Cabot Creole

Cabot Creole
Khąmu:tnų̀
Pronunciation	[kʰãmə̃ːtnə̃̀]
Created by	Dillon Hartwig
Date	2026
Setting	Cabot Island, United Kingdom
Language family	Iroquoian North Iroquoian Cabot Creole

Cabot Creole /ˈkæbət/ (Cabot Creole: Khąmu:tnų̀ [kʰãmə̃ːtnə̃̀]) is a North Iroquoian language (heavily lexified by English and French but not a proper creole despite its name) spoken on the Cabot Island, a fictional island approximately 200 miles east-southeast from the coast of Newfoundland.

Etymology

Cabot Creole is named after Cabot Island, which is named after navigator John Cabot.

Orthography

Cabot Creole is written with the Latin script.

A a	Ą ą	E e	Ę ę	H h
/a/	/ã/	/e/	/ẽ/	/h/
I i	Į į	K k	Kh kh	L l
/i/	/ĩ/	/k/	/kʰ/	/l/
M m	N n	O o	Ǫ ǫ	Qu qu
[m]	[n,ŋ]	/o/	/õ/	/kʷ/
Quh quh	R r	S s	T t	Th th
/kʷʰ/	/ɹ/	/s/	/t/	/tʰ/
Ts ts	Tsh tsh	U u	Ų ų	W w
/t͡s/	/t͡sʰ/	/ə/	/ə̃/	[w]
Y y	’	á	à	:
/j/	/ʔ/	/à/	/á/	/ː/

Phonology

Consonants

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	Voiceless	kʷ	t t͡s	(t͡ʃ)	k	ʔ
	Aspirated	kʷʰ	tʰ t͡sʰ	(t͡ʃʰ)	kʰ
	Voiced	(gʷ)	(ɾ d͡z)	(d͡ʒ)	(g)
Fricative			s	(ʃ)		h
Approximant		w (m)	ɹ l (n)	j	(ŋ)

• /l w/ are realized as [n m] adjacent to nasal vowels or other [n m].
  • [n] assimilates in place to following velar consonants, including across word boundaries.
• Plain stops and affricates are voiced intervocalically, including across word boundaries; /t/ is voiced as [ɾ].
• Sibilants are realized as postalveolar before /j/ and front vowels, including across word boundaries.

Vowels

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ə	u~o
Low	e	a

All vowels may be long and/or nasalized.

Pitch accent

	High	Low
Short	á	à
Long	âː	ǎː

Accent is always final.

Phonotactics

Cabot Creole maximal syllables are CCVCC; /kʷ kʷʰ ʔ h/ are disallowed in coda, and only /sk skʷ/ clusters may be word-intial.

Morphology

Nouns

Non-predicate nouns have no inflectional marking, but possessive marking is mandatory on inalienable nouns. Possessed nouns are treated as verbs, with animate agent and patient agreement marking alienable and inalienable possession respectively by the other argument, except masculine alienable possessives are marked as if both arguments are animate.

Pronouns and Determiners

Reflexive yusél is generally treated as an inalienable noun, and relative/interrogative proform ǫtą̀: which also has non-pronominal uses. Aquát "near" and i:lù "far" are also often used as proximal and distal demonstratives respectively.

Negation

Negation is marked by a verb prefix te- (realized as te’- before vowels).

Numerals

Cabot Creole uses base-10 numerals, and numbers 1-10 have separate forms for human referents.

Numerals

	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	100	1,000	1,000,000
Nonhuman	si:rò:	mų́n	thó:	thurí:	ho:rù	háy	síks	semų̀n	é:t	ną́:y	thę́n	hųrèt	thawsų̀n	mįyų̀n
Human		lu:tsì:k	tekhì:	a:są̀	ke:rì	quhìsk	tshatarę́	tshatàk	tekhų́	mąthų́	wa:tshą̀:

• Billions and above are borrowed ad hoc from English.

Ordinal numerals are derived with -wa:, except for "first" this suffix is directly attached to the head noun.

Syntax

Constituent order

Cabot Creole word order is strictly SVO, not including incorporated objects.

Noun and verb phrases

Numerators precede their head, and adjectives and possessives follow. Verb modifiers follow their head, except numerators when used as adverbs.

Dependent clauses

Dependent clauses follow their phrase, generally directly, but may be disjointed if verb agreement provides enough context.

Example texts

Linguifex-hosted translations

• Translated works in Cabot Creole
• Cabot Creole/Test Case Sentences
• Cabot Creole/Corpus

Conlang Atlas of Language Structures-hosted translations

• CALS translations

Other resources

• CALS
• Cabot Creole/Swadesh