Ataši

Introduction

Marèngil is a constructed language inspired by both Elvish and Dwarvish, languages spoken by the elves and dwarves respectively in the fictional world of Middle Earth, invented by J. R. R. Tolkien. Thus, the language is spoken by an elf-like people, but of a more hardy stock, akin to the dwarves. These elves are known as the Lárï, live in a mountainous, dry jungle-like region of the planet Arâti, a world similar to Caladan, from Frank Herbert's Dune, with very little deserts or arid, inhospitable biomes.

While the words have no correlation to Elvish, it is intended to mimick it terms of phonology and syllable and sentence structure. It keeps a similar tonal musicality to Elvish, it also has aspects of the harsher Dwarvish, but few of the phonetic inventory. The language initially developed without a copular verb, but over time it aqcuired first a general copula, "to be" which later turned into a permanent state copula, and a second copula appeared as the impermanent state, similar to "ser" and "estar" in Spanish. As these only covered certain aspects of copular construction, many other copulas began to come into use, including "to feel," "to look," and others which have no direct translation, such as "to be," but with the voice of "to have a particular quality applied to."

Consonants

IPA chart of the Marêngil consonants

[[]]	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Post-alveolar	Velar	Glottal
Plosive
Fricative
Affricate
Nasal
Tap/Flap
Approximant