Kanduadas

General information
Kanduadas is the official language and a national language of the country Kanduai on the planet Chesnon. Chesnon is the name in English of the planet as well as the species. They call themselves Cesnon.

Phonology

 * The standard language is based on the dialect of Makiór [mäˈcɤ̞ɾ].

Consonants
1. [n] is in free variation with the regular pronunciation of /ŋ/ intervocalically.

2. /d/ only contrasts with /t/ intervocalically.

3. /ʔ/ only appears in a few conservative dialects.

4. [ts] is an allophone of /tʃ/ in alveolar-dominant words.

5. [ɹ] is an allophone of /r/ when word-initial or adjacent to /m/, /ŋ/, or /s/.

6. /l/ varies as [ɫ] and [lj] depending on the surrounding vowels and consonants.

Vowels

 * The sounds are rounded or unrounded according to the rules of roundness harmony. A vowel, usually the first vowel (that isn't /ə̃/) or the stressed vowel, dictates the roundness of a whole word.
 * [ǝ] and [ɵ̞] are the unstressed, word-final allophones of /a/, /e/, and /o/.
 * the legal diphthongs are /äj/, /äw/, /e̞j/, /e̞w/, /o̞w/, and /ə̃w/.

Stress
Stress is placed on the antepenultimate syllable unless otherwise indicated by an acute accent in the romanizations.

Alphabet
The Kanduadas orthography, Bakanduaxel, is an alphasyllabary. This page is written with the Latin transliteration shown below.

Nouns
Nouns decline according to case, gender, and number.

Case
The cases are:

Absolutive which used for the argument of an intransitive verb; Ergative which used for the subject of an transitive verb; and Accusative which used for the object of an transitive verb.

Gender
Gender is an interesting topic when talking about the Chesnon or their languages. They have three genders. And this is reflected in Kanduadas. The grammatical genders are: uol (with 3 declension classes), mrabin (4 classes), and ndrala (2 classes).

Number
The two grammatical numbers of Kanduadas may be of some interest to English speakers. The reason why is that the most basic and unmarked number is the one referring to multiple entities, called the collective. The number used for a single entity, the singulative, is more marked and is not used in compounds.

Deixis
There are no indefinite or definite articles. Instead, Kanduadas uses demonstratives.

The Deitic positions are as follows:

Proximal: Anything that is close to the speaker.

Mesioproximal: Anything close to the listener.

Mesiodistal: Anything away from the speaker and the listener but still close by.

Distal: Anything away from the speaker and the listener and far away.