Rinap

Background

Rinap (Kni Nape Rinhikhyr) was created for the fantasy world of Grundet in the beginning of 2013, and it was intended to be the main language of the seventh era Eastern Empire with over 10 million native speakers. This a priori language belongs to Herookian language family, but at the moment, it is the only one completed. The language itself suffered a decline during fifth and sixth era, but was soon revived and partly reconstructed based on ancient texts. The old Doslox writing system was also returned into use. Since the new language is a bit clumsy and spoken over a wide region, many different dialects appeared.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labio-dental	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	m			n		ɲ
Plosive	p b			t d			k g
Fricative		f v	θ ð	z s	ʃ ʒ		x	χ	h
Affricate				ts			kx
Approximant						j
Trill				r
Lateral app.				l

Phoneme /ɲ/ appears in the beginning of past participles such as 'nabeat' meaning 'gone', and 'ng' is pronounced as /ɲ/ in words such as kang /kɑɲ/ meaning time. 'Z' is often /ʒ/ in the beginning of words, but also if preceeded by /ɲɑ/. 'S' preceeding a consonant is often pronounced as /ʃ/. 'J' used at the end of a word is pronounced as /i/.

'H' is most often pronounced as /χ/, but also appears /x/ at the end of words, and sometimes /h/ before vowels in the beginning of words. 'H' is also pronounced as /f/ when preceeded by a non-sibilant frigative (such as /χ/ and /θ/) plus vowel: 'dohuho' becomes /doχu:fo/ (meaning 'many sheep').

Vowels

	Front	Back
Close	i y	u
Open-mid	ɛ œ	ɔ
Near-open	æ
Open		ɑ

Before vowels in the beginning of words, /y/ and /i/ become /jʷ/ and /j/.

Diphthongs

Diphthongs are very common in short words and come in great variety. Their pronunciation doesn't much differ from the combined vowel sounds, but the component sounds do come closer to each other, for example the most common 'ao' is /ao/ instead of /ɑɔ/ and ea /ea/ rather than /ɛɑ/. However, word forming and declension can produce stranger vowel combinations which are pronounced more easily by lengthening and/or modifying vowel sounds: thöa /θɜ:ɐ/ (Though the author is not sure about this)

Orthography

Writing system of Doslox has graphemes derived from pictograms, and their order is based on an old story ('Halox Dozkepyr' or Hunter's Day' which is where the name originates): [1]. Later, Wadoslox was developed to simplify the script and make it easier to read: [2]. Each grapheme represents a singe phoneme or syllable, but the words for original pictograms didn't sometimes even include the actual letter - rather the sound was thought to be essential to the word: for example, symbol for 'j' comes from 'nanyalt' /nɑnjɑlt/ meaning 'loved'. With Doslox, every word can be written without raising your pen of the paper.

Romanized versions and their pronunciation:

• A - /ɑ/ Symbol 'o' also used for their sun, Halla, as originally.
• K - /k/
• P - /p/
• D - /d/
• E - /ɛ/
• B - /b/
• H - /χ/, /x/ or /h/
• NI - /ni/ 'called'-symbol in names, e.g. 'Hithul ni-Xathen' means 'Hithul called-bear'
• KH - /kχ/
• NA - /ɲa/ Past participle prefix
• V - /v/
• F - /f/
• D - /d/
• M - /m/
• Ö - /œ/
• O - /ɔ/
• HO - /χɔ/
• L - /l/
• I - /i/
• W - /w/
• Y - /y/
• ZO - /ʒɔ/ Question-prefix
• R - /r/
• T - /t/
• TH - /θ/
• X - /ks/
• G - /g/
• Z - /z/ or /ʒ/
• S - /s/ or /ʃ/
• PH - /ph/
• Ä - /æ/
• J - /j/
• N - /n/
• HI - /hi/ Rarely used, most often for 'as'
• U - /u/