Flewtish

Flewtish
Flũťa / Флӯтьа
Flag of the Flewtish people. It is a simplified version of an ancient flag. The green represents nature, the white represents peace and the orange represents the joy to be alive.
Pronunciation	[ɸlûːtʷa]
Created by	Aggelos Tselios
Date	2023
Native to	Russia, Finland
Native speakers	approx. 1 million (2023)
Language family	Language Isolate Flewtish
Writing systems	Latin Cyrillic
Official status
Official language in	Flewtish Autonomous Republic, Russia
Regulated by	Instituto Standarzabüro Flutadene Glung (Institute of Standardization of the Flewtish Language)
Map of where Flewtish is spoken today. Dark blue areas indicate a majority Flewtish-speaking population, whereas light blue indicate areas where Flewtish is an important language.

Flewtish (endonym: Флӯтьа [ɸlûːtʷa] or Флӯтьа глӯн [ɸlûːtʷa ɡluːŋ] ) is a language spoken in much of Northwest Russia and the Karelia region, as well as a large pocket in Eastern Finland. Flewtish is a language isolate, meaning it does not genetically relate to any other known language on the planet, similar to Basque in Europe.

Flewtish is a polysynthetic language, something uncommon for the Siberian or the European languages, hinting a distant Urheimat far away from today's Russia (Usually placed near the Mongolian border, see Proto-Flewtish). The language is split into 4 periods: Proto-Flewtish, Old Flewtish, Ḟlǔṫas Eṽétt (Modern Latin Orthography: Fluṫas Ewet), and Modern Flewtish, each one signified by the historical events accompanying them. It is a biscriptal language, using both the Latin and Cyrillic scripts to be written (In Finland and elsewhere respectively), although during the early medieval period there were Turkic writings too. An important aspect of the language is differentiating between labialized and non-labialized consonants (Referred in Flewtish as "rounded" and "unrounded") see eg. [kʷáɣ.op] "Warmth" and [káɣ.op] "Deer".

Flewtish is not one unified language. Rather, it is a large dialect continuum, stretching from Eastern Finland to the Ob river, and from the White Sea all the way to Bestozhevo (Arkhangelsk oblast), and the large distance between the dialects has caused the extreme ends of that territory to be completely unintelligible to each other.

Etymology and history

Flutwe is an evolution of Proto-Flewtish *pʰlutuɘp, meaning "Blooming" or "Saturated". The reason for this name is that the regions that Flewtish speakers settled were far more greener and developed than their previous homeland. Flewtish is possibly a Paleo-siberian language that through migration reached it's current territory. This can be further supported by similarities with the Yeniseian languages, like having a pitch accent, vowel harmony and vowel length distinction.

Following harsh winters in the area and raids from other local tribes, migrations westwards began in search of a better homeland. Eventually, after ~1000 years, Flewtish people decided to settle to modern day Arkhangelsk (Tanrikutt in Old Flewtish, lit. God's city) and the areas around, where their language would remain. Small pockets of their language that settled in the way during that migration period survived for a few more centuries before being assimilated to neighboring nations.

Flewtish, from it's early years, was influenced by Mongolic, Turkic and later Indo-European and Uralic languages. The most obvious example would be the large amount of Turkic and Finnic loanwords into Flewtish, but even titles from the states with Flewtish rule such as "Gǎngÿán [gâŋɢán]" (Leader, possibly related to Khagan), "Tãnrǐ [taːŋɾiː]" (Same origin as Tengri) and "Taerkáng [tɘɾ.káŋ] (Local ruler, related to Tarkhan). On the Indo-European side, the word "оўиг /ówyg/" (Sheep) is probably borrowed from the Proto-Indo-European word *h₂ówis (Or perhaps from Proto-Balto-Slavic) and the word "ғамеги" (milking, from PIE *h₂melǵ-).

Phonology

Sound in parentheses only appear in dialects. Labialized consonants are not included in this chart as they don't form separate phonemes.

Consonants

Manner/Place	Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Palato-alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	m			n		(ɲ)	ŋ
Stop	p b			t d			k g	(q ɢ)	(ʔ)
Affricate			t͡s d͡z	t͡ʃ d͡ʒ
Fricative		f v	(θ) ð	s z	ʃ ʒ		x ɣ	(ʁ)	h
Approximant	w					j
Tap				ɾ
Lateral approximant				l

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i y	(ɨ)	u (ɯ)
High-mid	e	(ɘ)	o
Low	a

Orthography

Orthography and scripts

Cyrillic script

Flewtish is written from the 17th century onwards with a variation of the Cyrillic script, the Flewtish alphabet.

Cyrillic Script for Flewtish
Аа /a/	Бб /b/	Вв /v/	Гг /g/	Ғғ /ɣ/	Дд /d/	Ее /e/	Ёё /ə/	Зз /z/	Ӟӟ /ð/	Ии /i/	Йй /j/	Ўў /w/	Кк /k/	Лл /l/	Мм /m/	Нн /n/	Оо /o/	Ӧӧ - /jo/	Пп /p/	Рр /ɾ/	Сс /s/	Тт /t/	Уу /u/	Фф /ɸ/	Ьь (ʷ)	Хх /x/	Цц /t͡s/	Чч /t͡ʃ/	Шш /ʃ/	Щщ /d͡z/	Ыы /y/	Юю /ju/	Яя /ja/

The Flewtish alphabet also relies on acute accents to indicate that a vowel must be pronounced as a nasal one. The apostrophe may be used to show apheresis in rapid speech.

There are many dialects of Flewtish so the Flewtish alphabet is not reliable to denote the sounds of most dialects and accents. In that case, there are an additional 5 graphemes used to denote sounds found in the most spoken non-standard accents, eg. the one in Ukhta.

1. Ӱӱ - /ɯ/
2. Өө - /θ/
3. Ъъ - /ʔ/
4. Ӈӈ - /ŋ/*
5. Іі - /ɨ/

Latin script

Flewtish was written for a large period using the Latin script, adopted from contact with Germanic peoples in the west. Although it is rarely used since the late 20th century, it can still be found in inscriptions. It also survives as part of the dialect spoken in Eastern Finland.

Turkic script

Finally, dialects of Flewtish were written during the Old Flewtish period (452CE-778CE) using the Turkic script, while the southeastern tribes were subjugates by Turkish khanagates. Few inscriptions survive to this day.

Grammar

Flewtish is a polysynthetic language, using circumfixes or other affixes to change word meaning, or show different grammatical functions. Some dialects tend towards a more moderate, agglutinative model (By using fewer morphemes per word than other dialects), however the principle of affixation is shared between all dialects.

In addition, Flewtish contains an animate-inanimate distinction. If any part of speech within a sentence is animate, the subject, object and verb must take the -ü suffix.

Nouns

There are 10 cases (12 if dialectal ones are included) in Flewtish, formed usually with the use of an affix (For example: The apple: Hetceńe, I ate the apple: Wo jepgo hetceńen), with the exception of the nominative case which doesn't need any inflection directly. The exact suffixes can be found below, in the "Cases" section.

Similarly, possession is shown with a suffix.

Possession Suffixes in Flewtish

Suffix	Rough English Translation	Example
-mno	Mine	hetsjeńemno
-ði	Your	hetsjeńedi
-muk	His/Hers/Its	hetceńemuk
ne-, -mno	Our	nehetsjeńemno
ne-, -sji	Your (plural)	nehetsjeńesji
ne- -ktu	Their	nehetsjeńektu

Flewtish doesn't have articles, but uses the -e suffix as a replacement for the definite article, and sal for the indefinite article.

Adjectives

Adjectives in Flewtish have three degrees (Positive: crasnī, Comparative: cakrasnī and Superlative: crasnītta), which correspond roughly to the English and German suffixes -er and -est. They lack a plural number and they are always used in their singular form.

Word order

Flewtish is strictly an SVO language, except in answers, where the SOV form is used instead. Like most European languages, it uses word intonation to show emphasis.

Pronouns

Flewtish contains the usual three pronouns, with a distinction on the third person pronouns for animate and inanimate objects. Flewtish does not use standalone pronouns often, resorting instead to suffixes on the root verb.

Pronouns in Flewtish

English	Flewtish
I	Ғен
You	Ðи
(He or she)/it	У/Шов
We	Неғен
You (pl.)	Неши
They	Увок(ы)

Cases

Flewtish has 10 cases, most of which correspond to English prepositions. Depending on the dialect, the number or the actual inflection of the cases may vary significantly (The easternmost dialects spoken in Finland for example preserved the ancient attributive case whereas all other dialects eventually lost it).

Cases in Flewtish

Case	Affix	Example	English Approximation	Notes
Nominative	(None)		House	-
Genitive	-den	Dõmmaden	Of the house	-
Accusative	-n	Dõmman	The house	The accusative is formed when an action is done upon the object.
Vocative	-e	(Ē) Dõmmae	(Hey) house!	Dialectal only, conflicts with suffix -e (Similar to English 'the')
Adessive	-je	Dõmmaje	At the house	Dialectal only, usually fused with the inessive
Inessive	-seg	Dõmmaseg	In the house	Also exists as e-root-sek
Ablative	-sje	Dõmmasje	From the house	-
Essive	-l	Ēne Dõmmal	As a house	Rare, now usually the Russian borrowing 'как' is used.
Translative	-se	Dõmmase	(Transformed) into a house
Instrumental	-om	Dõmmaom	With a house	If it conflicts with the accusative, then it becomes -on
Causal-Final	-d	Dommad	For the house	-
Comitative	k-, -to	Kodommato	With (the company of) the house	Often fused with the instrumental.

Basic Vocabulary

Numbers

Numbers from 0-10 in Flewtish

Number	English	Flewtish
0	Zero	Нул
1	One	Зааԓ
2	Two	Деюе
3	Three	Заш
4	Four	Нóюе
5	Five	Аўе
6	Six	Еўе
7	Seven	Юскы̄
8	Eight	Анá
9	Nine	Цьербус
10	Ten	Ԓе

Sample text

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

English: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Flewtish (Latin): Awel neemól zalpen nesvabodii ve tiğez ivoam ve prava. Nežewemeg šiwatak ve sosnanije ve nekareveljomeg zaal baknwékonjoamd.

Flewtish (Cyrillic): Аўел неемóл залпен несвабoдии ве тиғез ивoам ве права. Нежеўемег шиўатак ве соснанийе ве некаревелйомег заал бакньéконйоамд.