Circular Gallifreyan

Introduction

Gallifreyan is the language spoken by the Time Lords of Gallifrey from the British TV show Doctor Who.

The Time Lords are a time-aware species capable of traveling through time and space who have taken upon themselves to protect the Web of Time from other time traveling species.

This is a fan created language made for the fans without any intention to be legally bound or profiting from it.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labio-Dental	Dental	Alveolar	Post-Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Labio-Velar	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	m			n		[ɳ]1	ɲ		ŋ
Plosive	pʰ / b			t / tʰ / d					k / kʰ / kʲ / g		ʔ2
Fricative		v	θ	s / z	ʃ / ʒ		ç		x / ɣ	[χ]3	h
Affricate				t͡s	t͡ʃ / d͡ʒ				k͡x
Lateral approximant				l			[ʎ]4
Approximant				[ɹ]5			j	w
Thrill	[ʙ]6			r							h͡r
Implosive	[ɓ]7								[ɠ]8

1. a) Only between or before vowels. b) For cases markers.
2. Only between or before consonants
3. Used when b is before any vowel at the beginning of a word, allophone of /b/

Vowels

	Front	Near-Front	Central	Back
Close	i			u
Near-Close		ʏ
Close-mid	e / ẽ		ɘ	o
Open-mid	œ
Open	a / ã			ɑ / ɒ

Epenthesis

Epenthetic vowels are a common occurrence in Gallifreyan. Each vowel has its own rule for epenthesis:

• [e]

     - between consonants + θ, ç, ʃ, ʒ
     - after final d͡ʒ or t͡ʃ 
     - after orthographic i between v, θ, s, z, ʃ, x

• [a]

     - after [t] if next vowel syllable has [e] if not then [e]

• [ɑ]

     - before kr + consonant - 
     - after final j

• [o]

     - If word begins with tr + consonant add o after tr

• [ə]

     - after words ending with ts, b, θ, v, k͡x, g preceded by consonants
     - before l preceded by consonant (if not in final position)

Some words might experience irregular occurrences of epenthetic vowels.

Elision

[ə] at the end of a word is dropped when followed by a word beginning with a vowel. [n] and [ɲ] are also elided when they begin intervocalic consonant clusters.

Consonant Mutation

Gallifreyan takes a lot from the Welsh and Gaelic consonant mutation ruleset, and, as the Celtic languages, the mutation is mostly initial in Modern Gallifreyan except in some archaic words that still play by the Old High Gallifreyan agglutinative system. This exceptions are mostly rare and are commonly dropped in casual speech. Gallifreyan has three mutations which are only phonetical and not represented on writing.

Standard	1st Degree	2nd Degree	3rd Degree	English
porʏm	borʏm	vorʏm		cable
tod͡ʒeθiesk	dod͡ʒeθiesk	θod͡ʒeθiesk		mouth
kɒmor	gamor	xamor		child
t͡siria		ziria		aunt
t͡ʃoupri	d͡ʒoupri			elbow
xejuvχan	ɣejuvχan			ask
ɲad͡ʒe	ɳad͡ʒe			fish
brialenk			ɓrialenk	cage
goneθ			ɠoneθ	sun

1st Degree Mutation

The general rule is that voiceless consonants become voiced or disappear entirely. The only exception is the nasal phoneme [ɲ] that becomes [ɳ]. This devoicing mutation is common when any word is next to any of the following situations:

• Nature or People class singular nouns with the article "due" or the word for one.
• Quality nouns accompanied by a quantifier.
• Momentary quality nouns used with nature or people class singular nouns.
• Words following spatial prepositions.
• Nouns following the number two
• Nouns after the 2nd and 3rd singular possessives.
• The second or third element of compound words.
• Verbs with aspect markers.
• Verbs in the negative form.

2nd Degree Mutation

Voiceless stops and the affricate [t͡s] become fricatives. This mutation happens in any of the following scenarios:

• After the conjunction "and".
• After any of the "with" prepositions.
• Singular nouns of the Space class after the number three.

3rd Degree Mutation

• after consonant ending prepositions.
• after consonant ending pronouns or possessives.

Prosthesis

Modern Gallifreyan has two forms of prosthesis:

r-

[r] is added if a word begins with a vowel after the 3rd singular and all plural possessives. Also for concepts about time after the preposition "in".

u-

The vowel [u] is added before words beginning with voiced fricatives [s] and [ʃ] when followed by another consonant.

skegletorah (language) — [uskegletorah]

Orthography

Circular Gallifreyan is mostly written in a series of interlocking circles. Each word is composed of other circles and a sentence is encapsulated by a yet bigger circle. A word is written inside a word denoter and each word goes inside a sentence paradigm, which will be explained later on.

Consonants

They are classified by consonant bases and then sub-divided by consonant add-ons.

On the following table we have to the right the bases and on the top the add-ons. The straight line under the base symbols represents the word denoter and its relation with the bases:

	m	b		t	d	p
	n		ŋ			ɲ
	k			w	g	pʰ	tʰ	kʰ
	r	x	ɣ	ç	rː͡h
	ʃ			l	ʒ
	s	z	t͡ʃ	d͡ʒ	t͡s
	v			θ
	h	qy		k͡x	j
		ʔ

Vowels

They are as well classified by a base called dot bases and these divided by directional lines. Each vowel is written along the consonant that comes before. If the word starts with a vowel or there are no consonants before the vowel is placed on the word denoter instead. On the table, the right column represents the dot bases and the top arrows the directional lines. The semi-circles on the right symbolize the consonant bases.