Lumikapis

Lumikapis is a fictional language that is used by a race of sea-dwelling squid-like lifeforms called Luminocapita, who inhabit the planet Derega in the fictional universe of “Empires of Land and Sea”, a franchise created only to accommodate this unique language.

Lumikapis

Type

Light-based

Alignment

Head direction

Tonal

No

Declensions

No

Conjugations

No

Genders

Nouns decline according to...

Case

Number

Definiteness

Gender

Verbs conjugate according to...

Voice

Mood

Person

Number

Tense

Aspect

Meta-information

Progress

0%

Statistics
Nouns	0%
Verbs	0%
Adjectives	0%
Syntax	0%
Words	of 1500

Creator

DanV92

The concept of this language is that it has no spoken and no permanent written form. Instead, the language is communicated by shaped emissions of light, transmitted between the Luminocapita using one of their four bioluminescent arms.

The inside of their arms are usually dim and emit a small, faint amount of light, but are covered by a layer of opaque skin. By opening the four flaps at the extremities of these arms, they are able to emit a bright light in a variety of colours, which changes depending on mood, their surroundings and current patterns of thought.

This allows them to create shapes of light that can be directed towards other members of their shoal to communicate ideas, ranging from basic utterances such as “danger” to more complex ideas such as “I think we should attempt to travel further towards the place with lots of kelp before the cover of night descends so that we may meet with Galefa and Jopuki tomorrow morning for some light hunting.”

Classification and Dialects[]

Phonology[]

As the format of their language is so different from spoken or written forms of communication, there are no letters to make up words and there are no consonants or vowels to transcribe.

Instead, all concepts are communicated by shape and colour.

Also, as the “speaker” can transmit their light message from any direction in a 3D space, the shapes produced can be interpreted regardless of their rotation, i.e. they mean the same thing whether they are shone upside-down, at an angle or upright (relative to the "receiver" of the light message).

All “words” and “sentences” consist of a sequence of light patterns. For example, one word could be “red star, mauve triangle, pink square”, meaning “unexpected”.

Consonants[]

	Bilabial	Labio-dental	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Epiglottal	Glottal
Nasal	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Plosive	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Fricative	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Affricate	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Approximant	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Trill	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Flap or tap	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Lateral fric.	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	A/N	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Lateral app.	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Lateral flap	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Vowels[]

	Front	Near-front	Central	Near-back	Back
High	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Near-high	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
High-mid	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Mid	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Low-mid	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Near-low	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Low	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Phonotactics[]

Any shape may be combined with any colour to produce a single "syllable" of a word. No two shapes may be combined. However, one shape and one colour may be followed by a different shape with the same colour, creating an effect similar to combining two consonants.

Writing System[]

Each light emission consists of a shape and a colour. There are 28 distinct colours and 8 distinct shapes that are used to communicate in Lumikapis. This is comparable to 28 consonants and 8 vowels.

Colour	Star	Circle	Triangle	Slit	Dip	Chevron	Dagger	Peanut
Red
Light red
Deep pink
Hot pink
Pale pink
Dark orange
Mid orange
Coral
Peach
Gold
Bright yellow
Pale yellow
Olive
Pea green
Lime green
Pale green
Teal
Cyan
Ice blue
Pale blue
Sky blue
Mid blue
Indigo
Purple
Mauve
Brown
Grey
White

Grammar[]

Nouns[]

Adjectives[]

The suffix is added to the end of an adjective to form an adverb.

Verbs[]

Verbs are formed by taking a verb stem and adding optional verb suffixes to specify tense, aspect, mood or valency.

Suffix	Meaning
	Imperative mood
	Causative valence

Syntax[]

Lexicon[]

As these lifeforms live exclusively underwater, they have no words for many concepts familiar to humans and things that only exist on land. For example, they do not have a word for overwater structures, such as “bridge”, “house” or “building”. They do however have words for “home”, “family”, “current”, “rock”, “coral”, “kelp”, etc.