Eindo

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Eindo is a highly agglutinating nominative-accusative language.

Name: Eindo Type: Agglutinative Alignment: Nominative-Accusative Head Direction: Mixed Number of genders: 1 Declensions: Yes Conjugations: Yes Nouns declined according to Case Number Definitiveness Gender Verbs conjugated according to Voice Mood Person Number Tense Aspect

Setting

Eindo is spoken by the ConCulture in the ConCountry of Eino, which is located at about the latitude of Earth's Scandanavia.

Phonology

The International Phonetic Alphabet Chart for the Eindo Consonants

Place of Articulation →	Liabial		Coronal				Dorsal				Radical
Manner of Articulation ↓	Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Uvular		Pharyngeal		Epiglottal		Glottal
Nasal	m		n					ŋ
Plosive	p b		t d					k g	q ɢ
Frictive		f v	θ ð	s z	ʃ ʒ										h
Approximant			ɹ				j
Labial Approximant							ɥ	w
Trill			r
Tap or Flap
Lateral Frictive
Lateral Approximant			l
Lateral Flap

The International Phonetic Alphabet Chart for the Eindo Vowels

	Front	Near-Front	Central	Near-Back	Back
Close	i y				u
Near-Close
Close-Mid	e ø				o
Mid
Open-Mid
Near-Open	æ
Open			ä

This page will use the convention that any character between brackets [ ] refers to the orthographic letter while any character between forward-slashes / / refers to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) pronunciation.

Consonants

The only consonant which has more than one possible pronunciation is [h]. Its differing pronunciations depend upon its context. When surrounded by vowels or immediately preceded by another consonant, it is pronounced as /h/. The letter [h] can only legally precede another consonant if the following consonant is a [p], [t], or [k]. If it does precede one of these three consonants, there are three additional possible pronunciations. If it is preceded by an [i] or [e], it is pronounced /ç/, by an [a] or [ä] as /ħ/, and by an [o], [ö], [u], or [y] as /ʍ/. Some speakers alternatively pronounce it always as /x/ except when preceded by [i] or [e] in which case they pronounce it as /ç/. This alternate pronunciation is mostly used by inhabitants of large cities, especially members of the lower class. Any time two identical consonants are adjacent, the consonant is geminated, meaning that the length of pronunciation is doubled. Geminated consonants cannot be at the beginning or end of a word, and cannot be a part of a consonant cluster.

Vowels

The only vowel which has more than one possible pronunciation is [e]. Officially it has only the one pronunciation, /e/, but in a syllable which contains a coda, especially in unstressed syllables, it can be pronounced /ɛ/. Nearly all speakers will use this alternate pronunciation.

Eindo contains a system of vowel harmony based on the frontness of vowels. The vowels [a], [o], and [u] are back vowels, and [ä], [ö], and [y] are front vowels. [i] and [e] are transparent neutral vowels, which means that they do not alter the frontness or backness of a word in any way and can be used in both instances. The vowel which determines the frontness of a word is the first non-neutral vowel in the root of the word. This also takes place with the semivowels, such that [j] is a neutral semivowel, [w] is a back semivowel, and [ẅ] is a front semivowel. If the entire root is neutral, the word acts as though it contained back vowels. The only time a word can contain both front and back vowels is when it is a compound word, which happens most often in place names.

When two different vowels are adjacent, in most cases a diphthong will be formed. All diphthongs are falling, which means that even when, for example, an [i] precedes an [a], the [i] is not pronounced as the semivowel /j/ as in English, but is in fact the dominant vowel in the diphthong with the sound falling into the [a] sound. There are 30 possible diphthongs: [ie], [ia], [iä], [io], [iö], [iu], [iy], [ei], [ea], [eä], [eu], [ey], [ai], [au], [äi], [äy], [oi], [oa], [ou], [öi], [öä], [öy], [ui], [ue], [ua], [uo], [yi], [ye], [yä], and [yö]. [eo], [oe], and [öe] are pronounced as two syllables. When three vowels are adjacent, the first two are pronounced as a diphthong (if legal) and the third is pronounced as a second syllable. If the first two cannot be legally pronounced as a diphthong, the second and third are, while the first vowel receives it's own syllable. If neither pair of vowels can be made into a diphthong, they are pronounced as three distinct syllables. In certain circumstances, a vowel pair which would normally be pronounced as a diphthong should not be. The most common example of this is when a root beginning with a vowel is prefixed. In such instances, in the Latin orthography the first vowel of the root should gain an acute accent or a macron if it already contains a diaeresis. Using the Eindo Runes, this is represented by a dot placed above the vowel. An example of this would be with the word naílpo (“colt,” or “young male horse”).

Any time two identical vowels are adjacent, the vowel is geminated, meaning that the length of pronunciation is doubled. A geminated vowel cannot make up any part of a diphthong.

Stress

The first syllable in a root is always stressed. This means that if the root begins the word, the first syllable of the word receives the main stress, while if it is prefixed it does not. The stress is only a light stress, but it is an important distinction which can cause confusion if done incorrectly. After the main stress, every second syllable receives secondary stress. If there are an odd number of syllables excluding prefixes, stress is moved from the third-to-last syllable to the second-to-last syllable and the final syllable is unstressed.

Phonotactics

Eindo Runes

Eindo phonemes are organized into three distinct categories which divide a syllable: onsets, nuclei, and codi. A syllable must contain a nucleus, but an onset and coda are both optional.

Onsets

[p t k] + [l r s š] + [j w ẅ]

[p t k] + [l r s š]

[b d g] + [l r z ž] + [j w ẅ]

[b d g] + [l r z ž]

[f s š v z ž] + [l r] + [j w ẅ]

[f s š v z ž] + [l r]

[p t k q b d g c f ŧ s š h v đ z ž m n ň l r ř] + [j w ẅ]

[p t k q b d g c f ŧ s š h v đ z ž m n ň l r ř j w ẅ]

Nuclei

Vowels

Diphthongs

Codi

[p t k m n ň l] + [s š]

[b d g m n ň l] + [z ž]

[f ŧ s š m n ň l] + [p t k]

[v đ z ž m n ň l] + [b d g]

[h] + [p t k]

[p t k q b d g c f ŧ s š h v đ z ž m n ň l r ř]

Orthography

The Eindo writing system is a runic alphabet with 34 letters, twelve numerals, and twelve punctuation marks.

Basic Grammar

	Gender	Cases	Numbers	Tenses	Persons	Moods	Voices	Aspects
Verb	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Nouns	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Adjectives	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Numbers	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Participles	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Adverb	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Pronouns	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Adpositions	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Article	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Particle	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No

Eindo is a highly agglutinating language. This means that derivation, conjugation, and declension are all done by the affixation of morphemes to a root. Roots end with specific vowels to denote the part-of-speech of the word. Nouns end with [-o] (from now on, any time an affix is given it will be given as if the root contained back vowels, but it should be understood that should the root contain front vowels, the affix's vowels will also be front vowels), verbs end with [-a], adjectives end with [-i], adverbs end with [-u], and determiners and other parts of speech end either with [-e] or with a consonant.

Nouns

All undeclined nouns end with [-o], which happens to also be identical to two of the possible declensions, the vocative and the nominative. Eindo nouns have four different articles, three numbers, and 27 declensional cases.

The four articles are the definite, indefinite, partitive, and negative articles. The definite article, me, indicates that the noun is a specific one (or ones) identifiable to the listener. The indefinite article, se, indicates the opposite, that the noun either is not specific or identifiable yet, or that its precise identity is irrelevant or hypothetical. The partitive article, swe, expresses the same as the indefinite article but is used in the specific instance of mass nouns. The negative article, kwe, specifies none of its noun. Articles always immediately precede their noun, and in writing they are separated by a hyphen.

The three numbers for which Eindo nouns can be declined apply to verbs and the rest of the language, as well, not just nouns. The three numbers are singular, which is unmarked and specifies one noun, paucal, which is expressed by [-a-] and represents between two and five of the noun, and plural, which is expressed by [-i-] and represents more than five of the noun.