View source for Alaia

{{Infobox language
|image = 
|imagesize = 100px
|name = Alaia
|nativename = ''alaia''
|creator = [[User:Serafín|Serafín]]
|setting = 
|pronunciation = [aˈla.ja]
|region = Senjana
|states = Kingdom of Senjana
|created = 2015
|speakers = 5 million
|date = 2015
|fam1 = Odolic
|ancestor = Proto-Odolic
|ancestor2 = Old Alaia
|dia1 = Iknapu (most prestigious)
|dia2 = Ammaka
|dia3 = Arpate
|dia4 = Keassu
|dia5 = Sili Atta
|dia6 = Ulpane
|dia7 = Vedeti
|script        = Alaian script, Old Alaian script
|agency        = None. Spelling largely follows pronunciation of the most prestigious dialect. The language of a few rather recent authors is deemed worth imitating.
|notice = IPA
|posteriori = b
|iso3 = none
}}

'''Alaia''' is a conlang that started being created by user [[User:Serafín|Serafín]] in 2015. It is the latest iteration of a series of similar conlangs, beginning with the conlang "Meftla" in 2009. It is mostly influenced by Latin and Standard Arabic in all aspects except for the lexicon, though many particular details have also been taken from, or inspired by, many other languages. The lexicon is a priori, and the author has done his best to not imitate the lexical structure of any of the languages he's familiar with.

In-universe, Alaia is a language spoken by nearly 5 million people in the Kingdom of Senjana, a kingdom that is based on a territory mostly composed of deserts with little life, but where a civilization flourished around its lake and along some of its rivers. Although the language is documented from as far back as nine centuries before the "current" stage (for this article), literacy was limited to a very few (not even much of the upper class knew how to write), and only became more widespread during the last century.

The prestige dialect of Alaia has 19 consonants, 4 monophthongs and 5 diphthongs. Words are always stressed on the penultimate syllable, and have a syllabic structure of (C)(C)V(C)(C) strongly adhering to the sonority hierarchy. Every single content word must be at least two syllables long. Alaia's inflectional morphology uses suffixes exclusively, while derivational morphology makes use of prefixes, suffixes and circumfixes. Nouns inflect for four cases and two numbers, adjectives for gender and sometimes case and number as well, and verbs for 7 TAMs plus one non-finite form. Alaia's neutral word order is SOV. It has both prepositions and postpositions, adjectives and genitives usually precede nouns, and relative clauses follow nouns. Negation is achieved with a preverbal particle, subordination always by a subordinator. It is strongly dependent-marking. It is by far the most successful of the Odolic languages.

===Phonology===

The phonemic inventory is shown in the following tables.

{| class="bluetable lightbluebg" style="width: 700px; text-align: center;"
|+'''Consonant phonemes'''
|-
!colspan="2"|
!Labial
!Dental/Alveolar
!Postalveolar
!Velar
|-
!rowspan="2"|Plosives/Affricate
!<small>Voiceless</small>
|'''p'''
|'''t'''
|'''c''' [tʃ]
|'''k'''
|-
!<small>Voiced</small>
|'''b'''
|'''d'''
|'''j''' [dʒ]
|'''g'''
|-
!colspan="2"|Nasal
|'''m'''
|'''n'''
|
|
|-
!rowspan="2"|Fricative
!<small>Voiceless</small>
|'''f'''
|'''s'''
|'''sh''' [ʃ]
|'''x'''
|-
!<small>Voiced</small>
|'''v'''
|'''z'''
|('''zh''' [ʒ])
|
|-
!colspan="2"|Rhotic
|
|'''r''' [r ~ ɾ]
|
|
|-
!colspan="2"|Lateral
|
|'''l'''
|
|
|}

{| class="bluetable lightbluebg" style="width: 700px; text-align: center;"
|+'''Vowel monophthong phonemes'''
|-
!
!Front
!Central
!Back
|-
!High
|'''i'''
|
|'''u'''
|-
!Mid
|colspan="2"|'''e''' [e ~ ə]
|
|-
!Low
|
|'''a'''
|
|}


[[Category:Languages]][[Category:Conlangs]][[Category:A priori]]