual and plural forms, the feminine merges into the masculine. Thus, the adjective's only irregularity is the plain form éra itself.

nakobu "different" Nakobu has no gendered forms, despite beginning in a consonant. This is likely due to the instability of the consonant n having two masculine consonant counterparts.

inako "different" Inako has distinct gender forms in all numbers, despite beginning in a vowel. Of curiosity is that it and nakobu come from the same etymology and share the same definition, despite having unrelated irregularities.

Syntax
Atráve is almost always a VSO language, although SVO is also acceptable in most cases, usually used to emphasize the subject.

''Sua la yexev. ''"I am (a) person".

Lakou sa hún lal. "The man drinks water".

As subject pronouns are often dropped, some Atráve sentences seem to be SVO.

''Séu mimatxev. ''"You are (an) author".

Whenever an auxiliary verb requires another form of the verb, usually the -ga form, then the -ga form is usually treated as the object of the sentence.

Som la kisavatega. "I am writing."

Lexicon
Atráve's lexicon currently consists of about 372 nouns, 158 verbs, and 156 adjectives. This is about enough vocabulary to write about any subject in basic depth, although vocabulary runs dry quickly when talking about science and technology, philosophy, occupations, law, and even seemingly simple things like food and daily routines. Even some basic words remain missing; the word for "to look for" (vèdega) was not created until more than a year and a half after the language was created.

As a strict a priori language, loanwords make up a small amount (less than 5% of Atráve vocabulary) and are disappearing fast as new words are created. However, proper names (Tom, Jane) and names specific to popular culture or a place (Quiddich, samurai) remain the same in Atráve, spelling and all.

In the one official dictionary (n 'Atrábhén Mímtat na Mimat thá), nouns are typically listed by gender, verbs by their -ga ending, and adjectives by their feminine form. In future versions, each section will itself be listed alphabetically.

(Author's note: I'm not exactly sure when I'm going to upload the lexicon.)