Krudic

=Phonology= In many ways, the grammar of Krudic is unusual, particularly by European standards. The high number of contrastive retroflex consonants and the complete lack of bilabials means that there are gaps in even basic European phonology.


 * 1. Krudic only has one phonemic nasal /n/, however this can assimilate into many differing allophonic nasal sounds depending on the consonant it is preceding.
 * before /f/ and /v/ is becomes [ɱ]
 * before /t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, /ts/, /dz/, /l/ and /r/ and before vowels and intervocalically it remains as the pure phoneme /n/.
 * before /ʈ/, /ɖ/, /ʂ/ and /ʐ/ it becomes [ɳ]
 * before /ç/, /ʝ/ and /j/ it becomes [ɲ]
 * before /k/, /g/, /x/ and /ɣ/ it becomes [ŋ] - familiar to most English speakers
 * before /χ/ and /ʁ/ it becomes [ɴ].
 * 2. Word initially, the retroflex stops /ʈ/ and /ɖ/ can become affricised to [ʈʂ] and [ɖʐ] respectively.

=Orthography= The Krudic orthography is complex, but allows for almost one-to-one correspondance between sounds and glyphs. The alphabet consists of 39 letters, including several digraphs and letters with diacritics. Digraphs and letters with diacritics are treated as seperate letters and collated seperately in alphabetical order from their component characters.

Diacritics

 * The Acute Accent (ujvaŗ - "heightener") is used above the vowels e and o to indicate they represent higher vowels than the same vowels without acutes. 'É' represents /e/, whereas plain 'e' represents the lower /ɛ/. Likewise, 'ó' represents /ɔ/, wheras plain 'o' represents lower /ɒ/. Both é and ó are treated as seperate letters from plain e and o.


 * The caron (kušvaŗ - "softener") is used above consonants c, dz, s and z to represent the "softer" postalveolar counterpart of the consonant it is modifying. The letters č, dž, š and ž are all considered seperate letters from their plain c, dz, s and z.


 * The cedilla (zugrehhi - "little hook") is used on c, g, r and s. Unlike the caron, which has a specific role (i.e. turning alveolar consonants into postalveolar consonants), the use of the cedilla is much more sporadic. ç and ģ represent the palatals /ç/ and /ʝ/, whereas ŗ represents uvular /ʁ/ and ş represents retroflex /ʂ/. The four cedilla letters are all considered seperate letters.


 * The grave accent (črhze "slide"), unlike the other three diacritics is completely optional. It serves merely the purpose of disambiguation between otherwise identical words, for example rta "and" versus rtà "where?". There is a list of specific words on which the grave accent can appear coming soon. Unlike the letters with the other three diacritics, the letters with grave accents are not considered seperate letters.

Digraphs
The Krudic alphabet makes use of eight digraphs dz, dž, gh, hh, kh, rd, rt and rz. They are all considered seperate letters and collated seperately in alphabetical ordering and dictionaries, for example nedze "nail" comes before nedžak "to hit". If a combination of letters appears as though it should be a digraph, when it is in fact not, the letter h is inserted between them silently as a "seperation sign". For example in the word črhze "slide", the inserted h shows that the 'r' represents vocalic /ɹ/. This can result in unusual spellings, such as qaghhhhe "woman", where there is an h inserted between the gh and hh digraphs to show that they are both pronounced seperately, resulting in [χaɣɦə], as opposed to qaghhhe [χagɦə].

ŗşʃ ʒ

=Basic Grammar=

Nouns
Nouns are declined for article, number, case and posession.

Article
Articles are added to nouns in the form of suffixes. The definate article "the" is written as the suffix -de, or -ede depending on whether the noun ends in a vowel (-de) or a consonant -ede. For example gegh "man" becomes geghede "the man". The indefinate article is -še or -eše, depending on whether the noun ends in a vowel -še or a consonant -eše, as in gegheše "a man".

Number
There are two grammatical numbers in the Krudic language, singular and plural. The plural marker is easy, just -ze if the noun ends in a vowel, and -eze if it ends in a consonant. For example gegheze "men", geghedeze "the men", geghešeze "some/any men".

Posession
=Dictionary= ...

=Example text= ...