Scellan

Äivö (g:ghaaþime äivöme) is a close relative of Tíogall with mutations and vowel harmony.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Coronal	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m /m/	n /n/		ŋ /ŋ/
Stop	voiceless	p /p/	t /t/		k /k/
	voiced	b /b/	d /d/		g /g/
Spirant	voiceless	f /f/	þ /θ/		x /x/
	voiced	v /v/	ð /ð/
Sibilant			s /s/			h /h/
Liquid			r /r/
Approximant			l /l/	j /j/

Vowels

	Front				Back
	unrounded		rounded
	short	long	short	long	short	long
Close	i /i/	ii /iː/	y /y/	yy /yː/	u /ʊ/	uu /uː/
Close-mid	e /e/	ee /eː/	ö /ø/	öö /øː/	o /o/	oo /oː/
Open	ä /æ/	ää /æː/			a /ɑ/	aa /ɑː/

There are also many diphthongs, among them ie yö uo.

Morphology

Nouns

The definite article is a suffix -me for nouns ending in a V or a resonant and -ime otherwise: duuvooŋ 'a teacher', duuvooŋme 'the teacher'.

Feminine nouns must undergo lenition in the singular: k:xuuþ 'an animal', k:xuuþime 'the animal'.

The plural suffix marked as follows:

• -a/-ä for masculine nouns ending in a consonant
• -ar/-är for feminine nouns

Adjectives

Adjectives must also inflect for definiteness, in addition to number and gender.

Copula

Äivö has a copula lä- which inflects regularly in the present tense.

As in Welsh, the copula is also used with progressive verbs: Lää duuvooŋme de ientäx. "The teacher (male) is sleeping."

Verbs

The Äivö verbal system is very different from Tíogall, and much closer to Bhadhagha.

Äivö analogized the analytic forms of verbs to all persons, and fused the personal pronoun with the verb.

Äivö is not split-ergative, unlike Tíogall.

Perfect tenses use the construction tänn followed by the verbal noun.

Present

molaigh ná -> molanna "I thank"
molaigh fiar -> molar "thou thankest"
molaigh hú -> molu "he thanks"
molaigh hí -> moli "she thanks"
molaigh -> mola "... thanks" (with nonpronominal subjects)
molaigh gámh -> molo "we thank" (both exc. and inc.!)
molaigh séid -> molad "ye thank"
molaigh hár -> molar "they thank"
Impersonal: molov "one thanks"

Analogously for front-vowel verbs (the following example is synem 'tune'):

synmännä, synmär, synmy, synmi, synmä, synmö, synmäd, synmär, synmöv.

Past

The past tense is marked by a séimhiú on the verb as in Irish, except that the suffixes are the same as in the present tense. If the initial consonant of the verb is not lenitable, then the particle go or g' is used before it. This comes from a construction that translates to "it was the case that ...", which also survives in Bhadhagha.

Future

The future tense is derived from the Old Tíogall future tense:

moltanna, moltar, moltu, molti, molto, moltad, moltar, moltov

Verbal noun

The verbal noun is much more regular than in Tíogall, and is consistently marked with -ax/-äx.

Vocabulary

Äivö vocabulary is much more purely Talmic than that of either Tíogall or Bhadhagha; however, a handful of words are from an unknown substrate language, such as ysvä 'knot'.