Shaj

The Shaj languages are spoken across the planet Tanoria. The most widely spoken variety is Velshaj.

General Information
Velshaj nouns are mostly agglutinative, but verbals tend to be monomorphemic. There are five genders, five tenses, and many aspects. Word order is typically SOV. There are many cases of consonant mutation and ablaut, and the language is beginning to show signs of developing vowel harmony.

Nasals
Velshaj has three nasals: /m/, /n/, and /ŋ/. The sequence /n/ + /ĭ/ yields a palatal nasal [ɲ], but this is not regarded as a separate phoneme.

Fricatives
Velshaj has five voiced fricatives /v/, /ð/, /z/, /ʒ/, and /ɣ/. Although they each appear in complimentary distribution with their voiceless counterparts ( /f/, /θ/, /s/, /ʃ/, and /x/ ), they are generally regarded as seperate phonemes.

Stops
Velshaj has four plosives /p/, /t/, /d/, /k/, and one affricative /tʃ/. There are very few minimal pairs between /t/ and /d/. One such pair is /te/ "know", and /de/ "turned".

Liquids
Velshaj has one lateral /l/, and one rhotic /r/. Like its nasal counterpart, t he sequence /l/ + /ĭ/ yields a lateral palatal approximant [ʎ], but this is not regarded as a separate phoneme. Semivowels /ŭ/ and /ĭ/ exist, but are not regarded as consonants.

Summary Chart
Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right is voiceless.

Vowels
Shaj has five common vowels /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/, and two semivowels /ĭ/ and /ŭ/. Semivo wels form rising diphthongs /eĭ/, /aĭ/, /oĭ/, /ŭĭ/, /aŭ/; and falling diphthongs /ĭə/, /ĭe/, /ĭa/, /ĭo/, /ĭu/. Any time /u/ or /ŭ/ precedes /i/ or /ĭ/, the result is /ŭĭ/. There are also two rounded front vowels /y/ and /ø/, one open front vowel /æ/, a homogenous diphthong /ĭĭ/, and a schwa /ə/. There is no length distinction in Velshaj, but there used to be in its parent languages.

Phonotactics
Syllable structure can be as large as CCCVC and as small as V (where V stands for any vowel or diphthong). Every word needs a vowel, and no word may end in more than one consonant. Typically, stress is on the first syllable.

Initials
Initial consonant clusters are determined arithmatically. Each consonant has a value 1–4. No cluster may exceed three consonants, or have a value greater than 4. Liquids and /z/ each have a value of 1. Stops each have a value of 2. Stops may be preceded by /z/ (which mutates to /s/) to add up to 3, or may precede a liquid also to add up to 3. Fricatives other than /z/ each have a value of 3, and may precede a liquid to add up to 4. Nasals each have a value of four. Any nasal — even /ŋ/ — may begin a word.

Nasals
Stops that precede nasals become nasals, and /n/ will assimilate to the place of articulation of any adjacent sonsonant. For example: /ekni/ → /eŋni/ → /eŋŋi/ "the man".

Fricatives
Fricatives devoice when adjecent to other consonants, or when ending a syllable. The exception is /ʃ/, which may occur initially, or anywhere else in a word. Sequences of /z/ + another fricative or /tʃ/ also yield /ʃ/. Non-sibilant f ricatives following nasals, /l/, or a pause tend to become pronounced as voiced stops rather than as voiceless fricatives. When not preceding a consonant, /z/ is pronounced [ts] at the begining of a word. Although [ts] is not regarded as a seperate phoneme, it is sometimes distinguished in certain orthographies.

Liquids
Dental obstruents /t/ and /ð/ may not precede /l/. Thus /l/ changes to /ŭ/ in this context.

Epenthesis
Sequences of VV ( where V stands for any vowel or diphthong) are prohibited anywhere within a word, or across word boundaries. Thus /l/  (or /ŭ/ if the first vowel is either /u/ or /aŭ/)  becomes inserted between the vowels. For example, /ʒax namballet aĭ ik/ →  /ʒax namballet aĭ lik/ "I have red hair".

Alternations
Some words alternate velar and postalveolar consonants. This reflects palatalization in former stages of the language that have yielded some unpredictable irregularities. For example, /vorəx/ "mountain", becomes /vørʒen/ "mountains".

Labials
In older stages of Shaj, all labials were bilabial. However, labial fricatives in Velshaj are in free variation between their bilabial and labiodental counterparts. Thus, Velshaj may be pronounced [βelʃaĭ] or [velʃaĭ].

Coronals
Most coronal consonants are apico-dental. These include /l/, /t/, /ð/, and /n/. The lateral and nasal may be in free variation between their dental and alveolar counterparts. Otherwise, /z/, /r/, and /d/ are strictly apico-alveolar. For this reason, and because there is arguably no voicing contrast in Shaj, /d/ is sometimes reconstructed as /ʈ/.

The dental nasal will assimilate to the place of articulation of any consonant that directly follows it, or will completely mutate into any consonant that directly precedes it. For example, /ynken/ → /yŋken/ "walls"; and /unəkno/ → /unəkko/ "the wall".

The rhotic /r/ is typically a tap [ɾ], which devoices at the ends of words, or becomes a trill [r] at the beginings of words, or when doubled.

Palatals
The postalveolar consonants /ʒ/, /ʃ/, and /tʃ/ may alternatively be realized as retroflex, or apico-palatal consonants. The voiced fricative may also be realized as an affricative [dʒ] or [dʐ] when begining a word, or when following /l/ or a nasal. Before vowels, /ĭ/, and the sequences /nĭ/, /lĭ/, and /ŭĭ/, may be realized as true dorso-palatals [j], [ɲ], [ʎ], and [ɥ], respectively.

Velars
The velar fricative /ɣ/ becomes pharyngeal [ʕ] between any two non-high back vowels. Additionally, a sequence of /ɣ/ + /r/ may yield a uvular fricative [ʁ] or trill [ʀ]. For example, /ɣroɣa/ "royal" → [ʁoʕa].

Vowels and Semivowels
Semivowels are typically realized as consonants before vowels, or as non syllabic vowels in rising diphthongs. When /ĭ/ is the only vowel in a word, it is pronounced the same as /i/. Monophthongs in closed syllables may be lax. The schwa, though always written, may dissapear after a consonant, or cause an adjacent nasal or liquid to become syllabic. For example, /vorəx/ "mountain" → [vorx]; or /muʒər/ "cattle" → [mu.ʒr].

Voiced Stops
Although voiced stops disappeared as phonemes early in the history of Shaj, they appear as allophones of other phonemes. Voiced stops are in free variation with their voiceless counterparts, except when beginning a word, or following /l/ or a nasal, in which case they are voiceless, and maybe aspirated. Voiced stop also occur in free variation with their voiced fricative counterparts when beginning a word, or following /l/ or a nasal. Otherwise, they are fricative. Voiced stops in loanwords are substituted by voiceless plosives.

Examples of Voiced Stops
/velʃaĭ/ = [βelʃaĭ] or [belʃaĭ]

/namvellet/ = [namβellet] or [nambellet]

/panðriʒen/ = [panðriʒen] or [pandriʒen], but not [banðridʒen]

/ʒax/ = [ʒax] or [dʒax]

/tʃarpel/ = [tʃarpel] or [tʃarbel], but not [dʒarpel] or [dʒarbel]

/ɣaləm/ = [ɣaləm] or [ɡaləm]

/kampel/ = [kampel], but not [ɡambel]

Roman
Current romanization of Shaj is supposed to represent the pronunciation of Shaj words phonetically in a way that is intuitive to native speakers of other languages written in the latin alphabet (especially English), while remaining both regular, and aesthetically pleasing.

Cyrillic
The Cyrillic transliteration of Shaj is based mostly off of the Bashkir alphabet because it has dedicated letters for dental fricatives (ҙ, ҫ). The short u (ў) is borrowed from Belorussian (where it is used as a semivowel), not from Uzbek (where it is used as a vowel).

Velar Consonants
Although Bashkir has a dedicated symbol for /ɣ/ (ғ), it is often written without the stroke (г) in Shaj. The velar nasal is written like it is in Bashkir, as an en with a descender (ң).

Fricatives
Voiceless fricatives (ф, ҫ, с, ш, х) are written differently than voiced fricatives (в, ҙ, з, ж, г). The voiceless alveolar affricate [ts], an allophone of /z/ the occurs at the beginnings of words or after /l/ or a nasal, is written ц, instead of з.

Voiced Stops
There are no true phonemic voiced stops in Shaj, so б is not used. To distinguish /t/ from /d/ (see coronals under phonetics), Cyrillic uses т for /t/ and д for /d/. As stated above, /ɣ/ can be written either as г or as ғ.

Iotized Vowels and Palatalization
The soft vowel letters (е, ё, ю, я) are always pronounced /ĭe, ĭo, ĭu, ĭa/, respectively. When they follow coronal consonants, they are written with a soft sign (nia = нья), but when they follow any other consonant, they are written with a hard sign (viot = въёт). Like in Russian, neither the hard sign nor the soft sign begin a word, or are even pronounced. When not iotized, /e, o, u, a/ are written э, о, у, а, respectively.

Umlaut and Schwa
The umlauted vowels (ә, ө, ү) also come from the Bashkir alphabet, and are pronounced /æ, ø, y/, respectively. The schwa phoneme is represented by ы as in Kazakh. There falling diphthong i' /ĭə/ has no consistent spelling.

Long and Short I
Lastly, Shaj uses и for both long and short i as the nucleus of a syllable, and uses й after a vowel for the semivowel. Thus, some minimal pairs may become homographs (e.g. both ni 'this' and ny 'he' = ни, but nii 'they' = ний).

Noun Phrases
Most parts of Noun Phrases in Velshaj merge together into a single word. For example ran'khcharpelloin is one word meaning "in the red hat". The adjective prefixes to the noun, the article suffixes to the noun, and the postposition suffixes to the article:

ran'kh- charpel -lo -in

red- hat -the -in

Personal Pronouns
Pronouns to not decline for case. Instead, position in the sentence determins part of sentence.

Clusivity
There are three first person pronouns,  Zhakh  1sg., and  Ros  or  Es  1pl. Ros  means "we" and includes the second person. Es  means "we" and excludes the second person.

Register
There are many second person pronouns, each with their own specific uses. Iit  is singular and familiar. It is what to use when addressing someone well known like a friend. Von  is plural and familiar. It is what to use when addressing many people at once, but like  Iit, it implies a certain degree of familiarity and informality. Zhi  is formal and either singular or plural. It is what to use when addressing any number of people who are not known very well, or who have a different social status.

Gender
Like many languages, Shaj distinguishes between singular and plural nominals. Shaj also has five "genders", which are only marked on definite articles, distal demonstratives, or personal pronouns. They are as follow:

Masculine, Feminine and Neuter
These three genders may refer to people or to animals. Groups of all masculine things are masculine, but groups of people or animals of different genders are neuter.

Natural and Artificial "Gender"
The "natural" gender refers to non-human, non-animal things and phenonena as they occur in their natural state. The category covers plant life like Kwelennii "the trees", but also celestial bodies like Ziellu "the sun", or forces of nature like Iirru "the wind". Natural gender is also used for geographical locations like Vor'khkhu "the mountain". Sometimes totems or deities are natural gender, rather than masculine or feminine. Abstract nouns are neutral gender instead of artificial or natural.

Lastly, the "artificial" gender covers things that are either man made, or used in ways contrary to their natural state. Whereas Kwelennii means "the trees", Kwelennet means "the logs". Historically, many mass nouns are derived from plural artificial-gender noun-phrases. For instance, Kwellet means "wood".

Articles and Demonstratives
Definite articles, distal demonstratives, and third-person pronouns are all the same in Shaj. Nia means "they" or "it" or "that" or "the". Ni means "this", and Nien means "these". Neither Ni nor Nien denote gender. Likewise, Ar means both "one" and "a/an", and does not denote gender.

Plurals
There are four classes of plurals: regular plurals, fish plurals, umlaut plurals, and irregular plurals.

Regular
Regular plurals add -en to nouns and -n to adjectives. For example, Ek "man" → Eken "men"; Ek ura "tall man" → Eken uran "tall men". When adjectives precede nouns, they loose all inflection: Eken uran → Ureken "tall men". Articles follow the plural morpheme: Enhnhy "the/that man", Ekennyn "the/those men".

Fish
Fish plurals are named after the word nuren "fish", which exhibits this type of change. This rule only affects some words whose nuclei are rising diphthongs and whose codas are nasals. The diphthong changes to a corresponding monophthong, and the nasal changes to a corresponding liquid. Some of the correspondences are not phonetically intuitive. See the charts below:

Word Examples:
nwin "fish" ⇒ nuren "fish"

zoim "self" ⇒ zolen "selves"

ghawm "hill" ⇒ ghalen "hills"

ein "god" ⇒ iren "gods"

Umlaut
Umlaut plurals are restricted to two-syllable words with back vowels and a schwa. The schwa rarely occurs in other types of words. The plural form of a word changes the back vowel to a front vowel, or a rising diphthong to a falling diphthong, and the schwa disappears. After the plural suffix -en is added, all relevant consonant mutations occur.

Word Examples:
Vor'kh "mountain" ⇒ Voerzhen "mountains"

Oir'l "mouth" ⇒ Iorlen "mouths"

Adjuncts
Adjectives typically prefix the noun that they modify. Otherwise, they take the suffix -a and follow the noun phrase. Adverbs follow the verb, adjective, or adverb that they modify, and take the suffix -da. Postpositions that do not have objects also take the suffix -da.

Color
Mieth = Color

Nanh = Red, or any similar warm color such as Pink or Orange, but not Yellow.

Ghal'kh = Yellow, or any similar bright color such as Lime or Chartreuse.

Vur'th = Green, or any similar cool color such as Blue, but not Purple.

Azh'r = Blue, or any similar color between the domains of Nanh and Vur'th and outside the domain of Ghal'kh.

Ok = White

Ash = Black