Shataranjan

Shataranjan was the language of Shataranjans, inhabitants of the tidally-locked planet of Shataran, located around 500 light years from the Solar System.

There are two main descendants, the one spoken on the always bright side which eternally is illuminated by their star, and the other spoken in the darkness of the hemisphere facing against the star.

= Phonology =

Consonants
The consonant inventory in noteworthy for having a retroflex series of sounds, no labiodentals and a contrast between voiced and voiceless bilabial trills.

Vowels
The vowel inventory is rather small and mundane, with [ɨ] being the realization of /i/ after a retroflex consonant

Diphtongs
All diphtongs and are made of either /j/ or /w/ followed by with a vowel. /i/ and /u/ cannot be combined with /j/ and /w/ respectively.

Phonotactics
The maximum syllable structure is (C)(L)V(C).

Onset
All consonants can serve as onset (for some speakers, /ŋ/ and /ŋʷ/ have merged with /n/ and /m/ in onset). The following onset clusters are permitted:

Nucleus
The nucleus of a syllable must contain at least one vowel.

Coda
/m, n, ŋ, p, t, ts, ʈʂ, k, s, ʂ/ are permitted syllable codas. Obstruent codas are ofetn voiced whenever the following syllable begins with a voiced sound.

= Transcription =

= Grammar =

Structure
Verbs in Shataranjan are highly inflected. Since the language is ergative, transitive verbs are inflected for agent and for the object, while intransitive verbs only mark one subject.

Auxiliary verbs
Despite its rich verb morphology, Shataranjan makes use of a few auxiliary verbs, which are often located at the very beginning of a sentence. Some of those include

Nouns
Nouns have several cases, despite the amount of verb agreement present. This is a relic of Old Shataranjan's extensive case system and less inflected verbs. Nouns can also be either animate or inanimate.

r-stem and l-stem nouns
A few nouns, descended from words that used to end in -r and -l in Old Shataranjan but have since lost those finals, unless followed by another vowel.

Syntax
The following table shows the default word order of a typical Shataranjan sentence.

Numerals
= Lexicon =

Example text
= Miscellaneous =