| Lefaneie eieame Lefaneie | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Artlang | ||||||||||||
| Alignment | Nominative-Accusative | ||||||||||||
| Head direction | |||||||||||||
| Tonal | No | ||||||||||||
| Declensions | No | ||||||||||||
| Conjugations | No | ||||||||||||
| Genders | No | ||||||||||||
| Nouns decline according to... | |||||||||||||
| Case | Number | ||||||||||||
| Definiteness | Gender | ||||||||||||
| Verbs conjugate according to... | |||||||||||||
| Voice | Mood | ||||||||||||
| Person | Number | ||||||||||||
| Tense | Aspect | ||||||||||||
| Meta-information | |||||||||||||
| Progress | 0% | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| Creator | Hope C. Dixon | ||||||||||||
Lefaneie ([lɛfaɲɛ:]) is a personal artlang created by Hope C. Dixon for her Einea science-fantasy setting, spoken in various forms by different Lefan-descended peoples throughout Einean history. Earlier and later forms will be touched on, but the majority of what will be discussed here concerns Old Lefan, spoken from the late days of Einea's middle age until the cataclysm of the Sudden Shock which began the Lus Desper movement and the current, modern era.
Classification and Dialects[]
Phonology[]
Consonants[]
| Bilabial | Labio-dental | Alveolar | Post-alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | (ɲ) | ||||
| Plosive | p b | t d | k g | (ʔ) | |||
| Fricative | f v | s z | ʃ ʒ | (x) | |||
| Approximant | j | ||||||
| Flap or tap | ɾ | ||||||
| Lateral fric. | ɬ ɮ | ||||||
| Lateral app. | l |
- /n/ becomes [ɲ] before long frontal vowels /y ɪ ɛ/.
- All stops are slightly aspirated - less so than English, but more so than Spanish.
- /k/ becomes [x] after back vowels [u, ɒ].
- /s/ becomes [ʃ] before the lateral approximant [l] and velar plosives [k g].
Vowels[]
| Front | Near-front | Central | Near-back | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | y, (i) | u | |||
| Near-close | ɪ | (ʊ) | |||
| Close-mid | (o) | ||||
| Mid | (ə) | ||||
| Open-mid | ɛ | ||||
| Near-open | ɐ | ||||
| Open | (a) | ɒ |
- The vowel clusters <eie>, <aia>, <oio>, <uiu>, <üiü>, and the <i> cluster equivalent, <ï>, sound as [ɛʔjɛ], [aʔja], [ɒʔjɒ], [uʔju], [yʔjy] and [ɪʔjɪ] respectively. These are known as 'person clusters,' after <eie>, meaning 'person.'
- This differs in final position, when person clusters become long versions of the first vowel, e.g. <eie> is pronounced [ɛ:].
- Central vowels /a, ɐ, ə/ that occur after frontal person clusters - <eie>, <üiü> and <ï> - are reduced.
- Vowels at least two syllables away from the stress in a given word often reduce into a schwa.
- <i> becomes /j/ intervocalically.
- Word stress is usually on the penultimate syllable, and here the vowel is lengthened and can change character:
- [ɪ] becomes [i:].
- [ɒ] becomes [o:]
- [ɐ] becomes [a:]
- [ʊ] becomes [u:]
- /y ɛ/ keep their vowel sound and lengthen.
Phonotactics[]
Lefaneie syllables follow a (C) V (C) structure, with these stipulations:
- Onset (C) can be any consonant.
- V can be any vowel.
- Coda (C) can be nasals /m n/, fricatives /f v s z ʃ ʒ/ and stops /t d/.
Writing System[]
| Letter | a | e | f | v | i | k | g | l | ł | ⱡ | m | n |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sound | a | ɛ | f | v | ɪ | k | g | l | ɬ | ɮ | m | n |
| Letter | o | p | b | r | s | z | t | d | u | ü | x | j |
| Sound | ɒ | p | b | ɾ | s | z | t | d | u | y | ʃ | ʒ |
Post-LRFL Clarity Orthography
| Letter | a | e | f | v | i | k | g | l | hl | dl | m | n |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sound | a | ɛ | f | v | ɪ | k | g | l | ɬ | ɮ | m | n |
| Letter | o | p | b | r | s | z | t | d | u | ü | sh | zh |
| Sound | ɒ | p | b | ɾ | s | z | t | d | u | y | ʃ | ʒ |
Reverent Speech[]
In Old Lefaneie, the kind of Lefaneie written of on this page, voiced consonants (barring nasals and the lateral approximant) are not used in every day speech. These are generally reserved for a formal register known as Reverent Speech. In Reverent Speech, often shortened to Reverent, all non-nasal consonants become voiced word-initally and intervocalically, but not word-finally. Archaic features of Ancient Lefaneie have been preserved, including individually pronouncing the phonemes in person clusters as written, and devoicing nasals intervocalically. Rhotics become trilled and occasionally uvular, and /l m j/ become palatalised word-initially.
Reverent Speech also uses older, 'fancier' pronouns, and in general doesn't reflect many of the changes that have affected Lefaneie between the First Empire and the Second.
Orthography and the Lefan Cultural Preservation Society[]
The Lefan Cultural Preservation society, or the Leiei tü Roaipeme tü Fen tü Lefaneie'e, literally 'those who preserve the blood of the Lefaneie,' often abbreviated in modern texts as the LRFL, was one of the most influential forces on the written Lefaneie language before it collapsed with the fall of the third and final Lefan Empire in 10 NM.
The LRFL's main focus was on the maintenance of the orthographical standards that their founder, Fasele Amoio Tomixo, decided upon with the Society's inception in the late Second Empire. Arguably, these standards were based on fetishisations of the strength and supposed nobility and austerity of the early Second Empire and the entirely of the First, but they were highly influential all the same.
A notable basic rule laid out by Tomixo was that he believed no single sound should be represented by anything more than one single letter - therefore, no digraphs were allowed. This functioned perfectly fine when Lefaneie used a syllabary adapted from the Shinshic logography from inner Akkand, but became more complicated when Lefaneie officially adopted the Nymric Alphabet, Einea's equivalent to the Latin Alphabet, which had descended from runic transcriptions in south-west Tokarey. There weren't enough Nymric letters for every Lefaneie sound, so some of them were modified - the 'u' was given a diaresis to represent /y/, and the lateral alveolar fricative was represented by an <l> with one extra line for its unvoiced version and two for its voiced version, so <ł ⱡ> /ɬ ɮ/.
Grammar[]
Nouns[]
Adjectives[]
The infix -ipe- will transform a noun into an adjective, e.g. xaie, 'injury,' becomes xaipe, 'in an injured state.' This can be combined with the past-tense suffix -ele to create xaipele, meaning 'the state of being injured in the past.'
Noun Class[]
Lefaneie nouns can either fall into a class, or be classless root words - these are known as teke (hand) and aian (arm) words, respectively. Classless nouns have less nuanced meaning, and require less affixation - classed teke nouns agree with their verbs, and, notably, teke and aian verbs themselves also exist, and their nouns agree with them. This makes the affixation involved potentially quite complex. Let us start with the classes themselves. Common shorthand for each is shown at the start.
Classes of Abstraction
- Pillaric - solid and unmoving: immovable rocks, mountains, places - the concept of death is seen as this
- Congealic - solid, but moveable: flora, fauna, smaller rocks, ice, snow, fallen leaves - any solid matter that gathers in a mass
- Liquidic - substantial + visible, but able to be moved through: water, mist, light, units of time (seconds, minutes, days, months, etc.)
- Echoic - invisible, but felt: wind, heat, cold, thoughts, emotions, vibrations
- Confundic - transcendental, intangible: the gods, the void, libraries in general, writing (though this may be reduced in less formal speech or writing to save time)
As stated previously, the affixation of verb and noun classes can be complex - I'll try to break it down as simply as I can, with a table showing the various affixes.
When a noun is teke, or has a class, it takes a prefix depending on what class it falls into - (v) here is marked for vowel harmony, where there is a simply front vowel for front vowel, back vowel for back system - and whatever verb is affected by that noun takes a corresponding affix in agreement with the original noun's class, whether that verb is teke or aian.
In the same way, if a verb is teke, having a class, the noun it acts on will also receive an affix.
If both the noun and verb are teke constructions, both will have their original class affixes as well as whatever class affixes agree with their complimentary noun/verb.
| Nouns | Verbs | Noun-Verb | Verb-Noun | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pillaric | (v)kł- | -k(v)ł(v) | l(v)k- | -(v)ł(v)k |
| Congealic | (v)sl- | -s(v)sl(v) | s(v)l(v)- | -(v)sl(v) |
| Liquidic | t(v)m- | -t(v)r(v)m(v) | p(v)m- | -n(v)r(v) |
| Echoic | m(v)r- | -m(v)t(v) | f(v)t- | -m(v)t |
| Confundic | ł(v)n- | -n(v)ł(v)m(v) | i(v)m(v)- | -m(v)ł(v) |
For example:
Metene łe osmoło po oine sunułumu.
‘He writes in the dark.’
Sunułumu here means 'writes,' from the teke root sune, 'to mark,' and gains the -ułumu suffix as it is in Confundic class. Os means 'darkness,' and is an aian or classless noun. However, it gains the suffix -moło because, as stated, the verb acting on it is of the Confundic class.
Adverbs[]
The -ipe- infix can also be used to convert nouns that represent numbers (e.g. one, four) into quantitative adverbs - for example, fa, 'one,' with an adjectivising infix, becomes fipea, 'once.'
Verbs[]
The prefix i- will transform a noun into a verb. For example, ren, 'thought, wish,' becomes iren, 'to think.'
Syntax[]
Lefaneie is typically SOV, but due to the fact that it has subject and object markers and a consistent placement of adjectives/adverbs relative to nouns/verbs, Lefaneie syntax can be quite fluid within clauses. The SOV format is broken in order to place emphasis on different parts of a clause.
Here is an example of syntax shifting within a glossed sentence.
Aurin ła ukaxa e po leos-ele łatese oine.
Aurin SBJ musket DEF OBJ shoot-PST sky within.
Aurin ła ukaxa e po leosele łatese oine.
'Aurin fired the musket into the air.'
Ukaxa e po Aurin ła leosele łatese oine.
'Aurin fired the musket into the air.'
Leosele łatese oine Aurin ła ukaxa e po.
'Aurin fired the musket into the air.'
Lexicon[]
aian - arm
akłaian - headland
akłame - glacier
akłanes - parenthood
akłanfe - stillbirth
ame - cold
anes - birth (n.)
anfe - life
aslaian - a mass of something deposited in a line, e.g. a moraine, snow drift, mud, sand bar, etc.
aslame - snow
aslanes - infant
aslanfe - life in motion, as in humans and animals - most common ‘anfe’ word
maraian - familial or romantic comfort
marame - cold air
maranes - parent-child attachment
maranfe - excitement
moros - unease
okłos - blindness
os - darkness
oslos - shade (of wood, stone, solid substances)
tamaian - a limited period of time
tamame - icy water, boring periods of time
tamanes - labour
tamanfe - pregnancy
tomos - shade (of leaves, fabric, etc.)
łanaian - writing posture
łaname - existential loneliness (as in; experience in the void)
łananes - the birth of planets, worlds, and gods, and also the completion of great works of writing
łananfe - the concept of life in a religious, sacred sense
łonos - the void
Example text[]
Leie łe osren om po luele fipea lapexin tü eine xaipeiem om.
‘Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me.’
Leie ła os-ren om po lu-ele
person SBJ unknown-thought 1.SG OBJ tell-PST
f<ipe>a lapexin tü eine xa<ipe>ie-m om.
one<ADJZ> roll of land injure<ADJZ>-FUT 1.SG.
Om ło lüri sumita tü nakosake roxiperelo pe iren!
‘I wish you all a wonderful Pride Month!’
om ła lüri sumi-ta tü nako-sake rox<ipe>relo po i-ren!
1.SG SBJ 2.PL moon-travel of powerful-justification strong<ADJZ>beauty OBJ VERBZ.wish
Metene łe meiperosele po reneramele niuiren tü łonos ło e.
‘He felt uneasy when thinking of the void.’
Metene łe me<ipe>ros-ele po rene-ram-ele
man SBJ unease.ADJZ-PST OBJ thought-heart-PST
niu - i- -ren tü łonos ło e.
TRA-VBLZ* thought of void OBJ DEF
‘He writes in the dark.’
Metene łe osmoło po oine sunułumu.
‘I saw a merchant while travelling.’
Om ło temeie pe foafoinele silimiunele.
‘I ate beans in the shade of a tree.’
Om ło bini pü lomele oine tomos tü asulenere.