Chlouvānem

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Chlouvānem, natively Chlouvānaumi dældā ("language of the Chlouvānem people"), is the most spoken language on the planet of Calémere (Lac.: Liloejāmna). It is the official language of the Chlouvānem land (Chlouvānaumi bhælā), and a lingua franca in many areas of the eastern part of the continent of Evandor. Despite the fact that local vernaculars in most of the Chlouvānem lands are in fact daughter languages of Chlouvānem or creoles based on it, the Chlouvānaumi dældā is a fully living language as every Chlouvānem person is bilingual in it and in the local vernacular, and in fact in the last half century the Chlouvānem language itself has been replacing some vernaculars as internal migrations have become more and more common. About 1,4 billion people on the planet define themselves as native Chlouvānem speakers, more than for any other Calémerian language.

External History

Chlouvānem is the ninth radically restructured version of Laceyiam; I started creating it in late November 2016 as I found some parts of my conworld which were too unrealistic to work - and as such by changing the whole conworld I had to change the language. I took that opportunity to change some things in the grammar that, while I liked them and they worked well, I wanted to do in some different way — mainly this arises from my love of more complex inflection patterns. As such, compared to Laceyiam, Chlouvānem has much more influences from Sanskrit and Lithuanian (which always were my main influences anyway); other natlangs that influenced me a lot are Russian, Latvian, Icelandic, Proto-Indo-European, (Biblical) Hebrew, Latin, and Japanese. Still it is an a priori language and, despite having much in common with all of these (particularly with the IE ones), is also strikingly different (the Austronesian morphosyntactic alignment, morphological expression of evidentiality and more broadly the particular emphasis on moods probably being the most noticeable things). Moreover, I tried to create a language very different from my native language (Italian) while keeping many - not so apparent - similarities.
The morphology of Chlouvānem is very different from Laceyiam, though many words are still the same (like smrāṇa (spring), junai (foot), jāyim (girl), saṃhāram (boy)).

As I mentioned before, Chlouvānem is the latest version of the conlang for my main conculture. I started sketching conlangs back when I was 9 or 10 but only started interesting myself into linguistics seven years later - in 2014 - and since then I started doing more "serious" conlangs (the earlier ones were more like relexes of my native language, Italian). Ideally, Chlouvānem is the refined version of all of these languages, but except for a few recurring words (like maila (water) or hulyn (woman)) it is only comparable to those languages I have been creating since July 2015.

Chlouvānem is mainly thought for my conworld, but more than any other conlang of mine it is quite on the border between an art- and a heartlang.

Phonology

Orthography

Consonants

Vowels

Prosody

Stress

Intonation

Phonotactics

Morphophonology

Morphology

Nouns - Halenī

The Chlouvānem noun (haloe, pl. halenī) is highly inflected: it declines for three numbers (singular, dual, plural), and eleven cases (direct, vocative, accusative, ergative, genitive, translative, exessive, essive, dative, ablative, and locative). Nouns also have grammatical gender, being divided in three classes (called dragon, lotus, and parrot based on nouns included in them[1]).

Gender

Genders and declensions are dependent on the form of the noun. Due to the prevailing endings in direct case, dragon nouns are also called the s-class; lotus nouns the m-class; and parrot nouns the h-class:

Dragon nouns (kaṃšūlñeis halenī):

  • 1s: nouns ending in -as or -ās
  • 2s: nouns ending in -us or -ūs
  • 3s: nouns ending in -is or -īs
  • 4s: nouns ending in -oe /ˈɔə̯/

Lotus nouns (yujamñeis halenī):

  • 1m: nouns ending in -am, -em, -ām, -ėm, or any vowel plus -n
  • 2m: nouns ending in -um or -ūm
  • 3m: nouns ending in -im or -īm
  • 4m: nouns ending in -ai

Parrot nouns (geltařñeis halenī):

  • 1h: nouns ending in -a, -ah, , or -āh
  • 2h: nouns ending in , -eh, or -ėh (and a few exceptions in -oê /ɔˈɛ/)
  • 3h: nouns ending in -uh or -ūh
  • 4h: nouns ending in -ih or -īh (plus a few exceptional ones in -i)
  • 5h: nouns ending in -a which have ablaut-conditioned variations in their stems in different cases

Adjectives and adverbs

Verbs

Pronouns

Numerals - Mālūye

Chlouvānem has a decimal numeral system which has however a base-5 sub-base for some numbers (mainly 5 and 11-19) and a base-20 borrowed one for the tens.

Numbers have six different forms: cardinal, ordinal, collective, distributive, adverbial/multiplicative, and fractionary. Cardinal 1, 2, and 3 are adjectives, as are all ordinal and collective ones; 1-4 have separate adverbial forms, while all other ones have an invariable adjective used as multiplicative and a derived adverb used as adverbial. All distributive, fractionary, and cardinal (except 1-3) numbers are invariable.

Digit Cardinal Ordinal Collective Distributive Adv./Multiplicative Fractionary
0 ajrā (ajrāyendes) (ajrājes) (ajrauṣā) (lājrā)
1 leil
leilum
leila
lahīlas leilajāsis leiluṣā leilaϑit / lāleil
(lāleilum, lāleila)
leilaskā
2 dani
danīm
danīh
hælinaikas daniajāsis daniṣā daniϑit / lādani
(lādanīm, lādanīh)
danīrṣkā
3 tarvas
tarvam
tarvė
tarvendes tarvajāsis tarvuṣā tarvaϑit / lātarvas
(lātarvam, lātarvė)
tarveṃskā
4 nahoê nahėbindes nahėñjāsis nahėbuṣā nahėbāϑit / lānahoê nahėbiṃskā
5 švā švājindes švāyajāsis švauṣā lāšvā švajiṃskā
6 tulū'a tulū'endes tulū'ajāsis tulū'uṣā lātulū'a tulū'eṃskā
7 chīka chīkendes chīkajāsis chīcuṣā lāchīka chīkeṃskā
8 teitė teitendes teitajāsis teiteṣā lāteitė teiteṃskā
9 moja mojendes mojajāsis mojuṣā lāmoja mojeṃskā
10 na'ikām na'ikāmindes na'ikāñjes na'ikāṃṣā lāna'ikām na'ikāmiṃskā
11 lelišvatī lelišvatīlindes lelišvatījes lelišvatīṣā lālelišvatī lelišvatīliṃskā
12 danešvatī danešvatīlindes danešvatījes danešvatīṣā lādanešvatī danešvatīliṃskā
13 tarošvati tarošvatīlindes tarošvatījes tarošvatīṣā lātarošvatī tarošvatīliṃskā
14 nahėšvatī nahėšvatīlindes nahėšvatījes nahėšvatīṣā lānahėšvatī nahėšvatīliṃskā
15 švāmašvatī švāmašvatīlindes švāmašvatījes švāmašvatīṣā lāšvāmašvatī švāmašvatīliṃskā
16 tulūšvatī tulūšvatīlindes tulūšvatījes tulūšvatīṣā lātulūšvatī tulūšvatīliṃskā
17 chīcæšvatī chīcæšvatīlindes chīcæšvatījes chīcæšvatīṣā lāchīcæšvatī chīcæšvatīliṃskā
18 teitašvatī teitašvatīlindes teitašvatījes teitašvatīṣā lāteitašvatī teitašvatīliṃskā
19 moješvatī moješvatīlindes moješvatījes moješvatīṣā lāmoješvatī moješvatīliṃskā
20 ekāma ekāmendes ekāmajāsis ekāṃṣā laikāma ekāmeṃskā

Particles

Syntax

Constituent order

Noun phrase

Verb phrase

Sentence phrase

Dependent clauses

Example texts

Other resources

  1. ^ Dragon is kaṃšūs, lotus is yujam, and parrot is geltah.