Ughonic

=Phonology= The phoneme inventory of Ughonic consists of nine vowel monopthongs and twenty-one consonants. Peculiarities of Ughonic include the numerous central vowel phonemes and the absence of any dipthongs. Occasionally, interjections and recently borrowed loanwords may contain unusual sounds.

Vowels
There are nine vowel phonemes in Ughonic. Unusually, the language contrasts a number of central vowels, ones which are unusual as phonemes. There are three front vowels, two back vowels and four centrals vowels. The schwa, a severely reduced central vowel /ə/ is a phoneme in it's own right, whereas in english it is usually found as an allophone of various vowels in unstressed positions.

There are no proper dipthongs in Ughonic, however each vowel can be combined with a glide to form what some may consider a dipthong. For example bejkh meaning "horse" is pronounced /bɛjx/.

Consonants
The standard language has twenty-one consonant phonemes.

The consonant inventory is fairly regular, and similar to that of many other languages. Only three sounds appear in Ughonic that do not appear in English. These are /ɲ/, /x/ and /ɣ/. /ɲ/ is like the sound in onion before a /j/ sound. /x/ is the sound in the scottish pronunciation of loch, and /ɣ/ is the voiced counterpart of this sound.

=Orthography= The alphabet is completely standard, following a one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and letters.

=Grammar=

Verbs
Verbs in Ughonic come in four tenses: Past, Present, Present Participle and Future. There is also a gerund form of most verbs.

In the following table there is an example of the verb tense system, using the verb venë meaning "to say".

The usual verb word order is SOV (Subject-Object-Verb).

The Verb 'To Be'
The verb 'to be' in Ughonic is quite troublesome in that often it is used in a different way to how it is in English, and sometimes even different than other verbs in Ughonic. It is also, in many cases, left out altogether.

'To Be' as a Copula
When 'to be' is a copula, the root shkë is used. It is then treated as just another verb, so follows the regular pattern of SOV, with nominative and accusative nouns. So for example in the sentence "Dogs are canines", it would be written "Gõrakek kaninakim shkë" (Dog+pl+nom. canine+pl+acc. to be).

'To Be' before adjectives
In Ughonic, when the verb 'to be' comes before an adjective, the root seti is used. So the sentence "That cat is ugly" becomes "Ptë nicën golzhënëm seti " (that cat+nom. is ugly), which literally means "that cat is ugly". The root "seti" is written after the noun and adjective.

'To Be' describing a location
When 'to be' is used before a location, as in "I am here", the root a is used. So the sentence "I am here" is written Umek a malgamat.

'To Be' before other verbs
When 'to be' is needed before verbs, the root ndë is needed. It is put immediately after the noun and before the verbs. The nominative forms of verbs are used in these instances.

Cancelling A Verb
The word një can be used to cancel any verb. For example: Umek ndë sânelashek "I am going" can be altered to Umek një ndë sânelashek.

Nouns
Nouns in Ughonic are highly declined for number, posession and case. Rather than having seperate case forms for plural and singular (as in Latin), the plural suffix (-k) is added to the noun, with the case suffix added after.

Case
There are -- cases in Ughonic, each of which is notified by a suffix. Unusually for a language, Ughonic marks both the nominative and accusative forms of nouns.

The following table shows noun declension using the noun õrçem meaning "house".

Posession
The posessor of a noun is indicated in the form of a short suffix added to the end of the word.

For example
 * Umek õrçemuron shâmbëkh. "I went to my house".

Number
The plural of a noun is formed by the suffix -k. In the case of nouns that end in a consonant, the -k suffix is preceded by an a.

Plural vs Genitive Suffix
The plural and genitive suffixes in Ughonic both revolve around the letter -k. However, the plural suffix is just a plain -k after vowels, and -ak after consonants, whereas the genitive suffix is -nek after vowels, and -ek after consonants.

Moveable N
Ughonic uses a moveable /n/, which is placed inbetween the word root ending in a vowel and an declining suffix that begins with a vowel. This is to prevent the collision of the two vowels, as vowels are never found adjacent to eachother in Ughonic.

So for example, the word voleptu meaning "mother", becomes voleptunërâk, when the 1st person plural possessive suffix -ërâk is added.

Articles
There are no articles in Ughonic, so the word ptesh can mean "boy", "the boy" or "a boy".

Adjectives
Adjectives in Ughonic determine the quality of nouns and pronouns.

The first syntactical function of Ughonic adjectives is to define a noun. (For e.g. "The pretty woman is here": Mâram khntisa a malgamat).

Secondly, they describe a copula. (For e.g. "The woman is pretty": Mâram khntisa seti).

Interrogatives
Interrogative words in Ughonic come a) as the opener to a question, and b) as a pronoun.

Pronouns
=Example Texts=