Quattrokeili

Quattrokeili is a language spoken on the small Northern European island-state of Celebration Island (Paroeetoonn îl edenn in Quattrokeili), which, although officially a dependency of Finland (Finimininn) has largely been independent since the early 20th century. Due to the island's convient geographical position (it being close to to the Western and Eastern Europe) and it having historically been a part of the Ottoman Empire (Empiroan Osmanlariun) until the 19th century, the country has been influenced by a wide range of sources. Thus, whilst its vocabulary is mostly taken from English and the Romance languages, particularly French and Italian (France and Italy were both important trading areas in the past), its grammar is mostly Finnish and Turkish. Linguistically speaking, the language is known for its logical nature, having very few irregularities, and also for its complex morphology, which can sometimes put newcomers to the language off learning it. This page gives an overview, both linguistic and cultural, into the language of Quattrokeili.

The alphabet
The alphabet of Quattrokeili, just like its grammar and vocabulary, is varied and derived-- perhaps even cannabalised-- from numeorus sources. Despite this, the alphabet is actually one of the easiest parts of the language. This is because, in keeping with the logical nature of the language, each letter in the alphabet usually only corresponds to one sound.

The alphabet of Quattrokeili uses a modified version of the Latin alphabet. There are 27 basic letters, which are of course:

a b c d e f g h i ı  j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

There are two variations of the I-- one dotless, the other dotted.

As well as this there are also some Cyrillic characters in use. There are eight of these, since Russia was an important military ally of the Celebration Islands. The Cyrillic characters currently in use reflect a historic agreement between Russian and the Celebration Islands. They are:

Ш Г Я Э П Ж Ф Ы

These symbols were picked due to their lack of resemblance with the Latin alphabet, avoiding any possible confusion.

Vowel harmony:
Quattrokeili shares with Finnish (and the majority of the other Uralic languages, as well as the Turkic languages) the idea of vowel harmony. This means that only certain vowels can go together in one word. In Quattrokeili, there are ten vowels:

a e i ı  o u y Ш Ф Ы

These vowels are, like in Finnish, separated into neutral, back and front vowels, as follows:

Front: i, y, Ш

Neutral: e, o, Ы

Back: a, u, Ф, ı

The rules are simple enough to remember: if the first vowel in a word is a front vowel, the remianing vowels can only be front or neutral vowels. If the first vowel, conversely, is a back vowel, the remainder can only be back or neutral vowels. Finally, if the first vowel in a word is a neutral vowel, the other vowels are irrelevant.

Pronunciation of the basic letters
Since Quattrokeili tends to follow the rule of "one letter, one sound", the pronunciation of the basic letters at least is easy enough to learn. Here they all are:

A-- pronounced like the Italian "a"

B-- pronounced "bay"

C-- pronounced "say", like in French

D-- pronounced "duh"

Section heading
Write the second section of your page here.