Hauteis

Hauteis or L'Hautlang is a Romance language descended from Norman French and is one of two languages spoken on the island of Rathmos.

Phonology and Orthography

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosives	p      b		t      d			k      g
Nasal	m		n
Trill			r
Fricative		f      v	s      z				h
Affricate			t͡s	t͡ʃ      d͡ʒ
Approximant	w		l		j

Vowels

Hauteis has the following six pure vowels, most of which (excluding only /ɛː/), have long and short variants.

	Front	Back
Close	i(ː)	u(ː)
Close-mid	e(ː)	o(ː)
Open-mid	ɛː
Open	a(ː)

In addition to the pure vowels there are five diphthongs: /au̯/, /ei̯/, /i̯u/, /oi̯/ and /ou̯/.

Orthography

The Hauteis alphabet consists of the following letters:

a b c d e f g h i j l m n o p q r s t u v w z

The table below shows the correspondence between orthography and pronunciation:

Graph	IPA	Notes
a	/a/
á	/aː/
au	/au̯/
b	/b/
c	/k/	before a, o, u, au and oi
/s/	before e, i, ei and iu
d	/d/
e	/e/
é	/eː/
ei	/ei̯/
f	/f/
g	/g/	before a, o, u, au and oi
/d͡ʒ/	before e, i, ei and iu
h	/h/
i	/i/
í	/iː/
iu	/i̯u/
j	/d͡ʒ/
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/o/
ó	/oː/
oi	/oi̯/
ou	/ou̯/
p	/p/
q	/k/
qu	/kw/
r	/r/
s	/s/	initially; finally; adjacent to a voiceless consonant
/z/	between vowels or voiced sounds
t	/t/
u	/u/
ú	/uː/
v	/v/
w	/w/
z	/t͡s/

Phonological Processes

The following phonological processes occur in Hauteis:

• word-final al and ol become au and ou when a following consonant is added (e.g. animal "animal" > animaus "animals").
• word-final z becomes c when a vowel-intial ending is added (e.g. fáz "face" > fáces "faces").

Morphology

Nouns

Nouns are either masculine or feminine in gender. Nouns themselves are not usually marked for gender but words qualifying nouns, such as articles and adjectives, often are.

lo rei "the king" (m.)

la rein "the queen" (f.).

The plural of most nouns is formed by adding -s to the stem. Nouns ending in -s or -z add -es (-z also changes to -c-).

los óms "the men"

iuns dáms "some women"

les fáces "the faces" (< fáz)

fóus "fools" (< fól)

Articles

Hauteis has definite and indefinite articles, which agree with their noun in number and gender. The definite article is declined as follows:

	Singular	Plural
Masculine	lo	los
Feminine	la	les

Both singular articles are reduced to l' before a vowel-initial word.

Examples:

l'óm "the man"

la nuris "the nurse"

los arbres "the trees"

les cats "the cats"

The prepositions de "of", a "to" and en "in" combine with the definite article in the following ways:

	Singular	Plural
Masculine	lo	los
Feminine	la	les

The indefinite article has only two forms: iun (singular) and iuns (plural).