| Kenalese
Kenarese | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Isolating/Semi-Synthetic (Agglutinative) | ||||||||||||
| Alignment | Nom-Acc | ||||||||||||
| Head direction | Non Rigid Head Final | ||||||||||||
| Tonal | No | ||||||||||||
| Declensions | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Conjugations | No | ||||||||||||
| Genders | 3 (Animate-who, Animate-what, Inanimate) | ||||||||||||
| Nouns decline according to... | |||||||||||||
| Case | Number | ||||||||||||
| Definiteness | Gender | ||||||||||||
| Verbs conjugate according to... | |||||||||||||
| Voice | Mood | ||||||||||||
| Person | Number | ||||||||||||
| Tense | Aspect | ||||||||||||
| Meta-information | |||||||||||||
| Progress | 47% | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| Creator | tompov227 | ||||||||||||
Classification and Dialects
Tíkhona isjKénar comes in three principal parts:
tíkhona meaning language (composed itself of tiw "tongue" and khóne "sound")
and
isjKénar meaning isj "people" + kéna "river" + r [genitive marker]
There is only one principle dialect of kelanese and that is this main dialect. Variations include the use of aspirate consonants instead of fricatives (see phonology) but aside from that, the vocabulary, syntax, and phonology is quite cohesive.
Phonology
Consonants
| Bilabial | Labio-dental | Dental | Alveolar | Post-alveolar | Palatal | Velar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m [m] | n [n] | nj [ɲ] | ||||
| Plosive | b [b] • p [p] | d [d] •
t [t] |
g [g] •
k [k] | ||||
| Fricative | bh [β] • ph [ɸ] | v [v] • f [f] | dh [ð] • th [θ] | z [z] •
s [s] |
zj [ʒ] •
sj [ʃ] |
gj [ɟ]* •
kj [ç]* |
gh [ɣ] •
kh [x] |
| Affricate | ts [ts]
dz [dz] |
dj [dʒ] •
tj [tʃ] |
|||||
| Approximant | j [j] | w [w] | |||||
| Trill | r [r] | ||||||
| Lateral app. | l [l] | lj [ʎ] |
Orthography is written plainly, IPA realizations are in square brackets.
Vowels
| Front | Near-front | Central | Near-back | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i, ë [i] • ü [y] | u [u] | |||
| Near-close | ö [ʊ] | ||||
| Close-mid | e [e] | o [o] | |||
| Mid | |||||
| Open-mid | ä [ɛ] | ||||
| Near-open | |||||
| Open | a [a] |
Orthography is written plainly, IPA realizations are in square brackets.
Phonotactics
There are highly loose phonotactics in Kelanese. Complex clusters are uncommon but not unheard of. Words frequently start with both consonants and vowels. Words that are animate typically end in vowels though this is not universally true. Another rule is stress. Animate nouns tend to be stressed initially and stress tends to move right with decreasing levels of animacy but this is once again not totally universal.
I-Mutation (Umlaut)
Umlaut in the form of i-mutation occurs in several positions in the language. It can happen intentionally in borrowings, by metaphony in borrowings but this is less common. It is more common to happen in native nouns in the plural and in the instrumental case. Outside of these instances, there is really no use for the vowels with umlauts. When an umlaut occurs, the <i> vowel or yod sound that causes it affects the vowel preceding the consonant that precedes either the yod or the vowel. This means the yod does not count as that consonant sound. Some times double umlauts (such as plural instrumental nouns) occurs. When this occurs, the second umlaut is ignored. The umlaut is also ignored if the vowel to be umlauted is an <i> which is why there is not i-with-umlaut letter of the alphabet. This is an integral part of the language and only occurs in prescribed declined forms of nouns and rarely in borrowings. For example fas /fas/ means "foot" or "paw" and in the plural it becomes fäst /fɛst/ meaning "feet" or "paws". Some nouns do have the umlaut in the singular nominative though, like âlju /ɛʎu/ which comes from Latin "alium" and means "garlic". Therefore, in the plural this is âljut with the umlaut already in place.
Writing System
| Letter | A | Ä | B | D | E | Ë | F | G | I | J | K | L |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sound | /a/ | /ɛ(j)/ | /b/ | /d/ | /e/ | /i/ | /f/ | /g/ | /i/ | /j/ | /k/ | /l/ |
| Letter | M | N | O | Ö | P | R | S | T | U | Ü | V | W |
| Sound | /m/ | /n/ | /o/ | /ʊ/ | /p/ | /r/ | /s/ | /t/ | /u/ | /y/ | /v/ | /w/ |
| Letter | Z | |||||||||||
| Sound | /z/ |
There are several digraphs (but no trigraphs) that you should know:
bh, dh, gh, kh, ph, th make the sounds /β ð ɣ x ɸ θ/ respectively. These sounds were originally aspirates /bʱ dʱ gʱ kʰ pʰ tʰ/ but have since become fricatives as shown previously.
sj and zj make the sounds /ʃ ʒ/ respectively.
tj and dj make the sounds /tʃ dʒ/ respectively.
kj and gj make the sounds /ç ɟ/ respectively, however these are new additions, uncommon, and may be removed or substituted for kh and gh respectively.
nj and lj make the sounds /ɲ ʎ/ respectively.
ts and dz, of course make the sounds /ts dz/ respectively.
Apostrophes can be used to prevent these digraphs however it is usually reserved for foreign words or phonetic spellings. All other consonant and vowel combinations form no special sounds a part from the single sounds they represent.
Vowels do not form diphthongs different vowels together are always separated by hiatuses and double vowels of the same kind create long vowels. Likewise, double consonants create geminated consonants. The semivowels /j/ and /w/ however do form vocalic diphthongs.
Note that acute accents simply mark stress. Stress marking is not obligatory but in formal or academic writings, every polysylabic word should and usually is marked for stress especially when disambiguation is needed which occurs frequently due to the rules of animacy (see phonotactics). Circumflexes mark stressed vowels that are umlauted and is therefore the stressed form of all vowels with an umlaut and follows the same conventions of acute accent. It should be noted that umlauts must always be marked. When techinical limitations prevent this, a "y" may follow the vowel to indicate it has been umlauted. Therefore fäst (plural of fas) can be written fayst. The "y" does not appear anywhere else in the language.
Grammar
Nouns
Nouns are currently the most developed part of the language and probably the part of speech you'll be using most.
Gender
I find gender to be a misleading term for this, but it is technical. Regardless, there are three "genders" of nouns in the language. Animate-who, animate-what, and inanimate.
Animate-who: this gender is reserved exclusively for human beings, deities, God, gods, and the like. It is generally marked by the following endings: -a, -te, -bh, -o, and -tji* (these endings are nearly universal, but it sometimes violated)
Animate-what: this gender is used for animals, living things, some disease names, and large natural forces. It is marked by -a though some words (like tath) are animate-what but do not end in final a and some words like fenía (borrowed from Latin fenestra) end in -a and are inanimate.
Inanimate: All other nouns are inanimate and they compose the bulk of nominals. They are unmarked in the singular nominative.
*causes i-mutation of vowel preceding the consonants before the <i>.
Because this is an agglutinative language, it is important to note that any gender suffixes are the first suffixes appended to the stem of a noun.
Number
Number is marked very simply.
Animate-who: +(e)s [only use <e> in purely allophonic cases were the epenthetic vowel is necessary]
All others: +t(i) with umlaut of vowel [only use <i> in purely allophonic cases were the epenthetic vowel is necessary or when the final letter of the stem is <t>]
Number is always the last agglutinative suffix to be affixed to the noun.
Case
Case falls inbetween the number and the gender. Note that suffixes are not mandatory and as such case be first, last, or only however, when other suffixes are present they must appear such that gender always precedes case, case always precedes number and number is always last.
Anyway, cases are more complex than English but not too bad. Cases can be expressed in some postpositions (See below) and therefore are eliminated in common, colloquial speech, though in high text cases are preferred to postpositions and not all cases can be expressed by postposition. Below you will find a table of case suffixes used according to gender.
Note that epenthetic vowels should only be used in cases of necessary allophony. Epenthetic or intrusive consonants should be used only when there is a two or more vowel sequence preceding the vowel ending. As such single hiatuses are preferred to epenthetic consonants but double hiatuses are not. Epenthetics are shown in parens. The locative prefers <w> when following any vowel.
| Nominative | Genitive | Instrumental | Locative | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Animate-who | -o, -a, -te, -bh, -tji (with umlaut) | +r | +(l)en | +u/w |
| Animate-what | -a (usually) | +(a)r | +(l)i (with umlaut) | +u/w |
| Inanimate | unmarked | +(o)sj | +(l)i (with umlaut) | +u/w |
Note that some cases cause umlauts. See above the rules regarding conflicting umlauts from the plural and the instrumental.
Using Cases
First let me say that the Nominative is used in any such instance where the other three cases cannot or would not be used.
The genitive is the easiest as it usually only indicates possession or relation and can be translated almost exclusive as "of" or the apostrophe-s of English.
The instrumental is rather straightforward. The noun in the instrumental case indicates that said nouns is used as an instrument to accomplish a means or cause something to happen. It can be translated as the noun in the following senses:
He kicked the ball with his leg (leg being instrumental)
The boy was burned by the water (water being instrumental)
Through him all things were made (him being instrumental)
The man fixed the car (the man being techinically nominative but acting as an instrument)
The locative case can be used for any instance of location and can often be translated as a variety of prepositions in English including but not limited to: at, during, while, in, on, near, above, within, throughout.
Articles
There are only definite articles in Kenalese. Indefinite articles are not used but can be implied. Definite articles are used much less frequently than say a Romance language like Catalan or Italian and are used even less than English. They are used similar to English demonstratives but slightly more frequently and are a bit less specific.
Articles in formal writing exist in both numbers (singular and plural) for all three genders. They are as follows:
Singular
| Nominative | Genitive | Instrumental | Locative | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inanimate | an | ansj | anli | anu |
| Animate-what | ana | anar | anai | anau |
| Animate-who | ante | anter | anten | antew |
Plural:
| Nominative | Genitive | Instrumental | Locative | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inanimate | änt | änsjt | änlit | änut |
| Animate-what | änat | änars | änlit | änut |
| Animate-who | antes | anters | antens | antew |
Verbs
Verbs are the most complex and difficult aspect of the language. There are no actual verbs in the language but rather particles which convey transitive, relational, or motive ideas that relate to nouns (or less commonly adjectives).
Take for example: ma isjkól mar ta bin jo.
That sentence is composed as follows:
Lit: I school my towards PROGRESSIVE-ASPECT PRESENT-MOTION-INDICATOR
Trans: I school my towards go.
English: I go to school; I am going to school
Take also: fenía jópe-si pígro ta.
Lit: window INCOATIVE/MOTION.AORIST.INTRANSITIVE damage towards
Trans: window moves/becomes damage towards.
English: A Window breaks; the window is breaking.
Setences can get pretty complex and as such there is not real one way to express an idea. Take this for example: Khézof mar maj átepa stóbi
Lit: House my MALEFICENT-PARTICLE fire RELATIONAL-MARKER.AORIST.
Trans: House my (bad) fire was.
English: My house was on fire.
Khézof mar maj átëpai jópe.
Lit: House my MALEFICENT-PARTICLE fire.INSTRUMENTAL MOTION/INCHOATIVE-MARKER.AORIST
Trans: House my (bad) by means of fire went.
English: My House burnt down.
Notice here the subtle difference between a motion or inchoative marker and the relational/possessive marker. By indicating fire as a maleficent possession of the house it is on fire (rather than say containing a fire if the maleficent marker isn't there) whereas by indicating an inchoative change caused by or through the fire you indicate the house was changed or became more "fire" which is to say it burnt down.