Nillíno

Nillíno
nillíño
Pronunciation	[niˈjiɲo]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2024
Native to	Nillíno Islands
Native speakers	391,000 (2014)
Language family	Sinatolean Naéllang Nillíno
Early forms	Proto-Sinatolean Proto-Naéllang
Official status
Official language in	Sinatolean Federation

Nillíno(nillíño, Nillíno: [niˈjiɲo], Spanish: lengua nillína, lengua de San Miguel) is a Sinatolean language spoken in the Nillíno Islands(Nillíno: nillíntalu), an archipelago historically colonised by the Spanish and dubbed Islas de San Miguel de la Mancha(Spanish for "Islands of Saint Michael of La Mancha"). Because of this history, Nillíno's orthography is primarily based on the Spanish alphabet, leading to the existence of letters such as ⟨ñ⟩ and digraphs such as ⟨ll⟩. Additionally, Nillíno also has many Spanish loanwords which have in turn influenced other neighbouring languages, such as mesa "table" or silla "chair", which became mesa and siya in Sinatolean. By number of native speakers, it is the 3rd most spoken Sinatolean language with 391,000 speakers, after Mowinda-Moyeng with 765,000 speakers.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Stop	p b	t		k
Nasal	m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Fricative		s z	ç	x
Semivowel	w		j
Lateral		l

/j/ is written as ⟨ll⟩, /x/ is written as ⟨j⟩, /ŋ/ is written as ⟨ng⟩ and /ɲ/ is written as ⟨ñ⟩. /k/ is written as both ⟨c⟩ and ⟨k⟩, though ⟨k⟩ is used before and /i/ or /e/, as ⟨ci⟩ or ⟨ce⟩ would be pronounced /çi/ or /çe/ respectively.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		ɯ u
Close-mid	e		o
Front	a

/ɯ/ is descended from Proto-Sinatolean *é and is written as ⟨ü⟩. /a/ is variably pronounced, from as far back as /ä̠/ to as far front as /æ/ from some speakers.

Prosody

Stress

Stress is marked with acute accents on vowels, ⟨á é í ó ú⟩. Because ⟨ü⟩ /ɯ/ already has a diacritic, the stress is not marked on ⟨ü⟩, but is still phonologically present, such as in sanün [saˈnɯn] "northern wind" and nücmaí [nɯkmaˈi] "in the thread"

Morphology

Ablaut

Like most Naéllang languages, Nillíno retains grammatical ablaut from Proto-Sinatolean, and, like in Proto-Sinatolean, ablaut is primarily used for three purposes: grammatical number, possession and negation. Nillíno words are primarily categorised in a-grade, i-grade and o-grade words.

Ablaut declensions for sana(wind), sen(person) and tolo(triggerfish)

	Number	Possession	Negation
A-grade	sona (plural)	sane (singular genitive)	sano ("not the wind")
I-grade	sün (plural)	sun ("their")	son ("not the person", "not that guy")
O-grade	telo (plural)	tele (singular genitive)	tulu ("not the triggerfish")