Loshi

Introduction

Setting

Loshi (Loshi: ელსი /ˈiʃi/) is a Locian language spoken primarily in Loshaith (Loshi: ელოსჯაჯდ /iʔɔˈʃɛːð/), being the official language of the country. It's closest relatives are its sister language Rozian, and its daughter language Irocian. Loshi is spoken by roughly 10-12 million people in Loshaith alone, with another 5 million speakers in its extended territories who use the language for business and commerce.

Typology

Loshi is a primarily agglutinative language with some synthetic tendencies. Nouns decline for 11 cases (Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Possessive, Instrumental), 3 numbers (Singular, Dual, and Plural), and can be either animate or inanimate. Animacy is primarily semantically based, however the semantic reasoning is not always intuitive to L2 speakers. (ოკალნ okán "egg" is animate, but გნიჯოკ níoki "claw" is inanimate), and it can be used to distinguish meaning: ჯოკ äk can mean either "human, person, individual", or "body, corpse, cadaver" depending on whether it is declined as animate or inanimate. Verbs decline for aspect, mood, person, number, and animacy. Morphologically verbs behave in a very agglutinative fashion, with each category pairing with a single morpheme.

Phonology

Orthography

Loshi uses a modified version of Mkhedruli (Loshi: კნეტლოლი [netˈluː]. It's most prominent feature is it's complexity. Sound changes throughout the language's history have yet to be recorded in the written language, and thus the writing systems reflects the pronunciation of centuries past.

Alphabet

Letter	Name	Name IPA	IPA
ა	Ani	[ɐɲ]	[ɐ]
ბ	Bani	[pˀɐɲ]	[pˀ]
გ	Gani	[kˀɐɲ]	[kˀ]
დ	Däni	[tˀɛɲ]	[tˀ]
ე	Eni	[eɲ]	[e]
ი	Ini	[iɲ]	[i]
კ	Kani	[kɐɲ]	[k]
ლ	Laz	[ɫɐʃ]	[ɫ]
ნ	Ná	[nɑː]	[n]
ო	Oni	[ɔɲ]	[ɔ]
პ	Pá	[pɑː]	[p]
ს	Sani	[sɐɲ]	[s]
ტ	Tá	[tɑː]	[t]
ჯ	Äni	[ɛɲ]	Silent

Digraphs

Loshi's native orthography makes extensive use of digraphs to represent it's pronunciation. However, there exist many digraphs that represent the same phoneme, resulting in a large number of homophones.

Vowel Digraph	IPA
იჯ	[iː]
ეჯ	[iː]
აჯ	[ɛː]
ოჯ	[iː]
ილ	[i]
ელ	[iː]
ალ	[ɑː]
ოლ	[uː]
ჯი	[i]
ჯე	[i]
ჯა	[ɛ]
ჯო	[ɛ]
სჯ	[ʃ]
კს	[x]

Consonants

Categories	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Post-Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal	/m/		/n/		/ɲ/
Stop	/p /pˀ/		/t/ /tˀ/			/k/ /kˀ/
Fricative	[f] [v]	[θ] [ð]	/s/	/ʃ/	[ç] [ʝ]	/x/ [ɣ]
Lateral			/l/		/ʎ/

Allophony

Nasals

• /n/ is realized as [ŋ] before /k/ or /x/ and [ŋˀ] before /kˀ/, but [ŋ] before [ɣ].

  კოლნკჯოლსჯ kunkuz [kuːŋkuːʃ]

  სჯტოლნკ ztunk [ʃtuːŋx]

  ბანგოდ bangod [pˀɐŋˀkˀɔð]

  ლჯოსალნგ ljäsáng [ʎɛˈsɑːŋɣ]

• /n/ is realized as [m] before [ɔ uː p], as [ɱ] before [f], and as [ɲ] before [i iː].

   ნიკჯოლტლოსი nikutläz [ɲiˈku:tlɛʃ] 

  ნოჯინოტ mínot [ˈmiːmɔθ]

  გელტჯატანპ gitätamp [kˀitɛtɐɱf]