Elven (jokelang)

Elven
Ervfvgo
Pronunciation	[/ɛɽʉfʉgo/]
Created by	Elliott Wheeler
Ethnicity	White Martians
Native speakers	~34.1 million (2020)
Language family	Altaic Japonic Japanese Elven
Official status
Official language in	Musk Dynasty, Grimszezia (1988-2018, merged with Musk Dynasty)

Elven (Ervfvgo) is a Japonic creole, which evolved from an English-based corruption of the Japanese language, and was primarily spoken among the Martian "technocracy" (properly classified as an aristocracy) of the 2020s and onwards.

It is worthy of note that, at its peak in the early 2020s and late 2010s, it was largely spoken by specifically non-male portions of the class, remaining somewhat unpopular by the patriarchal class until the birth of Prince X Æ A-12 in 2020, at which point it became fashionable for a plurality of upper class Martians, and was even adopted by some more bourgeois members of the Martian proletariat.

Phonology

Orthography

Elven uses a modified version of Appius Claudius's alphabet, itself a version of Classical Latin orthography, notably incorporating the Claudian letter Ⱶ to represent the vowel /ɨ/ appearing as an allophone of /ɯ/ in Japanese proper. As per custom with Classical Latin, the orthography does not distinguish between v and u as well as j and i, using v and i respectively. Breaking somewhat from consistency with Classical Latin, the language uses exclusively the vowel digraphs æ and œ to represent /ai/ or /aɛ/ and /oi/ or /oɛ/ respectively, never accepting their multiple letter counterparts of ae and oe. Similarly, the language uses the letter X to represent the phoneme /t͡s/ in Japanese proper, being indistinguishable from /k͡s/ in Elven.

Letter	IPA Sound	Letter name
A a	/æ/	Ei
Æ æ	/aɛ, ai/	Ass
B b	/b/	Bī
C c	/kʰ(i,ɛ)/	Sī
D d	/d/	Dī
E e	/ɛ/	Ī
F f	/f/	Eff
G g	/ɡ/	Dvzī
H h	/ɦ/	Eixx
I i	/i, j/	Æ
K k	/kʰ(a,-)/	Kei
M m	/m/	Emm
N n	/n, N/	Enn
O o	/o~ɒ/	Ō
Œ œ	/oɛ, oi/	Oss
P p	/pʰ/	Pī
Q q	/kʰ(ʉ,o)/	Kiv̄
R r	/ɽ/	Ārr
S s	/s~ɕ/	Ess
T t	/tʰ/	Tī
V v	/ʉ, w/	Iv̄/Vī
X x	/k͡s~t͡s/	Exx
Z z	/z~ʑ/	Zī
Ⱶ ⱶ	/ɨ/	Hāfv Eixx

Consonants

Elven consonant phonemes

		Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m (m)	n (n)
Stop	aspirated	pʰ (p)	tʰ (t)			kʰ (k,q,c)
	voiced	b (b)	d (d)			ɡ (g)
Affricate				ɽ (r)		k͡s (x)
Fricative	fortis	f (f)	s (s)
	voiced		z (z)
Approximant					j (i)	w (v)	ɦ (h)

Vowels

Elven short vowel phonemes

	Front	Central
		unrounded	rounded
Close	i (i)	ɨ (ⱶ)	ʉ (v)
Mid	ɛ (e)		o (o)
Open	æ (a)

Phonotactics

The language is very similar to its direct ancestor in terms of phonotactics, with the primary exception being that any consonant may appear in the coda of a syllable instead of only the phonemes /N/ and /Q/. In spite of this, all nasals syllable-finally are written with a n, and are not distinct phonemes.