Ormå

Ormå
ormå píppi
Pronunciation	[ormɔ ˈpi.ppi]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2023
Native to	Ormå Nation
Ethnicity	Ormå people
Language family	Yeldhic Ulmic Umic Ormå
Early forms	Proto-Yeldhic Proto-Ulmic Proto-Umic
Official status
Official language in	Ormå Nation, Southern Ulmis
Recognised minority language in	Southern Ulmis, Moshuria
Regulated by	Ormả Committee(Kikilẽ Ormå)

Ormå(/ormo/, ormå píppi; Ormå: [ormɔ ˈpi.ppi]) is a language spoken by the Ormå people of the southern areas of the tundras of Ulmis. It is an Umic language, so it is related to the languages of Umį and Pailä. The Umic languages themselves are a sub-branch of the Ulmic languages, which includes Pêrsir and Zadję.

It is a fusional SOV language that, like all other Ulmic languages, heavily features nasalised vowels.

Etymology

Ormå comes from Ancient Ormå ormorri, a term referring to a tundra that is naturally protected from harsher winds by some other geographical feature, typically hills. ormorri may come from Proto-Ulmic *olmuy, "silence", which would make Pêrsir ulmii, "volume", cognate with ormorri.

Phonology

Orthography

Ormå uses a modified form of the Standard Ulmic Script(SUS), which includes a special letter, ⟨å⟩, that represents the phoneme /ɔ/, which among Ulmic languages is unique to Ormå. Additionally, the common digraphs ⟨sk⟩ and ⟨zg⟩ are pronounced /sˠ/ and /zˠ/ respectively, instead of /sk̚/ and /zg̚/ in other Ulmic languages like Pêrsir or Pailä.

Consonants

		Bilabial/ Labiodental	Alveolar	Velar	Palatal
Plosive	pulmonic	p b	t d	k g	c
	aspirated	pʰ bʱ	tʰ dʱ	kʰ gʱ	cʰ
Trill/tap			r~ɾ
Nasal		m	n̥ n	ŋ
Fricative	pulmonic	f v	s z	x	ç
	velarised	fˠ vˠ	sˠ zˠ
Approximant	pulmonic	w			j
	lateral		l		ʎ

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i y		u
Close-mid	e~ə		o
Open-mid/Near-open	æ		ɔ
Open	a

Nasalised vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	ĩ ỹ		ũ
Close-mid	ẽ		õ
Open	ã

Stress

Ormå has no stress pattern, though most speakers tend to go towards paroxytonic stress.

Morphology

Nouns

Gender

Ormå has four grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, passive neuter and active neuter. The distinction between passive and active neuter is quite vague, though the general pattern is that if it is a countable geographical feature that moves by itself, such as a river(mittä), it is active and if not, like a watershed(nncẽ), it is passive. However, some words, like krỹse("snowy mountain"), which would logically be passive, is actually active, because in Ormå mythology, the God of Snowy Mountains, Ukkäjan, supposedly causes avalanches to deter climbers of Mount Kakkijajå, thus making snowy mountains active deterers of climbers. Many of these logical exceptions in the neuter gender are rooted in Ormå mythology.

Number

Ormå, like all Ulmic languages, differentiates between single, dual and plural grammatical number, which vary according to the four grammatical genders of masculine, feminine, passive neuter and active neuter.

Grammatical number with thåsk, skyd, nncẽ & mittä

number       gender		Singular	Dual	Plural
Masculine		thåsk "rock"	thåski	thåskir
Feminine		skyd "bulb"	skydje	skydjus
Neuter	Passive	nncẽ "watershed"	nncẽmmi	nncẽmmä
	Active	mittä "river"	mittäpyr	mittäfyr

Pronouns

Demonstrative

Demonstrative pronouns in Ormå fall into three categories: adjacent(next to something), near and far. For example, thåsk khe means "the rock next to [me]", skydje nhus means "these two bulbs" and mittäfyr käller means "those rivers (over there)".

	Adjacent	Near	Far
Singular	khe	khes	khest
Dual	nhu	nhus	nhussr
Plural	kär	källä	käller