Lortho

Lortho ['loɾ.tʰo]
Spoken in:	Lamona Continent
Conworld:	Dhamashi, a circumbinary planet
Total Speakers:	~ 60,000,000
Genealogical classification:	Proto-Lamona    - Old Lortho       - Lortho          - ?
Basic word order:	Verb-Subject-Object
Morphological Type:	Agglutinating
Morphosyntactic Alignment:	Nominative-Accusative
Created by:
Brian Bourque	March 2017

Lortho is an a priori constructed language created by Brian Bourque in the beginning of 2003. It originally started as a prop for a strategy board game where only the script was created for aesthetics. It is an agglutinating language with some minor fusional aspects.

The people (Kalanune) who speak Lortho live on Dhamashi, a circumbinary planet which has two natural satellites. The planet's surface has many similarities to Earth where it has oceans, mountains, deserts, and forests. The planet has three major continents: Mashonu, Kashti, and Lamona. The Kalanune live on Lamona.

Inspiration

A friend was creating a board game similar to Risk; however, instead of taking place on Earth, this new game was to take place on an inter-planetary scale. The game creator wanted to develop an extraterrestrial theme and requested a fictional script. The name of the race on this game is "Lortho" and thus the seed was planted. Brian was unable to work on this piece for quite sometime until he joined the CONLANG mailing list and observed both seasoned and novice conlangers discussing all aspects of linguistics. Since then he decided to move forward and bring Lortho into fruition.

Another inspirational source is Brian's daughter. Through her development of learning how to make speech sounds leading to coherent speech, Brian found certain "words" to use in Lortho which he used to develop its phonology.

Kashti	Lamona	Mashonu
Dhamashi

Etymology of Lortho

Lortho is a combination of Lor, the god from which their story of life stems, and -tho, the archaic form for the genitive case. It has since become a noun and can take other case endings (e.g. konpharin lorthome - I speak Lortho-ACC).

The mountain whence Lor is said to originate is called Malhi Dharakhi, "Great Mountain," and is located in the coastal mountain range on the west coast of Lamona.

Goals

The goal is to create the gradual progression of Lortho which will lead to the development of daughter languages and, eventually, create sister languages which have developed on different parts of the planet.

Phonology

Consonants

There are 18 consonants in Lortho and all are strictly pronounced the same regardless of placement.

	Bilabial		Labiodental		Alveolar		Postalveolar		Velar		Glottal
Nasal		m			n
Plosive	p   pʰ	b			t   tʰ	d   dʰ			k   kʰ
Fricative			f		s		ʃ				h
Lateral Approximant					l   lʰ
Tap or Flap					ɾ

Vowels

Monophthongs

	Front	Near- front	Central	Near- back	Back
Close	i u   o   ɛ ɑ
Near-close
Close-mid
Mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open

Diphthongs

There are only four diphthongs in Lortho: [aɪ], [eɪ], [aʊ], and [ɔɪ].

Phonotactics

Syllable Structure

The syllable structure is (C)V(V)(C).

• The syllables can be constructed as:
  • V (at this time only used in 3 person singular)
  • CV
  • CVV
  • VC
  • CVC
  • CVVC

Consonant Clusters

There are no consonant clusters allowed in onsets or codas; however, clusters formed from adjacent syllables (i.e. coda + onset) are allowed. These clusters are:

1. /nd/
2. /nk/ (normally pronounced [ŋk])
3. /np/ (colloquially it is sometimes pronounced [mp] e.g. the verb konpharo to speak)
4. /ns/
5. /pt/
6. /rt/
7. /sk/

Prosody

Stress

Stress in Lortho is handled as follows:

1. Stress is always on the penultimatae syllable of the root or infinitive except:
   • -n verbs will always receive stress on the final syllable of the infinitive or root.
   • Pluralized nouns will shift the stress to the penultimate syllable.
2. If the word is two syllables long, then the stress is on the first syllable.
3. Stress is neither given to prefixes nor suffixes.

Intonation

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Orthography

Writing System

The Lortho alphabet contains 21 letters, one of which is a vowel. The writing system behaves in a similar manner to an abugida; however, there are no conjunct consonants. Ligatures are formed by the combination of consonants and vowels (other than the vowel [i]). Lortho's script was inspired by the Devanagari, Uchen, and Tengwar writing systems.

Lortho Alphabet

Vowels and Vowel Constructs

Monophthongs

Vowels (except [i]) are attached to the preceding consonant forming ligatures.

Lortho Vowels

Diphthongs

The diphthongs are written as seen below.

Lortho diphthongs

Word-Initial Vowels and Diphthongs

For word-initial vowels, the letter [i] will be used as the place holder (unless the [i] is the vowel) and the additional vowel will be added as one would on a consonant-vowel ligature.

Romanized Text

Since Lortho has its own script, a romanized version has been set up to make it easy to read and pronounce as shown in the tables below.

Consonants

IPA

dʰ

d

kʰ

k

lʰ

l

tʰ

t

pʰ

p

ʃ

s

n

nː

m

mː

h

b

f

ɾ

Romanization

dh

d

kh

k

lh

l

th

t

ph

p

sh

s

n

nn

m

mm

h

b

f

r

Monophthongs
IPA	i	ɑ	ɛ	u	o
Romanization	i	a	e	u	o

Diphthongs
IPA	aɪ	aʊ	ɔɪ	eɪ
Romanization	ai	au	oi	ei

Morphology

Nouns

Introduction

Nouns in Lortho have three distinct features:

1. They are one of three genders: masculine, feminine, or neuter
2. All nouns are modified to denote case
3. All nouns end in a vowel

Gender

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
-i dharakhi mountain	-u dhammu chair	-a hadikha country, land

Exceptions:

There there are a couple nouns that do not follow the above rules for gender (this will increase as Lortho's lexicon grows):

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
tapas pasta		dhi water

Grammatical Case

Lortho has ten cases. The vowels in parentheses are added if the word ends in a consonant. The following word will be used for demonstration:

kansaptha (n. neut.) woods, forest

Case	Affix	Example	Translation
Nominative	-	kansaptha	woods, forest
Accusative	-(i)me	kansapthame	forest (direct obj.)
Dative	-(i)mela	kansapthamela	forest (indirect obj.)
Genitive	-(i)nalo	kansapthanalo	of the forest
Sublative	-ina/ena	kansaptaina	in/into the forest
Ablative	-(e)nat	kansapthanat	out of/from the forest
Allative	-(e)dan	kansapthadan	to/towards the forest
Prolative	-(e)danar	kansapthadanar	through/via/by way of the forest
Instructive	-(i)len	kansapthalen	using the forest
Vocative	fa(l)-	fakansaptha	Hey, Forest!

Possessive

The personal possessive is formed using a prefix which is gender and number specific. We will use the following word:

dhammu (n. fem.) chair

Person	Singular			Plural
	masculine	feminine	neuter	masculine	feminine	neuter
1st person	nidhammu	nudhammu	-	nimadhammu	numadhammu	-
2nd person	lindhammu	lundhammu	-	nanidhammu	nanudhammu	-
3rd person	lidhammu	ludhammu	ladhammu	limidhammu	limudhammu	limadhammu

Pluralization

Each noun is pluralized by adding a suffix:

1. Feminine (-u) and Neuter (-a) nouns add the plural suffix -ne:
   • Examples:
   1. Feminine: kansaphu (n. fem) tree; pl kansaphune
   2. Neuter: hadikha (n. neut) land, country; pl hadikhane
2. Masculine nouns (-i):
   • Regular masculine nouns will add the infix -en- before -i:
   • Masculine nouns that end in -ni will add the infix -em-.
   • Examples:
   1. olakhi (n. masc) boat; pl olakheni
   2. phorenni (n. masc) peak, summit; pl phoɾennemi
   • If the noun ends in a consonant, the suffix -eni will be added:
   1. Example: tapas (n. masc) pasta; pl tapaseni

Personal Pronouns

	1SG	2SG	3SG	1PL	2PL	3PL
Masculine	hin	manni	i	minan	namin	nimi
Feminine	hun	mannu	u	munan	namun	nimu
Neuter			a		naman	nima

Verbs

Introduction

Verbs are conjugated in gender and in number which are governed by the subject (written or implied). For the most part the conjugations are simple and are formed through agglutination; however, there are slight fusional changes that occur when denoting aspect.

Conjugation

Regular Verbs

There are three main verbs in Lortho: -o verbs, -t verbs, and -n verbs. The conjugation tables below show a preview of how the regular verbs conjugate in each category. Conjugation in other tenses includes more fusional aspects.

-o verbs

The root is formed by subtracting the final "o."

	Present Tense
	konpharo [kon.'pʰɑ.ɾo] to speak root: konphar-
	Singular			Plural
	masc	fem	neut	masc	fem	neut
1st pers	konpharin	konpharun	-	konpharinan	konpharunan	-
2nd pers	konpharanni	konpharannu	-	konpharamin	konpharamun	-
3rd pers	konphari	konpharu	konphara	konpharimi	konpharimu	konpharima

-t verbs

The root is formed by changing the final "t" to a "d."

	Present Tense
	phramit ['pʰɾɑ.mit] to push root: phramid-
	Singular			Plural
	masc	fem	neut	masc	fem	neut
1st pers	phramidin	phramidun	-	phramidinan	phramidunan	-
2nd pers	phramidanni	phramidannu	-	phramidamin	phramidamun	-
3rd pers	phramidi	phramidu	phramida	phramidimi	phramidimu	phramidima

-n verbs

The root is the same as the infinitive.

	Present Tense
	shailan [ʃaɪ.'lɑn] to sit root: shailan-
	Singular			Plural
	masc	fem	neut	masc	fem	neut
1st pers	shailanin	shailanun	-	shailaninan	shailanunan	-
2nd pers	shailananni	shailanannu	-	shailanamin	shailanamun	-
3rd pers	shailani	shailanu	shailana	shailanimi	shailanimu	shailanima

Irregular Verbs

Although labelled irregular, the verbs still have a regular feel in that they still use the same personal endings; however, the root is derived slightly differently. One example is the verb harlan.

	Present Tense
	harlan [hɑɾ.'lɑn] to be root: harl-
	Singular			Plural
	masc	fem	neut	masc	fem	neut
1st pers	harlin	harlun	-	harlinan	harlunan	-
2nd pers	harlanni	harlannu	-	harlamin	harlamun	-
3rd pers	harli	harlu	harla	harlimi	harlimu	harlima

Moods

Imperative

The imperative form of the verb is simply the root with the vocative case (which can be either implied or explicit).

Examples:

1. famannu, konphar!
   • Hey you, speak!
2. fanamin, nathar namineme!
   • Hey you, be quiet! (lit. quiet yourselves)
3. fabrian, shailan!
   • Brian, sit!

Vocabulary:

1. konpharo (konphar-) v. to speak
2. natharo (nathar-) v. to quell, pacify
3. mannu pronoun you (fem. sing.)
4. namin pronoun you (masc. pl.)
5. shailan (shailan-) v. to sit
   

Passive Voice

The passive voice is formed by adding the suffix -im after the root before any other additional suffixes. The passive voice does not apply to the present tense at this moment.

Example:

• madhit (madhid-) v. to give
  1. madhid-ikh-i i khanishu-me u-mela
     give-PST-3MSG PN.3MSG book.F-ACC PN.3FSG-DAT
     He gave the book to her
     • In this example, the verb agrees with the subject he (i).
  2. madhid-im-ikh-u khanishu-me u-mela
     give-PASS-PST-3FSG book.F-ACC PN.3FSG-DAT
     The book was given to her
     • In this example, the verb agrees with book since there is no subject initiating the action; however, book is still affected by the action, hence the accusative case.

Adjectives

Adjectives behave a little differently. All adjectives are roots since they must agree in gender with the noun which they modify. For placement, adjectives must be placed in front of the noun which they modify.

Syntax

Morphosyntactic Alignment

The morphosyntactic alignment of Lortho is Nominative - Accusative.

Word Order

Verb-Subject-Object (VSO). Lortho contains a lot of information in the verb and the noun or noun phrase. The verb is conjugated by person and gender and thus pronouns are largely unnecessary except for emphasis or clarification. The nouns are altered to denote case, removing almost entirely the need for prepositions.

Word Agreement

There are four basic rules which govern agreement between words:

1. Verbs must agree in gender and number with the subject (explicit or implied)
2. Cardinal numbers do not take case nor gender
3. Nouns are not pluralized when counted
   • kilikh-in kansaphu-ne-me
     see-1MSG.PRS tree.F-PL-ACC
     I see trees
   • kilikh-in bon kansaphu-me
     see-1MSG.PRS two tree.F-ACC
     I see two trees (lit: I see two tree)
4. Adjectives must agree with the noun which they modify in gender, but not in grammatical case nor number

Example texts

Text	Translation
konpharin lorthome	I speak Lortho

Text	Translation
kalanune denimanimu kalanune khonaminalo hana tomidikhimu ma kansapthaina	The people are known as people of the lanterns and they lived in that forest.

Text	Translation
lharidikhin kansapthanat hana tharnidikhin dharakhime. konpharinin toshanimela hana semanikhin, "hankhanin malhiro danadanar." remedikhi toshani, "dhamalhirianni danadanar."	I ran out of the forest and climbed the mountain. I was speaking to the dragon and said, "I want to walk through here." The dragon replied, "You will not walk through here."
Source: Brian's Instagram post

Resources

Linguistics

Endangered Alphabets - YouTube channel about 14 of the world's writing systems threatened with extinction
International Phonetic Alphabet
Glossika Phonics - YouTube channel for IPA pronunciation
NativLang - YouTube channel about the history of written and spoken language
Omniglot
Online Etymology Dictionary (English)
Reddit: Linguistics
Wikitongues - A not for profit YouTube project to help preserve the world's living languages
World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS)

Constructed Languages

Conlang Atlas of Language Structures (CALS)
Conlang Bulletin Board (CBB)
Conlang Critic - A YouTube vlogger who offers insight on conlangs
Conlang Mailing List
Conlang Relay Museum on CALS
Conlanging on Wikibooks
ConWorkShop - an online one-stop-shop for cataloging your conlang
Fiat Lingua - an online archive of conlang articles
Guide: Writing System - A guide on how to develop your own writing system
Language Creation Society (LCS)
LCS on YouTube
Reddit: Conlangs
Reddit: Neography (Constructed Scripts)
Speculative Grammarian - A satirical periodical on linguistics and conlangery
Zompist Bulletin Board (ZBB)

Lortho

Lortho on CALS
Lortho in the 24th Conlang Relay (8th Position)
Lortho on ConWorkShop
Lortho on FrathWiki
Lortho Lexicon
The World of Dhamashi (Continually updated)

Miscellaneous

Sajem Tan (Common Honey) Collaborative Conlang Discord Server