Chlouvānem

Chlouvānem
chlǣvānumi dældā
Pronunciation	[[Help:IPA|c͡ɕʰɴ̆ɛːʋaːnumi dɛɴ̆daː]]
Created by	Lili21
Date	Dec 2016
Setting	Calémere
Ethnicity	Chlouvānem
Native speakers	1,450,000,000 (3874 (642410))
Language family	Lahob Chlouvānem
Official status
Official language in	lands of the Inquisition, Brono, Fathan, Qualdomailor, Gorjan (regional)
Regulated by	Inquisitorial Office of the Language (dældi plušamila)

Chlouvānem, natively chlǣvānumi dældā ("language of the Chlouvānem people"), is the most spoken language on the planet of Calémere (Chl.: Liloejāṃrya). It is the official language of the Inquisition (murkadhāna) and its country, the Chlouvānem lands (chlǣvānumi babhrām), the main lingua franca across vast areas of Márusúturon - most importantly Brono, Fathan, Qualdomailor, and all other countries of the former Kaiṣamā, and, due to cultural exchanges and influences in the last seven hundred years, also a well known language in Greater Skyrdagor.
It is the Yunyalīlti religion's liturgical language.

The language currently known as Chlouvānem was first attested about 2400 years ago in documents from the Lällshag civilization, as the language of a Lahob-speaking people that settled in the southern part of the Lāmiejāya-Lāmberah plain, particularly near Lūlunīkam Lake. Around year 4000 of the Chlouvānem calendar (itself an adaptation of the Lällshag one), the Chlamiṣvatrā, the great Prophet of the Yunyalīlta, lived and taught her doctrine in the Chlouvānem language, paving the way for it to gain the role of most important language and lingua franca in the at the time massively linguistically fragmented lower Plain. While the Chlamiṣvatrā's language is what we now call "Archaic Chlouvānem" (chlǣvānumi sārvire dældā), most of the Yunyalīlti doctrine as we now know it is in the later stage of Classical Chlouvānem (chlǣvānumi lallapårṣire dældā), a koiné developed in the mid-5th millennium. Since then, for nearly two millennia, this classical language has been kept alive as the lingua franca in the Yunyalīlti world, resulting in the state of diglossia that persists today.

Despite the fact that local vernaculars in most of the Inquisition are in fact daughter languages of Chlouvānem or creoles based on it, the chlǣvānumi dældā is a fully living language as every Chlouvānem person is bilingual in it and in the local vernacular; in the last half century there have been instances where the classical language itself has been replacing some vernaculars due to internal migrations, both forced and voluntary ones. About 1,4 billion people on the planet define themselves as native Chlouvānem speakers, more than for any other Calémerian language.

Chlouvānem (not counting separately its own daughter languages) is by far the most spoken of the Lahob languages (more than 99.98% of Lahob speakers), and the only one of the family to have been written before the contemporary era. It is, however, the geographical outlier of the family, due to the almost 10,000 km long migration of the Ur-Chlouvānem from the Proto-Lahob homeland at the northern tip of Evandor. Chlouvānem, due to its ancientness, still retains much of the complex morphology of Proto-Lahob, but its vocabulary has been vastly changed by language contact, especially after the Chlouvānem settled in the Plain, where they effectively became a métis ethnicity by intermixing with neighboring peoples.

→ See Chlouvānem lexicon for a list of common words grouped by theme.

External History

Chlouvānem is what I - lilie21 - consider my main conlang, as it is the spiritual descendant of all conlangs I've created focussing the most on. Actually my earliest conlangs were not really conlangs, just some strange-sounding, often natlang-mimicking relexes of Italian; it was only when I was 17 that I found myself randomly reading about Ancient Greek online and that ignited in me the flame of love for linguistics - after a few months, I discovered conlanging sites and started making conlangs that were actually something more worthy of the name of "conlang", i.e. made starting from even the slightest hint of linguistic knowledge, and therefore not a relex (by the way, the first conlang I did this way was Valdimelic, which is in some way echoed in Qualdomelic).

With time, the spiritual ancestors of Chlouvānem eventually became more and more fixed at least on certain, basic characteristics (e.g. the use of Austronesian alignment, or some 90% of the phonemic inventory), but I was refining those languages more and more every version.
Chlouvānem itself 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, together with Persian, my main influences anyway); other natlangs that influenced me a lot are Russian, Adyghe, Old Church Slavonic, Proto-Indo-European, Matses, Tucano, Nambikwara, Latin, and Japanese, while its actual in-world use is inspired by Arabic. 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... oh, and the duodecimal number system, obviously). Moreover, I tried to create a language divergent from general Western European IE languages while keeping many - not so apparent - similarities, and, most importantly, I always tried not to just copy features from natlangs, but adapt them in some way, so that the influence is crystal clear but the actual feature works in a somewhat different way. I don't know if I've always succeeded in doing this, but at least this was - and still is - one of my main guidelines.
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)). The name of the people in the language itself used to have -ou- too, but then I changed historical phonology just enough that it caused that to become -ǣ-. Still I kept -ou- in the English name as I had used it too much and for too long in order to change it so easily.

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.

Variants

Chlouvānem as spoken today is the standardized version of the literary language of the mid-5th millennium Lāmiejāya plain, the one in which most sacred texts of the Yunyalīlta are written. Since then, the language has been kept alive for more than 1500 years and counting in a diglossic state with many descendant and creole languages developing in the areas that gradually came under Chlouvānem control, and Classical Chlouvānem is in fact a major defining factor of Chlouvānem ethnicity, enabling the existence of a single cultural area spread across half a continent despite the individual areas each having their own vernaculars.

Pronunciations

It’s not easy to define “dialects” for Chlouvānem, due to this history: all true dialects of Chlouvānem eventually developed into distinct vernaculars, and today’s regional variations are as such defined as “pronunciations” of Chlouvānem, in some cases moderately divergent from the standard one. Chlouvānem sources refer to them as babhrāyāṃsai “land-sounds”, but they do not only vary in pronunciation. Each major geographic area of the Inquisition has its own pronunciation; present-day standard Chlouvānem is based on the pronunciation in the city of Līlasuṃghāṇa around year 6350, but the local pronunciation has somewhat diverged, so that the city where the traditional pronunciation is closest to the standard is Galiākina, some 300 km further west. Local pronunciations are typically divided in six major groups by geographic areas:

• Jade Coast, Rainforest, and Eastern Plain (lūṇḍhyalēnei nanayi no naleidhoyi no), including pronunciations of the eastern part of the Lāmiejāya plain, the Jade Coast, and its interior (the main Chlouvānem heartlands and the northern parts of the rainforest). Standard Chlouvānem is one of these.
• Western Plain and Sand Coast (samvāldhoyi chleblēnei no), including the whole western part of the Lāmiejāya plain and the Sand Coast in the central-western Inquisition.
• Far Eastern (lallanalejñutei), including the Far Eastern part of the Inquisition (both mainland and insular); the dioceses of the so-called Near East are frequently considered a transitional zone between this and the Eastern Plain pronunciation group.
• Eastern (nalejñutei), in the Chlouvānem East (the former Toyubeshi area).
• Northeastern (kehamnalejñutei), in the Northeast of the Inquisition; note that the most remote areas (the far northern taiga and the insular part), due to continuous and relatively recent immigration, have a pronunciation still closer to Standard Chlouvānem.
• Western (samvālyutei), in the Western dioceses and in the coasts of the desert. As these were formerly Dabuke areas, they use distinctly more Dabuke terms than all other speakers.

Areas that do not fit in any of these groupings are often recent colonizations (or “Chlouvānemizations”), like e.g. the northern coast on the Skyrdegan Inner Sea, that do not have a truly distinct pronunciation, being a mix of speakers from different areas and tending to be very close to Standard Chlouvānem.

Vernaculars

Most local vernaculars of the Inquisition (babhrāmaivai, sg. babhrāmaiva, literally “land word(s)”) are, linguistically, the daughter languages of Classical Chlouvānem. They are the result of normal language evolution with, in most areas, enormous influences by substrata.

Actually, only a bit more than half of the Inquisition has a vernacular that is a true daughter language - most areas conquered in the last 600 years, thus since the late 6th millennium, speak a creole language, with an almost completely Chlouvānem lexicon and a grammar which shows semplifications and Chlouvānem-odd traits uncommon to languages of the heartlands. It is however widely agreed on that the Eastern Chlouvānem languages, despite being considered true daughter languages, have a large and long creolization history.

The main division for local vernaculars - or Chlouvānem languages - is the one in groups, as few of them are standardized and large areas are dialect continua where it is extremely difficult to determine which dialects belong to a particular language and which ones do not. Furthermore, most people speak of their vernacular as “the word of [village name]”, and always refer to them as local variants of the same Chlouvānem language, without major distinctions from the national language which is always Classical Chlouvānem. Individual “languages” are thus simply defined starting from the diocese they’re spoken in, so for example the Nanašīrami language includes all dialects spoken in the diocese of Nanašīrama, despite those spoken in the eastern parts of the diocese being closer to those spoken in Takajñanta than to the Nanašīrami dialect of Līlasuṃghāṇa - which has, however, lots of common points with the Lanamilūki Valley dialects of Talæñoya to the south.
Note that the word maiva, in Chlouvānem, only identifies a language spoken in a certain area which is typically considered to belong to a wider language community, independent of its origin. It does not have any pejorative meaning of stigmatization, unlike examples like e.g. lingua vs. dialetto in Italian.

Main local vernaculars by macroarea (Tribunal):

• Jade Coast, Eastern Plain, Northern Plain, parts of the Central Plain
  • Eastern Plain and Jade Coast dialect continuum (naleidhoyi lūṇḍhyalēnei no maivai) — spoken in the eastern half of the Lāmiejāya plain, the Jade Coast (littoral and interior), and the northern part of the rainforest. If Chlouvānem itself is not counted as being spoken natively, then this dialect continuum constitutes Calémere's most spoken language by number of native speakers.
  • Northern Plain dialect continuum (kehaṃdhoyi maivai) — spoken in the northern Lāmiejāya plain, in the foothills of the Camipāṇḍa mountains. It has traits of both the Eastern Plain and the Western Plain continua, but also has its odd features common throughout the area but lacking in the other two groups. However, due to internal migration, the linguistic border is rather odd, especially the one with the Eastern Plain continuum: the contemporary vernacular of Mamaikala, the largest city of the Northern Plain, as well as nearby areas on the mid-Lāmberah river, is undoubtedly Eastern, despite being well into Northern-speaking territory.
• Western Plain, Inland Southwest, parts of the Central Plain
  • Western Plain dialect continuum (samvāldhoyi maivai) — spoken in the western half of the Lāmiejāya plain, including the Inland Southwest
• South and Coastal Southwest
  • Jungle language (nanaimaiva) — term for the Chlouvānem daughter language spoken across most of the South, including nearby islands. Due to the historical importance of Tariatindē and Lūlunimarta in the Chlouvānem Age of Discovery, the nanaimaiva is sometimes considered one of the most prestigious vernaculars and, almost uniquely for a Chlouvānem vernacular, it has contributed quite a few words to foreign languages.
  • Many inland villages in the rainforest have their own local language, often not related to Chlouvānem. Large parts of the area are therefore trilingual, with the local language being spoken alongside Classical Chlouvānem and a local nanaimaiva dialect - often described as being "Tariatindē-type", "Kælšamīṇṭa-type", or "Lūlunimarta-type" from its similarity to the three main dialects.
  • Sand Coast dialect continuum (chleblēnei maivai) — spoken across the Sand Coast, i.e. the Coastal Southwest tribunal. The dialects of Vāstarilēnia, at the southwesternmost tip of the main subcontinental body, have mixed Sand Coastal and nanaimaiva traits.
• Near East
  • Near Eastern dialect continuum (mūtiānalejñutei maivai) — a dialect continuum spoken in the Near East, the area roughly between Āgrajātia and Yambrajātia in the west and the Cāllikāneh mountains in the east.
  • Rǣrumi (ræ:æron u xæræž; Chl.: rǣrumi dældā) — the Fargulyn language (distantly related to Skyrdagor) of the historically nomadic Rǣrai, which were settled in Kaiṣamā times in a hilly area between the Near East and the Northern Far East, nowadays the semi-ethnic diocese of Rǣrajāṇai.
  • Kanoë-Pulin languages (kanoyēpulin ga dældai) — a language family mostly spoken in the Kahaludāh mountains and hills in Yarañšūṇa, Tumidajātia, and parts of Kotaijātia and Naitontā. Tumidumi (sokaw y eetumið; Chl. tumidumi dældā), spoken by the Tumidai people of the ethnic diocese of Tumidajātia, is by far the most spoken.
  • Kotayumi (kotaii šot; Chl. kotayumi dældā) — a Yalikamian language (likely distantly related to the Kanoë-Pulin family) spoken by the Kotayai, indigenous people of the ethnic diocese of Kotaijātia.
• Southern Far East and Southeastern islands
  • Katamadelī (katamadelī maivai) — dialect continuum of Chlouvānem daughter languages spoken on the western coast of the Far East and its interior, from far southern Pēmbajātia up to the southeasternmost tip near Ehaliħombu. Katamadelē is a traditional, pre-Chlouvānem name for today's Hadьlakāna diocese, later extended to the whole area.
  • Naleilēnei (naleilēnei maivai) — the dialect continuum of Chlouvānem daughter languages spoken - as the name says - on the eastern coast of the Far East, from Torašitā in the north to Daihāgaiya in the south.
  • Hūnakañumi (huwënaganь sisaat; Chl. hūnakañumi dældā) — the language of the Hūnakañai, the indigenous people of the ethnic diocese of Hūnakañjaiṭa; as with many Near- and Far Eastern languages, it belongs to the Yalikamian languages. It is however spoken only in sparsely populated hilly areas, and the diocese is predominantly Chlouvānem, including the macroregional metropolis and tenth-largest city of the Inquisition, Līlekhaitē.
  • Tendukumi (tănduk sisod; Chl. tendukumi dældā) — a Yalikamian language spoken by the Tendukai people of the ethnic diocese of Tendukijātia. By percentage of speakers in its native area, it is one of the most spoken languages among officially recognized ones in ethnic diocese, with about 41% of people in Tendukijātia speaking it. The diocese, however, is the least populated in the tribunal.
  • Niyobumi (niyyube sesath; Chl. niyobumi dældā) — a Yalikamian language spoken in the hilly areas of Niyobajātia ethnic diocese.
  • Kumilanāyi (kumilanāyi maiva) — a Chlouvānem language spoken on Kumilanai and neighboring islands.
  • Tātanībāmi (etek tatënibång; Chl. tātanībāmi dældā) — the main language spoken on the island of Tātanībāma, in most of the other islands in the Haichā group, and on Tahīɂa. The languages of the Leyunakā islands - commonly known as Northern Leyunakī and Southern Leyunakī - are also related to Tātanībāmi, with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility.
  • Tanomalī (nzɛk pɔb; Chl.: tanomalī dældā) — the indigenous language of Tanomaliē island, the southernmost of the Southeastern archipelago.
• Northern Far East
  • Kaitajaši (kaitajaši maivai) — a dialect continuum spoken in most of the Northern Far Eastern tribunal, the historically Toyubeshian lands.
  • Modern Toyubeshian (úat Vyānxāi, úat Từaobát, úat Xợothiāp or other names; Chl.: tayubešumi tāvyāṣusire dældā) — a koiné language for the dialects widely spoken in the inland areas of the former Toyubeshian lands. The common name is actually misleading, as it is not a daughter language of Toyubeshian (the former courtly language the loans in Chlouvānem and most local placenames came from), but of a related language. Due to the common koiné it is considered a single language; however, dialects on the eastern and western ends on the area are for the most part mutually unintelligible.
• East and Northeast
  • Hachitami-Šimatogi (hachitami šimatogi no maivai) — the Chlouvānem language spoken in most of the Eastern dioceses of Hachitama, Šimatoga, Utsunaya as well as northern Šiyotami and rural Padeikola. Often considered the northwesternmost extent of the Kaitajaši dialect continuum.
  • Northeastern creoles (helaṣyuñci maivai) – a family of related Chlouvānem-based creoles spoken as vernaculars across most of the Eastern and Northeastern tribunals.
  • Nalakhojumi (üj nolomħoj; Chl.: nalakhojumi dældā) — a Nahlan language spoken in most of the ethnic diocese of Nalakhoñjaiṭa by the Nalakhojai people. The city of Lānita, main urban area of the diocese, however, is almost entirely Chlouvānem-speaking.
  • Halyañumi (üš hælyaney; Chl.: halyañumi dældā) — a Nahlan language spoken by the Halyanyai people in the ethnic diocese of Halyanijaiṭa. Usage is highest in the northern part of the diocese and lowest in the metropolitan area of Īdisa, the largest inland metropolitan area of the Northeast.
  • Kūdavumi (kowdao hüüj; Chl.: kūdavumi dældā) — a Nahlan language spoken in the ethnic diocese of Kūdavīma by the Kūdavai people. While having only a small number of speakers, some words from it are common in the vernaculars of all of the Northeast, likely due to the historically nomadic nature of the Kūdavai.
  • Čathinow (čathinowtawkow; Chl.: cathinauvyumi dældā) — main vernacular in the ethnic diocese of Seikamvēyeh. It is one of only two official languages of ethnic dioceses - together with Bazá - which is official in other countries, in this case it is the national language in the bordering country of Nēčathiwēyē as well as in the latter's northern neighbour Čiwēynac.
• North
  • Hålvareni (hålvareni maivai) — a family of Chlouvānem-based creoles spoken in the dioceses of the Hålvaren plateau (Mārmalūdven, Doyukitama, Telyegāša, Kayūkānaki).
  • Dahelyumi (dæhæng pop; Chl.: dahelyumi dældā) — a language isolate (often subject to controversial classification theories) spoken by the Daheliai people of the ethnic diocese of Dahelijaiṭa, Northern tribunal, mostly in rural villages.
  • Ogotet' (oghotet' tuyun; Chl. augatethumi dældā) — a language, related to its neighbor Čathinow, spoken by the Ogotet' people of the diocese of Mevikthænai. Most Ogotet' live, however, in the bordering country of Ogotet'hep or as the extremely large Ogotet' diaspora, very numerous across Greater Skyrdagor.
  • Saṃhayoli (saṃhayoli maiva) — a Chlouvānem-based creole spoken in the diocese of Saṃhayolah and parts of Maichlahåryan.
  • Moamatemposisy (ta fewåwanie ta mwåmatimbušihь; Chl.: måmatempuñiyi dældā) — a variant of Brono-Fathanic spoken as a vernacular in the northern part of the diocese of Hivampaida. It is a triglossic area, as for official purposes, aside from Chlouvānem, Standard Bronic is also used.
  • In the whole North there are various pockets of Skyrdagor speakers due to the vicinity of Greater Skyrdagor, especially in Maichlahåryan (which was a part of Gorjan until the Kaiṣamā era). Skyrdagor varieties spoken here are mostly similar to Gorjonur, the variant spoken in the Greater Skyrdegan country of Gorjan.

[West to be added]

Some areas of the Inquisition do not have a major, local vernacular aside from the use of Classical Chlouvānem. The reason for all of these is that they were only recently (in the last two centuries) annexed to the Chlouvānem world and often there was no single local dominant language, so that there has been an often radical shift to Chlouvānem; some of these areas had also been Western colonies before being annexed by the Chlouvānem. These areas are:

• all of the Northwest with the exception of the northern two thirds of Tapirjātia diocese. This includes the densely populated areas of Ārūpalkvabī and Līnajotia, but also the virtually uninhabited deserts of Samvālšaṇṭrē and Ūnikadīltha.
• the Nukahucē atoll chain, uninhabited before Chlouvānem settlement
• the Kāmilbausa islands, also previously uninhabited
• the far northern islands of Hokujaši and Aratāram as well as the inland taiga of Kēhamijāṇa, whose original inhabitants mostly shifted to Chlouvānem. Hokujaši island is however notable for the emergence on it of a peculiar koiné dialect of the Eastern Plain-Jade Coast continuum, as most of its original Chlouvānem settlers came from that area. This dialect, however, has been shrinking for decades and is today only spoken by a few people in rural areas, and many Hokujašeyi people do not even know of its existence.

Phonology - Yāṃstarlā

Chlouvānem is phonologically very conservative from Proto-Lahob as it has not had a lot of changes - however, those few it had have had the effect of strongly raising the total number of phonemes, developing a few distinctions that, while not rare themselves, are rarely found all together in the same language.

Consonants - Hīmbeyāṃsai

Chlouvānem has a large consonant inventory, with 39 different consonants, divided into seven categories: labials, dentals, palatalized dentals, retroflexes, palatals, velars, and laryngeals. The Chlouvānem term for "consonant" is hīmbeyāṃsa, a compound of hīmba (colour) and yāṃsa (sound). The following table organizes consonants by their behaviour - thus, for example, the treatment of the phonetic affricates /c͡ɕ(ʰ) ɟ͡ʑ(ʱ)/ as stops.

→ PoA ↓ Manner		Labials hærṣoke	Dentals aṣṭrūke	Retroflexes āḍhyāsūke	Palatals dehāṃlūdvyūke	Velars bhyodilūdvyūke	Laryngeals diṇḍhūke
Nasals1 mantaiyai		m m	n n2	ṇ ɳ	ñ ɲ	l [ŋ～ɴ]3	ṃ ɴ4
Stops aspṛšē	Unvoiced uṣmąlkai	p p ph pʰ	t t̪ th t̪ʰ	ṭ ʈ ṭh ʈʰ	c c͡ɕ ch c͡ɕʰ	k k～q kh kʰ～qʰ	ɂ ʔ ƾ ʡ5
	Voiced lāmąlkai	b b bh bʱ	d d̪ dh d̪ʱ	ḍ ɖ ḍh ɖʱ	j ɟ͡ʑ jh ɟ͡ʑʱ	g ɡ～ɢ gh ɡʱ～ɢʱ
Fricatives kāvubuñjñē			s s	ṣ ʂ	š ɕ		h ɦ ħ ħ6
Approximants taberdīyai		v ʋ7			y j		r ʀ8 l ɴ̆9

Table notes:

1. All nasals except /ɴ/ may be said to be a single phoneme /N/ when preceding another consonant (except /j/), as they assimilate to the following consonant's PoA.
2. Realized as [ŋ] word-finally after high monophthongs (/i iː i̤ u uː ṳ/) and as vowel nasalization after the others, including diphthongs.
3. The realization of the sequences orthographically marked as lk lkh lg lgh varies regionally and, therefore, the l-phoneme can in these contexts be realized as either [ŋ] or [ɴ]. In most local Chlouvānem pronunciations, these sequences are [ŋk(ʰ) ŋɡ(ʱ)] but, in areas including notably Līlasuṃghāṇa, most of the southern Jade Coast, and the South, they are [ɴq(ʰ) ɴɢ(ʱ)].
4. /ɴ/ contrasts with other nasals only before non-labial voiced stops, where it is realized as nasalization of the preceding vowel.
5. Traditionally treated as the aspirate version of /Ɂ/, despite varying behaviour (e.g. in reduplication)
6. /ɦ/ and /ħ/ do not contrast word-finally, and word-final h represents /ħ/. In the Chlouvānem script, word-final h is actually a different glyph, even if considered a variant of normal, /ɦ/-representing, h.
7. /ʋ/ may be realized as [f] before voiceless consonants; this is NOT reflected orthographically.
8. /ʀ/ is often realized as [ʁ] after consonants, especially after coronal stops, and as [ɽ] or [ɻ] adjacent to retroflex consonants. In coda it is usually vocalized to [ɐ̯], except when before a retroflex consonant.
9. /ɴ̆/ is the conventional representation for this sound, which may also be transcribed as a prenasalized uvular [ᴺɢ̆] or epiglottal [ᴺʡ̆] flap.

Another classification of consonants is by active point of articulation. There are five such points for Chlouvānem consonants:

• diṇḍha "larynx, throat" — all laryngeal consonants
• jeltālǣca "tongue root" — all velar consonants
• jeltārašan "tongue surface" — all palatal and palatalized consonants plus /s/ and /n/, i.e. laminal consonants
• jeltāthiḍa "tongue tip" — dental stops and retroflex consonants, i.e. apical consonants (retroflex ones are actually subapical)
• šuhærṣūlaukas "lower lip" — all labial consonants

Some allophonic variations not proper of standard Chlouvānem but widespread in many areas:
/j/ and /ʋ/ are often deleted before /i iː i̤/ or /u uː ṳ/ respectively, e.g. in yinām /jinaːm/ [inaːm] (protection, refuge) or vurāṇa /ʋuʀaːɳa/ [uʀaːɳa] (a kind of small-sized reptile). This also leads to phonetic hiatuses, like in Kāyīchah /kaːjiːc͡ɕʰaħ/ [kaːiːc͡ɕʰaħ] (an insular diocese between Mārṣūtram and Vedren) or the common given name Martayinām /maʀtajinaːm/ [maɐ̯ta.inaːm].

The area around Lūlunīkam Lake, including both Līlasuṃghāṇa and Ilēnimarta (except gerontolectally) is also known for shifting /g/ to semivowels in coda position - the aforementioned diocese of Lågnemba is pronounced as [ɴ̆ɔʊ̯nẽ(m)ba] there; the country of Ênêk-Bazá (enægbasā in Chl.) is [enɛɪ̯basaː].

/ɴ̆/'s realization is usually uniform across the Chlouvānem-speaking world. However, in the Near and Southern Far East, it is often denasalized to [ɢ̆] after stops. The occurrence of this process varies even for a single speaker, but it's more common in the area around Līlikanāna.

Vowels - Camiyāṃsai

The vowel inventory of Chlouvānem is fairly large too, consisting of 24 phonemes: 15 monophthongs, 7 diphthongs, and 2 syllabic consonants.
Phonetically, there are also nasal vowels, but they are phonemically /Vɴ/ or (word-finally) /Vn/ sequences. On the contrary, breathy-voiced vowels may phonetically surface as [Vh] or [Vχ] in some contexts (most notably before stops) in some pronunciations — e.g. tąkis /tɑ̤kis/ (a kind of herb) pronounced in Cami as [taxkʲis].

The term for vowel is camiyāṃsa, from cami (great, large, important) and yāṃsa (sound), as these sounds are necessary in building syllables.

→ Backness ↓ Height		Front	Central	Back
High	Oral	i i ī iː		u u ū uː
	Br.-voiced	į i̤		ų ṳ
High-mid	Oral	e e ē eː
	Br.-voiced	ę e̤
Low-mid		æ ɛ ǣ ɛː		o-å1 ɔ
Low	Oral		a ä2 ā äː2
	Br.-voiced			ą ɑ̤
Diphthongs	Oral	ai aɪ̯ ei eɪ̯	oe ɔə̯	au aʊ̯
	Br.-voiced	ąi a̤ɪ̯ ęi e̤ɪ̯		ąu a̤ʊ̯
Syllabic consonants		ṛ ʀ̩ ṝ ʀ̩ː

Table notes:

1. In modern Chlouvānem, the distinction between o and å is purely orthographical.
2. Chlouvānem a is a central vowel and is better transcribed as [ä]. However, for simplicity's sake, it will always be transcribed, phonemically and phonetically, as /a/ [a] hereafter.

Chlouvānem vowels have very little allophony, always having values pretty close to their IPA representations' usual positions in the vowel trapeze. As Chlouvānem (and most of its descendants, which are the true native languages for the majority of Chlouvānem speakers) is a syllable-timed language, and stressed and unstressed syllables are barely (if at all) distinguished, unstressed vowel reduction is basically nonexistent.
The most notable instances of vowel allophony are:

• /ɛ ɛː/ lower to [æ æː] before /ʀ/ - e.g. kauchlærīn [kaʊ̯c͡ɕʰɴ̆æʀiːŋ] "professor";
• /ɔ/ is realized as a mid or, for some speakers, high-mid vowel ([o̞] or even [o]) when preceding any of l r c ch j jh - e.g. jålkha [ɟ͡ʑo̞ɴ̆qʰa～ɟ͡ʑo̞ɴ̆kʰa] "cold". It is also realized as [oː] (high-mid and long) word-finally. This is, however, rare, mostly only found in borrowings or Eastern toponyms - e.g. Paramito [paʀamitoː] (a city in the Far East).
• /aɪ̯/ is often pronounced as [æɪ̯] in large parts of the Chlouvānem world, notably virtually all of the North, Northeast, East, and Far East, and large parts of the Near East, but not in most of the Plain or in the Jade Coast. Word-final, unstressed /aɪ̯/, which quite often is a plural marker, is merged with /ɛ/ in many areas of the Southern Far East.

The variants of Chlouvānem spoken by the Chlouvānem minorities in Kŭyŭgwažtov, Soenyŏ-tave, and other countries of the former Kaiṣamā have acquired, through language contact, the front rounded vowels /y ø/ - they are present in loans from the majority languages of those areas (cf. in Kŭyŭgwaž Chlouvānem köndegura /køndeguʀa/ "mountain road", nüvka /nyʋka/ (a typical dish) < Kŭy. köndŭgŭr, nüvŭk; the latter is known as nivka /niʋka/ in the Inquisition), as well as in peculiar sound changes from the standard pronunciation.

Phonological history

Chlouvānem is, phonologically, very conservative when compared to Proto-Lahob, even if there is a reconstruction bias due to the fact that Chlouvānem was attested more than 2000 years earlier than all other Lahob languages of other branches.

Especially in the consonant system, Chlouvānem is extremely close to Proto-Lahob: the dental, palatal, and velar stops are preserved completely unchanged (even if PLB palatals are reconstructed as true stops, instead of affricates); changes to their distribution have only occurred because of the assimilation of velar stops + *j into palatal stops and of the assimilation of dental stops + *r into retroflex ones.

Labial stops are mostly unchanged, except for original *pʰ being reflected as ħ, presumably through the intermediate stages */pʰ/ > */ɸ/ > */hʷ～χʷ～xʷ/ > /ħ/ (the same fate was followed by PLB *pw). Chlouvānem ph arises from PLB *kʷʰ.

Labiovelar stops are the only ones that show the most changes: the aspirates have become true labial aspirates (*kʷʰ > pʰ; *ɡʷʱ > bʱ), while the plain ones have backed to /ʡ/ ƾ.

PLB *l, *ŋ, *ŋʷ, and *ʕ (conventional representation for a laryngeal sound) all merged into /ɴ̆/ l.

Prosody

Stress

Stress in Chlouvānem is not phonemic and typically very weak.
In formal Chlouvānem, stress position is, in most cases, predictable, determined by long vowels and verbal roots:

• The last long vowel in a word is stressed, unless it is word-final ē;
• Verbal roots always carry either the main stress or secondary stress (depending on the previous rule);
• In words with no long vowels, the third-to-last syllable is stressed, unless the fourth-to-last is the stressed part of a verbal root;
• Compound words have secondary stress on each vowel that would have primary stress if it were an isolated word, except if immediately preceding another (primarily or secondarily) stressed vowel; in that case, the stress moves one syllable backwards unless it would lead to another such situation of consecutive stress (e.g. */ˌSSˌSˈSS/ → /ˌSSSˈSS/ and not **/ˌSˌSSˈSS/).
  • Some noun-forming suffixes, especially for specialized terminology, are always stressed, such as -bida/-buda in chemical elements.
• Final -oe and -ai are always stressed, except when -ai is a plural marker - thus lunai "tea" is stressed on the ending, while kitai "houses" on the first syllable.

Some examples of stress placement:

• dilṭha "desert" [ˈdiɴ̆ʈʰa]
• upānāraḍa "seminary" [upaːˈnaːʀaɖa]
• ñulge "to crawl (monodirectional)" [ˈɲuŋge]
• ñogē "(s)he/it crawls" [ˈɲogeː]
• ñuganāja "we crawled" [ˌɲugaˈnaːɟ͡ʑa]
• driturkye "[I've been told that] (it) was done against you" [ˈdʀʲituˤkje]
• švaghṛṣṭrausis "tunnel" [ˌɕʋagʱʀ̩ˈʂʈʀaʊ̯sis]
• švaghṛṣṭraustammikeika "tunnel railway station" [ˌɕʋagʱʀ̩ʂʈʀaʊ̯sˌtammiˈkeɪ̯ka]

Words with unpredictable stress often have regional variations. For example, tandayena "spring (season)" is stressed as [tandaˈjena] in most of the East and Northeast but as regular [tanˈdajena] almost anywhere else (in this particular case, the irregular stress is actually closer to the etymology, as it is a borrowing from a Toyubeshian compound word).

Phonotactics

The maximum possible syllable structure is ^｢[((C1)C2)C3]_｣(j)V^｢(C4(C5))_｣.

The nucleus is formed by V - which can be any vowel, diphthong, or syllabic consonant - and an optional preceding /j/.
The onset may contain up to three consonants: C3 is notated differently because phonetically there always is one, as phonemically vowel-initial syllables are always pronounced with a preceding [ʔ]. Any consonant bar /N/ can appear in this position; C2 can be any other consonant except aspirated or breathy-voiced stops (with a single exception) or /ʔ/, but, if C3 is a stop, no stop can be in this position. If C3 is /ɴ̆/ , then C2 may be /c͡ɕʰ/. C1 may be a sibilant, /ʋ/, or a nasal agreeing in PoA with the following consonant. Note that ss-, vv-, and ll- are all valid onsets under these rules.

In codas, C4 may be may be any consonant except /ʔ c͡ɕ ɟ͡ʑ/ or all aspirated or breathy-voiced stops. C5 may be /n m s/, or also one of /t d k g/ if C4 is one of /ɴ̆ ʀ/.

In absolute word-final position, only C4 is possible, and the only possible consonants are /m n p t ʈ k s ħ ʡ ɴ̆/. Interjections are an exception, as some other consonants are found there, e.g. hār! "ouch!" [ɦaːɐ̯] /ɦaːʀ/.

Morphophonology

Vowel alternations

Ablaut

Chlouvānem morphology uses a system of ablaut alternations in its vowels, most notably for some verbs, for the ablauting declension of nouns (5h), and for many derivations. Every normal ablaut pattern has a base grade (the one given in citation forms), a middle grade, and a strong grade.
The patterns of regular ablaut are the following:

• i-ablaut: base i or ī — middle e — strong ai
• u-ablaut: u/ū — o (ą) — au
  • u>i-ablaut: u/ū — i — au
• ṛ-ablaut: ṛ — ar — ār

A few roots have the so-called inverse ablaut, where the vowels get simplified in the middle grade, and there is no strong grade:

• i-type inverse ablaut: base ya (or ьa) — middle i
  • ei-type inverse ablaut: base ei — middle i
• u-type inverse ablaut: base va — middle u

Lengthening

Lengthening alternations, which originate in Proto-Lahob, substitute a vowel with its lengthened form. There are many apparently irregular cases, due to the huge vowel shifts that happened between Proto-Lahob (PLB) and Chlouvānem. Note that PLB *î represents /ɨ/ or /ɨ̯/.
Lengthening as a type of vowel alternation is the so-called diachronic lengthening, as the results are largely determined by what those vowels were in PLB:

• a → ā
  • a → ū (PLB *o → *ō)
• i → ī
  • i → æ (PLB *ej → *ēj)
  • i → au (PLB *aî → *āî)
• u → ū
• e → ya (PLB *e → *ē)
  • e → ai (PLB *aj → *āj)
• o → au (PLB *aw → *āw)
  • o → ei (PLB *ow → *ōw)
• æ → yau (PLB *ew → *ēw)
• oe → ai (PLB *oj → *ōj)
• ṛ → ar

Another, different type of lengthening, is synchronic lengthening, which is a saṃdhi change; it only applies to a, i, u, ṛ, æ, and e, turning them into ā, ī, ū, ṝ, ǣ, and ē respectively.

Vowel saṃdhi

Vowel saṃdhi in Chlouvānem is often fairly logical, though sometimes the results are influenced by Proto-Lahob phonology.
Similar vowels (thus /a i e u ʀ̩/ only diverging in quantity or phonation) merge in these ways:

• short + short = long (e.g. a + a → ā)
• long + short = long (and viceversa) (e.g. ā + a → a)
• oral + breathy-voiced = breathy-voiced (a + ą → ą)
• breathy-voiced + oral = /VɦV/, written with the breathy-voiced character followed by the oral one (e.g. ą + a → ąa)

The only exception to this pattern is the sequence ē + e which becomes ege.

Dissimilar vowels merge in these ways. ṛ and ṝ become semivowels wherever needed, and i and u become y and v before other vowels; ī and ū turn to iy and uv respectively.
Other changes are:

• e and o always continue PLB *aj and *aw regardless of etymology, so when followed by vowels the results are ayV and avV respectively. Similarly, with ai and au the results are āyV and āvV;
• æ and ǣ both become ev and oe becomes en when followed by another vowel;
• All other ones simply turn their second element into the corresponding semivowel (e.g. ei → ey).
• a: a-i → e ; a-u → o ; a-e → ai ; a-o → au
• ā: ā-i and ā-e → ai ; ā-u and ā-o → au
• a or ā and a following long vowel (or æ or å) get an epenthetic y (before ī, ē, æ) or v (before ū, å).
• When preceded by a, other diphthongs get a prothetic y if their first element is front and a prothetic v if it is back. æ turns to ya.

For verbs with root-initial ṛ-, the result depends on the preceding vowel: u-ṛ- (and o-ṛ- and au-ṛ-) becomes (∅/a/ā)vṛ-, while with all other vowels it is ṛ (or ṝ) that becomes a semivowel, cf. švṛṣme "to believe" (šu-ṛsme), šuterṣmau "I believed" (šu-te-ṛṣmau).

Vowel saṃdhi in vowel-ending verbal roots has a few extra rules — see Chlouvānem morphology § Verbs § Vocalic stems.

Consonant alternations

Palatalization

Some morphemes beginning in /j/ - especially vowels as the result of diachronic lengthening - may change the preceding consonant by assimilating the /j/ in the following ways:

• Alveolars and velars shift to palatals (e.g. k + y or t + y → c);
• h + y → š;
• ɂ and ƾ remain unchanged;
• All other consonants get a /j/ glide (written y).

Internal saṃdhi

Note: for simplicity, ь will be treated as a stand-alone consonant in all the following examples.

Saṃdhi assimilations are fairly straightforward, and usually it’s the second consonant in a row the one that matters. The most basic rules are:

• Nasals assimilate to the PoA of any following consonant except for y (no assimilation occurs) and s (all become ṃ, phonetically realized as vowel nasalization).
• All stops assimilate in voicing to a following stop; if the first one is aspirated, then aspiration shifts to the second one. Dentals also assimilate to adjacent (preceding or following) retroflexes.

In stop saṃdhi, a few further changes apart from basic voicing and retroflex assimilation occur. Note that any such combination also applies to aspirated stops. In voiceless stops:

-pṭ- → -ṭṭ- ; -pc- → -ṃc-
-tc- → -cc- ; -tk- → -kt-
-ṭp- → -ṭṭ- ; -ṭc- → -cc- ; -ṭk- → -kṭ-
-cp- → -cc- ; -ct- → -kt- ; -cṭ- → -ṣṭ- ; -ck- → -šk-
-kp- → -pp- ; -kc- → -cc-
Doubled stops and the combinations -tp-, -pt-, -pk- , -kt-, and -kṭ- remain unchanged.

Voiced stops mostly mirror voiceless assimilations (doubling saṃdhi already applied - all nasal + stop clusters are underlyingly a geminate stop):

-bḍ- → -ṇḍ- ; -bj- → -ṃj- ; -bg- → -lg-
-dj- → -ñj- ; -dg- → -gd-
-ḍb- → -ṇḍ- ; -ḍj- → -ñj- ; -ḍg- → --gḍ- → -rḍ-
-j + any other stop, also aspirated ones → -jñ-
-gb- → -mb- ; -gḍ- → -rḍ- ; -gj- → -ñj-
Doubled stops become a nasal+stop sequence; -db-, -bd-, and -gd- remain unchanged.

-d(h)n- and -ḍ(h)ṇ- from any origin further assimilate to -nn- and -rṇ- respectively.

h, wherever it is followed by a consonant (apart from ь), disappears, leaving its trace as breathy-voiced phonation on the preceding vowel (e.g. maih-leilē → mąileilē). Vowels change as such:

• i, ī → į
• u, ū → ų
• e, ē, æ, ǣ → ę
• all other monophthongs, or oe → ą
• ai, ei, au → ąi, ęi, ąu respectively.

Sibilants trigger various different changes:

• Among themselves, -s s- remains ss (but simplified to s if the latter is followed by a consonant other than y or ь), but any other combination becomes kṣ (e.g. naš-sārah → nakṣārah).
• ṣ, if followed by a dental stop, turns it into ṭ or ṭh according to aspiration (e.g. paṣ-dhvakām → paṣṭhvakām).
• s or š plus any voiced stop, or ṣ followed by any non-dental/retroflex voiced stop, disappear but synchronically lengthen the previous vowel (e.g. kus-drāltake → kūdrāltake).
• Dental stops followed by ṣ or š result in a palatal affricate (e.g. prāt-ṣveya → prācveya).

Note that the two roots lih- and muh- behave, before consonants (with a few exceptions, e.g. the verbal infinitive), as if they were *lis- and *mus-.

If the first sound which undergoes saṃdhi is already part of a cluster, a few more assimilations may occur. In a nasal-stop + stop sequence, usually the first stop gets cancelled, but nasals do not assimilate entirely to the stop:

• m becomes ṃ;
• Other nasals do not assimilate at all.

Note that the combinations -mpt-, -mpk-, -lkt-, -lkṭ-, -mbd-, -lgd-, and -lgḍ- all remain unchanged; doubled stops are degeminated (like -mpp- > -mp-).

If the sound before the stop sequence is l or r, nothing happens and assimilations are normal. If the sound is a sibilant (note that they cannot precede voiced stops), assimilations are as usual.

Note that a few roots may have internal clusters that would not be permitted in internal saṃdhi. Many of these are part of scientific lexicon and all of them are ultimately borrowings, for example Līšabgin - the name of the sixth planet of the star system Calémere is in.

Doubling saṃdhi

In a few cases of consonant doubling due to saṃdhi, there are irregular results:

• -y y- → -jñ-
  • This also applies to -ai-y-, e.g. mai-yųlake → majñųlake
• -v v- → -gv-
• -r r- → -rl-
• any doubled voiced stop (also due to assimilation of other stops) → homorganic nasal + voiced stop (e.g. -b b- → -mb-)

Epenthetic vowels

Epenthetic vowels are usually discussed together with saṃdhi. They are often used in verbal conjugations, as no Chlouvānem word may end in two consonants. The epenthetic vowel used depends on the preceding consonant:

• u is inserted after non-palatalized labials;
• a is used after retroflexes (except ṣ), velars, and non-palatalized laryngeals (except l)
• i is used after all other consonants.

Note that y, v, and r in these cases turn into the corresponding vowels i, u, and ṛ.

Writing system - Jīmalāṇa

The word chlǣvānem in the language's native script, with the parts colour-coded according to function.

Chlouvānem has been written since the early 5th millennium in an abugida called chlǣvānumi jīmalāṇa ("Chlouvānem script", the noun jīmalāṇa is actually a collective derivation from jīma "character"), developed with influence of the script used for the ancient Kūṣṛmāthi language. The orthography for Chlouvānem represents how it was pronounced in Classical times, but it's completely regular to read in all present-day local pronunciations. The Chlouvānem alphabet is distinguished by a large number of curved letter forms, arising from the need of limiting horizontal lines as much as possible in order to avoid tearing the leaves on which early writers wrote. A few glyphs have diagonal or vertical lines, but in pre-typewriting times there was a tendency to have them slightly curved; however, horizontal lines are today found in the exclamation and question marks (which are early modern inventions) and in mathematical symbols. Being an abugida, vowels (including diphthongs) are mainly represented by diacritics written by the consonant they come after (some vowel diacritics are actually written before the consonant they are tied to, however); a is however inherent in any consonant and therefore does not need a diacritic sign. Consonant clusters are usually representing by stacking the consonants on one another (with those that appear under the main consonant sometimes being simplified), but a few consonants such as r and l have simplified combining forms. The consonant ṃ is written with diacritics and can't appear alone. There are also special forms for final -m, -n, -s, and -h due to their commonness; other consonants without inherent vowels have to be written with a diacritic sign called priligis (deleter), which has the form of a dot above the letter, or as conjunct consonants.
The combinations lā vā yā ñā pā phā bhā are irregularly formed due to the normal diacritic ā-sign being otherwise weirdly attached to the base glyph. There is, furthermore, a commonly used single-glyph abbreviation for the word lili, the first-person singular pronoun.

The romanization used for Chlouvānem avoids this problem by giving each phoneme a single character or digraph, but it stays as close as possible to the native script. Aspirated stops and diphthongs are romanized as digraphs and not by single letters; geminate letters, which are represented with a diacritic in the native script, are romanized by writing the consonant twice - in the aspirated stops, only the first letter is written twice, so /ppʰ/ is pph and not *phph.

Some orthographical and phonological notes:

• /n/ [ŋ] is written as l before k g kh gh n. Note that in many local varieties lk lkh lg lgh are actually [ɴq ɴqʰ ɴɢ ɴɢʱ], with the stop assimilating to l and not vice-versa, and thus analyzed as /ɴ̆k ɴ̆kʰ ɴ̆g ɴ̆gʱ/.
• /ɴ̆ː/ may be written as either ll or ṃl; the latter is used when compounding two morphemes, the first of which ends in any nasal consonant except for l itself.
• Vowels do not have non-diacritical forms; when word-initial, they are written on the glyph for ɂ. In Classical Chlouvānem and in many modern pronunciations, word-initial vowels are actually always preceded by an allophonic glottal stop. Such glyphs are, however, romanized simply as e.g. a, not *ɂa.

Letter names are formed with simple rules:

• All consonants apart from l, r, and aspirated stops form them with CaCas, e.g. s is sasas, m is mamas, b is babas and so on. ɂ is written aɂas.
• Aspirated stops form them as CʰeCas, e.g. bh is bhebas, ph is phepas, and so on.
• l is lǣlas and r is rairas. ṃ is, uniquely, nālkāvi.
• Short vowels are VtV*s, where the second V is a for æ (ætas), i for e (etis), and u for o (otus).
• Long vowels are vowel + -nis if unrounded (īnis, ēnis, ānis), but ū, being rounded, is ūmus. Oral diphthongs all have diphthong + -myas (aimyas, eimyas…); å is counted as a diphthong and as such it is åmyas.
• Breathy-voiced vowels are vowel + /ɦ/ + vowel + s (įis, ąas, ųus, but ęas). Breathy-voiced diphthongs are diphthong + /ɕ/ + as (ąišas, ęišas, ąušas).

o and å

In today's standard Chlouvānem, the letters o and å are homophones, being both pronounced /ɔ/: their distribution reflects their origin in Proto-Lahob (PLB), with o deriving from PLB *aw and *ow, and å from either *a umlauted by a (lost) *o in a following syllable, or, most commonly, from the sequences *o(ː)wa, *o(ː)fa, *o(ː)wo, or *o(ː)fo.

Most Chlouvānem sources, however, classify å as a diphthong: Classical Era sources nearly accurately describe it as /ao̯/, later monophthongized to /ʌ/ or /ɒ/ and merged with /ɔ/ - in fact, most daughter languages have the same reflex for both o and å. A few grammarians think that å was originally the long version of o, but this hypothesis is disputed as å does not pattern with the other long vowels (e.g. o does not lengthen into it because of synchronic lengthening; also it is grouped with diphthongs in the alphabetic order instead of coming just after o, as other long vowels do). Some kind of distinction in the pronunciations of Classical Chlouvānem must have been preserved until early modern times, as both are found in adapting foreign words - usually å transcribes more open vowels than o - cf. the two Holenagic loanwords Hålinaika (Holenagica) - with å for [ɔ] - and loyun (ṅoifṅ, a vodka-like Holenagic spirit) - with o for [o].

A spelling-based pronunciation distinction (with å being [ɔ] and o being [o(ː)]) has been recently spreading among young speakers in the large metropolitan areas of the Jade Coast.

Notes on romanization

The romanization here used for Chlouvānem is adapted to English conventions, with a few adjustments made to better reflect how written Chlouvānem looks on Calémere:

• Even if the Chlouvānem script uses scriptio continua and marks minor pauses (e.g. comma and semicolon) with a space between the sentences and a punctuation mark with following space, every word is divided when romanized, including particles. The only exceptions to this are compound verbs, which are written as a single word nevertheless (e.g. yųlakemaitiāke "to be about to eat" not *yųlake maitiāke). English punctuation marks are used in basic sentences, including a distinction between comma and semicolon. In longer texts, particularly in the "examples" section, : will be used to mark a comma-like pause (a space in the native script) and ।। will be used for a full-stop-like pause (written very similarly to ।। in the native script).
• As the Chlouvānem script does not have lettercase, no uppercase letters are used in the romanization, except to disambiguate cases like lairē (noun: sky, air) and Lairē (female given name), and for proper nouns written in isolation.

Writing

The Chlouvānem script is almost entirely composed of curved lines as, initially, it was written on leaves with reeds (ħålka, pl. ħålkai) or brushes (lattah, pl. lattai). With the invention, in the late 5th millennium, of paper (traditional Chlouvānem paper or mirtah is handmade by fibres from various types of wooden bushes; traditional papermaking is still important today as formal handwritten documents are usually written on traditional paper), the use of reeds or brushes often became region-dependant; the reeds of the ñagala plant became the dominant writing tool in most of the plains, as this plant abundantly grows by the river shores; in the Jade Coast, brushes (whose "hair" are actually fibres of wetland plants such as the jalihā) were preferred.
Today, pens (titeh, pl. tityai) are the main writing tool together with graphite pencils (bauteh, pl. bautyai). Non-refillable dip pens were the first to be introduced - an Evandorian invention that was "seized" by the Chlouvānem during the early 7th millennium occupation of Kátra, a Nordûlaki colony on Ogúviutón - and with the advent of industrial papermaking they became more and more popular; fountain pens were evolved from them first in Nivaren, and in 6291 (3785₁₂) the first fountain pen manufacturer in the Inquisition opened. Ballpoint pens are, on Calémere, a much recent invention, and first appeared in the Inquisition about forty years ago. They are still not used as much as fountain pens when writing on normal paper.
The traditional ħålkai and lattai have not disappeared, as both are still found and used - even if only with traditional handmade paper. Both are commonly used for calligraphy as well as in various other uses: for example, banzuke papers for tournaments of most traditional sports are carefully handwritten with reed pens, as are many announcements by local temples (written with either reed pens or brushes); a newer type of brush pen (much like Japanese fudepens) has proven to be particularly popular even in everyday use (both with traditional and modern industrial paper) in the Jade Coast area - many Great Inquisitors from there, including incumbent Hæliyǣšavi Dhṛṣṭāvāyah Lairē, have been seen writing official document with such kind of pens.

Pens themselves are often artisanal products and in many cases Chlouvānem customers prefer refillable ones; many people have tailor-made sets of pens and almost always carry one with them.

Morphology - Maivāndarāmita

Main article: Chlouvānem morphology

Chlouvānem morphology (maivāndarāmita) is complex and synthetic, with a large number of inflections. Five parts of speech are traditionally distinguished: nouns, verbs, pronouns, numerals, and particles.
Most inflections are suffixes, with stem-internal vowel apophony also playing a role. Prefixing inflections are almost exclusively reduplications, though there is a large number of derivational prefixes which play a major role in the language.

Syntax - Kilendarāmita

Main article: Chlouvānem syntax

Chlouvānem is a mostly synthetic, topic-prominent, and almost exclusively head-final language. It has an Austronesian-type morphosyntactic alignment and a topic-comment word order, with OSV or SOV syntax being chosen according to how the topic itself is marked.

Vocabulary

Due to the history and the present status of Chlouvānem, its vocabulary draws from a wide range of sources and is characterized by a large number of geosynonyms, a consequence of its role as a Dachsprache on a very large area with many different historical substrata and vernaculars.

The percentages of various sources depend on the definition, particularly for what concerns the Lahob stock. If roots are counted, Lahob-inherited roots may be as low as 30 to 35% of the total vocabulary, but Lahob vocabulary constitutes a much higher percentage due to the very high productivity of verbal roots (mostly of Lahob origin) with the various derivational prefixes and suffixes.
Non-Lahob roots are traditionally classified in the following way, depending on their geographical origin:

• Words from pre-Inquisitorial indigenous languages of the Plain and of the Jade Coast (dhoyi olelų maivai), most of them sparsely attested such as Ancient Yodhvāsi, Tamukāyi, Laiputaši, Old Kāṃradeši, and Aṣasṝkhami. possibly forming the majority of roots. Early Chlouvānem, soon after the Ur-Chlouvānem settled in the lower Lāmiejāya plain, was enriched by a very large number of roots taken from local languages. Such words are found in all semantic fields, and are particularly numerous in words for the family, plants, animals, and the earliest artifacts and practices of settled civilization.
• Lällshag words (lælšñenīs maivai) – divided in two large groups, that is, words that were borrowed from Lällshag in ancient times, pertaining to many semantic fields but mostly early technology (the Lällshag people were the first urban civilization in that area of the world); and a second group of modern scientific vocabulary that has been being coined since the start of the modern era from Lällshag roots.
• Southern, Far Eastern, Toyubeshian, and Dabuke words (maichleyuñcų lallanaleiyuñcų no tayubešenīs no dabukyenīs no maivai) – that is, words taken from the languages of the territories of the first millennium of expansion of the Chlouvānem world. They mostly relate to natural and cultural features of those territories, with Toyubeshian words being particularly important because they form most of the Chlouvānem words relating to a temperate climate area; whatever proto-Lahob roots that had survived the Ur-Chlouvānem migrations were mostly readapted to the tropical climate they had settled in; as a striking example, the Chlouvānem terms for the four main temperate seasons are all Toyubeshian borrowings.
• Skyrdegan words (ṣkurdauryenīs maivai) – the Skyrdegan civilization was the first one too large and strong to be fully Chlouvānemized, and the languages of the Chlouvānem and Skyrdegan people have, for the last eight hundred years, exchanged words for their habitats (tropical to equatorial for the Chlouvānem; temperate to subpolar for the Skyrdegan) and all new discoveries in their cultural spheres; this keeps happening today, with the Skyrdegan countries being politically more open than the Inquisition and many Western cultural concepts reaching the Inquisition only through Skyrdegan mediation. The few words of Bronic and Qualdomelic origin are usually added to this group, despite the very different history (Brono and Qualdomailor were historically minor, less influential countries, whose present identity has been thoroughly influenced by the Chlouvānem spreading the Yunyalīlti faith among them).
• "Discovery-era" words (tatalunyavyāṣi maivai) – words from the age of overseas discoveries, that is, related to flora, fauna, and cultures of continents new to the Chlouvānem; many of them have become in common use due to crops being now cultivated on the Inquisition's territory.
  • Western words (kerultugi maivai) – a subset of Discovery-era words, including those that have their origins in the more technologically advanced civilizations of Evandor, the Spocian cultural sphere of northern Védren, and the Nâdja- and Kenengyry-speaking world. This is overall a small group, but includes many modern international words and, among words of Kenengyry origin, quite a few slang terms because of the Kaiṣamā-era settlement of Kenengyry peoples (particularly Soenyubi and Kŭyŭgwažŭb) in the Inquisition and of Chlouvānem people in Kenengyry-speaking territories.
    As for words actually originating in the West (Evandor and Evandorian colonies), a large number of them, particularly for the earliest ones, come from Auralian, as Auralia was the first Western nation the Chlouvānem had fairly regular contacts with. Nordûlaki and, especially, Cerian borrowings are much more recent, though the prevalence of Cerian as modern Calémere's main lingua franca, only rivalled by Chlouvānem itself, has led many toponyms in Chlouvānem to be adaptations of the Cerian names.

Honorific speech

Politeness is lexically encoded in Chlouvānem through means of different honorific terms that are used depending on the listener. Most often, that means that there is a neutral or humble term for the speaker's side and a more respectful term for the listener's side: one area where this is very common is about body parts.

It is of great anthropological and historical interest how very often, for nouns, the higher register term is of Lahob origin, having cognates in most (if not all) other languages of the family, while the lower terms (i.e. the neutral or humble ones) are typically non-Lahob, from other indigenous languages of the Plain. This is consistent with Chlouvānem having been, in the centuries right after the Chlamiṣvatrā's lifetime, the local lingua franca and possessing a higher, and sacred, status.

Verbs show a similar distinction, though with most verbs the humble and the neutral forms are the same – the only two exceptions being "to ask" and "to receive", as well as "to do" and "to suggest, advise" which have a distinct humble but not a respectful form. Every verb which does not have a specific respectful form uses the tilah auxiliary verb; respectful verbs are never used with tilah, nor are their neutral-humble equivalents.
In many cases, if a verb has a respectful equivalent then each derived form can be made respectful by switching the root verb (e.g. muṣke, paṣmuṣke "to ask"; "to interrogate" → respectful forms pṛdhake, paṣpṛdhake).

Most common terms with honorific speech alternatives

English	Humble	Neutral	Respectful
advice, tip, suggestion	titta	smārṣas
to ask	yacce (√yac- (3)) (also yaccechlašake)	muṣke (√muṣ- (u → i))	pṛdhake (√pṛdh-)
cup of tea	lunąis lā galtha		ñimbha
to do, act, make	chlašake (√chlaš-)	dṛke (√dṛ-)
ear	yophus	minnūlia
eye	ṭaunis	mešīn nāhim (medical)	mešīn
father	bunā		tāmvāram
foot	kilka	junai
gift	comboe the speaker receives	yauṭoe	dvyauṇoe the listener, or respected third party, receives
to give	męlike		naiṣake
hand	kleina	dhāna
husband	snūṣṭras	šulañšoe
leg	miṇṭha	pājya
to meet	vuryake		naimake
meeting, encounter	voryanah		naimoe
mother	meinā		nāḍima
to receive	combake (√comb-) the speaker receives	yoṭṭe (√yoṭ-)	dvyūlke (√dvyūṇ- (3)) the listener, or respected third party, receives
request, question	icūm	muṣas	pardha
to suggest, advise	tittake (√titt-)	smārṣake (√smārṣ-)
wife	laleichim	ħaitlañši

"Thinking" in Chlouvānem

The English verb "to think" may be translated in different ways in Chlouvānem. Its meaning "to think" in the sense of imagining or communicating in one's own mind is translated by nilyake:

sāmi pa nelyęru. — I'm thinking about you.

nilyantairu ū. — I think, therefore I am.

When "to think" is used in order to state one's opinion, Chlouvānem makes the distinction of that thing being a personal opinion based on experience or trustable facts (where the verb is vvlurake) or an uncertain opinion, often because of mere sensation (still nilyake) (much like the Danish distinction between at synes and at tro). Both verbs require the quotative particle tati:

dumoe hulābdān tati vvlirute. — I think the movie is good. (for I have seen it)

dumoe hulābdān tati nelyęru. — I think the movie is good. (but I haven't seen it)

vvlurake is used also to state one's opinion about a situation (still requiring tati) as well as in the construction (2SG) nali vvlirute, better translated as "if I were you" (needs a subjunctive verb):

gundam hulābdān tati vvlirute. — I think it's a good idea.

viṣam lgutī nani nali vvlirute. — if I were you, I'd buy the other one. (note imperfective subjunctive)

viṣam lgutēt nani nali vvlirute. — if I were you, I'd have bought the other one. (perfective subjunctive here)

nilyake, on the other hand, is used in the past to state something that was thought to be one way but turned out not to be. Also, it is used for future forecasts:

nęlte yartāṃrye tati nilyirau, lalla hånna ni nāṭ moe. — I thought it was 4:00 in the morning, but it was already lalla hånna (7:00 in the morning).

camiyūs vali tati inilyiram e ! — I thought you were from Cami! (the perfect here could also be translated as "until now, I had been thinking ...")

menire dašajildiṣya tati nelyęru. — I think it's going to rain tomorrow.

Still, it's better not to translate directly "to think" as nilyake as in many cases Chlouvānem simply uses an evidential marker:

tū droste. — I think (s)he did it. (= apparently, (s)he did it)

tū drākoste. — I think (s)he did it, but it's probably not so. (= apparently, (s)he did it, but probably not)

dumoe hulābdān ice. — I've been told the movie is good.

Sensorial and emotional beauty

There are two Chlouvānem words that translate to "beautiful": laitenælike and ñæñuchlike. While conceptually similar, they are often not interchangeable: ñæñuchlike refers to sensorial beauty, while laitenælike to beauty in an emotional sense. Some examples:

gūltayom mešanah ñæñuchlire. — the view on the lake is beautiful. (note also that mešanah (a view) needs a dative case)

liloe ejulā laitenælire. — life here is beautiful.

jāyim ñæñuchlire. — the girl is beautiful. (= her appearance is beautiful)

jāyim laitenælire. — the girl is beautiful. (= she has many good qualities)

The derived nouns ñæñuchlyāva and laitenælyāva may be translated as "outer beauty" and "inner beauty" respectively.

Swadesh list

Main article: Chlouvānem Swadesh list

Common everyday expressions

Main article: Chlouvānem phrasebook

Thematic wordlists

Main article: Chlouvānem lexicon

Calendar and time

Main article: Chlouvānem calendar and time

Personal names

Main article: Chlouvānem names

Example texts

First Book of the Chlamiṣvatrā, 1:1-8

The First Book of the Chlamiṣvatrā (yamei chlamiṣvatrī lahīla naviṣya) is the first of the three Books of the Great Prophet, the most important among the holy books of the Yunyalīlta. The first seven verses are probably the key to understand the whole faith, as it presents the foundations of its worldview; verses 4 and 5 are particularly considered important as they represent the relation between the Yunya, life, and the Lillamurḍhyā. Verse 8 introduces what is then explained in the rest of the chapter, that is, how Lelāgṇyāviti, the Chlamiṣvatrā (Great Prophet; literally "Golden master") came to meditate and build up her philosophy, which then she taught common people in all villages.

1 ⸫liloe mæn ⸫yunya ga brausire meinā dęi devenom mædhramu męliēkæ linoe ।। 2 ⸫liloe pospurṣūyē saṃ gu jejiltsūyētuh ⸫yunya ga meinā nali samindevenyumi lalla laurāyana mæn 3 drālteninīka maiyau ñæltānu lātamilkīnam main yaniåh lilenom maiyau meinū āntaḍhūlīnam no ।। 4 ⸫yunya mæn meiyā lilenī hīmbenīka nīteboñjñāhai 5 sama brausameinælilūrah įstimē lillamurḍhyā ga demeni lilentugap lilah ।। 6 ⸫yunya mū lilaidhvap natehamvyek sama lilūrah demiā meinæhamvyenu tattemęliē mū tami pa ḍhāvildente no ।। 7 ⸫dralkye mæn āndre meinī yaivų bausų nanū ħaṣṭirena sama dǣ dǣ no līlti bīḍhovah : garpire grošpire virdu nītemilkāhai no ।। 8 ⸫dralkagarpā mæn leliē nanū kailirāhe āñjulyom liliā larḍhīka bīdumbhek ।।

1 life.DIR.SG. TOPIC. Yunya.DIR.SG. ADP. be_holy-IND.PRES.3S.INTR. mother-DIR.SG. REFL.ERG. soul-DAT.SG. body-ACC.SG give-IND.PRES.3S.EXTR-BENEF. process.DIR.SG.
2 life.DIR.SG serve.NEC-PRES.3S.EXTR.PAT. and. NEG. act.NEC-PRES.3S.EXTR-ANTIBENEF. Yunya.DIR.SG. ADP. mother.DIR.SG. for. child-soul-GEN.PL. high. act_of_devotion.DIR.SG. TOPIC.
3 respect-INSTR.PL. 1P.POSS-ACC. sister-ACC.PL. treat-SUBJ.IMPF.1P.EXTR-AGENT. 1P.DIR. INTENSIVE_PRONOUN.POSS-DAT. life-DAT.SG. 1P.POSS-ACC. mother-ACC.SG. defend-SUBJ.IMPF.1P.EXTR-AGENT. and.
4 Yunya.DIR.SG. TOPIC. 1P.POSS.DIR. life-DIR.PL. harmony-INSTR.PL. flow_in-IND.PRES.3P.EXTR-AGENT.
5 and. holy_mother's_world.DIR.SG depend-IND.PRES.3S.EXTR.PAT. Lillamurḍhyā.DIR.SG. ADP. REFL.POSS-INSTR. heartbeat-INSTR.SG. live-IND.PRES.3S.EXTR.PAT.
6 Yunya.DIR.SG 1P.ACC. how_to_live-INSTR.SG. cradle_into-IND.PAST.3S.EXTR-AGENT. and. world.DIR.SG. REFL.POSS.DIR. motherly_cradle-ACC.SG reflect-IND.PRES.3S.EXTR-AGENT. 1P.ACC. 3S.DIR. about. remember-CAUS.IND.PRES.3S.EXTR-AGENT. and.
7 man-DIR.PL TOPIC. creation-LOC.SG. mother-GEN.SG. all-ABL. stone-ABL.SG. more. be_weak-IND.PRES.3P.INTR. and. again. again. and. path-GEN.SG. forget-IND.PRES.3P.EXTR.PAT. : be_evil-IND.PRES.3S.INTR. be_crude-IND.PRES.3S.INTR. violence-ACC.SG. take_inside.IND.PRES.3P.EXTR-AGENT. and.
8 evil_of_men.DIR.SG. TOPIC. person-DIR.PL. more. be_pure-IND.PRES.3P.INTR. thither. 1S.POSS.DIR. girl.DIR.SG. lead_away-IND.PAST.3S.EXTR.PAT.

1 LIFE is the process where a soul is given a body for the holy mother Yunya's own benefit. 2 LIFE is the ultimate act of devotion of children souls to mother Yunya who must be served and not betrayed 3 by treating respectfully our siblings and defending our mother with our life. 4 YUNYA lives through her heartbeat the Lillamurḍhyā, which our lives harmonically flow in 5 and the world of our holy mother is dependent on. 6 YUNYA taught us how to live and her world reflects and reminds us her motherly cradle. 7 HUMANS are the weakest link in her creation and keep forgetting her path, embracing the crude violence of evil. 8 The EVIL that men do led my girl away to where lifeforms are purest.

A festive day

This is an excerpt from the leliēmiti ḍhūrṣūs (Family Chronicle) (written in 3835 (6377₁₀)), a world-famous narrative opera of contemporary writer Nariejūramāvi Lanæmiai Mæmihomah. The author recalls here a festive moment from when she was in her 12th year, namely a celebration of the juniahiyunyi jaṃšā (the Festival of Blossoming Nature) of year 3802 (6338₁₀) in her native village of Malįihālia (today part of the eparchy of Līlasuṃghāṇa, some 14 km from the city center).

dani yartāṃrye ē ⸫naina ga kalineh mæn ⸫nilāmulka ⸫tainā no lili no pudbhābe dvārmom nañamṛca kautepuglek : lañyās yunya juniāmite e tati ।।

main mæn asenānu lut nanān pārṇaman ñumirāja : nanān heirlaukan marcęe e gu nomire ša gu emibe jāyim vi ! hālkenīs yanomųvima keikom namṛcābhe daše šutimīnam ।। dašai juniahiyunyi jaṃšē gātarakeberdāhai e ।। bunā mæn main nali maildvārmu maitēmęlia nāṭ væse pābunā ⸫daṃdhigūlan ga glūkam no mæn kalirāhe nāniai khāngeltių kaumilūkāhai kælitsai mārai no vārīkai no baubai no goṃsadmāhai no ।।

nilāmulka mæn maildvārmom nañelīsa tainā lili no ṣveye primirtaram ñumirlam ।। lilše pārṇam lǣliriṣya tṛlirlam : naina tī sora pārṇaṃrīs lut mojende heirom nañelīsa : jånirāh mæn lahīlęe kamikækyai avyāṣa ē : blikyon lili no amalthirā māmei pārṇaṃrye maitēmęlima ।। meinā mæn buneyāt lili no nali jilkire bhadvęs lā dhāne keikom dāmē — taman mæn maiyā pārṇami jånirai ।।

tainā mæn jñūṃris halimendē bahīri sumenīs heicādrī nadāmē sama isilun urutha nānumi hanaṃhariana lairu smaurildekte ।। nilāmulka mæn yanelīsa jånirū kamitekyāk tainā mutirya heicāp nusmīte udvī dāmē no sama bahīrah gu mimendenautsē ša naina nañajolta nilāmulku lū no tora lijakenartatelunildek ।। nilāmulka mæn meinā murku milkekte sama dhāne danihaicē tarṣanu juniekūsi væse daṃdhigūlan tadāmē murkirde vārṇaigiyūri kamyūsijunai ।।

naina mæn væse jaṃšān chi ē dildhā geta no pa liju tī lilǣ minnūliom lijīte nadāmē — meinā lēyet gu glidemæh nainęs lā bīskæmųk dāšikē mūmikīndu : jaṃšī ñæñuchlire jilkire jånīrei kamyakyā nilāmulkei mbu dilęe dṛk ।। tainā mæn yanelīsa pārṇami nacu ilakakte nainęs lā ħuldek væse mutirau — ħærviṣe ājvalunāmom dāmaram væse ñikire naina meinei bhik ।।

Gloss two.DIR. morning-LOC.SG. be-IND.PAST.3S.EXTR.PAT. Naina.DIR. ADP. female's_younger_sister.DIR.SG. TOPIC. Nilāmulka.DIR. Tainā.DIR. and. 1SG.DIR.. and. sleep-IND.PAST.1P.EXTR.PAT. room-DAT.SG. run_into-IND.PERF.3S.EXTR.PAT. wake_up-IND.PAST.3S.EXTR-AGENT. : girl.VOC.PL. nature.DIR.SG bloom-LOC.SG. DECLAR. QUOT

1P.DIR TOPIC. month-ACC.PL. for. that-TRANSL. day-TRANSL.SG. wait-IND.PAST.1P.INTR. : that-TRANSL. time_of_year-TRANSL.SG. run-ADV. like. NEG. wait-IND.PRES.3S.INTR. NEG. no. one.DIR. girl.DIR.SG. be-IND.PRES.3S.EXTR.PAT. ! bed-ABL.PL. jump_out-IND.PERF.1P.EXTR.PAT. yard-DAT.SG. run_into-IND.PAST.1P.EXTR.PAT. rain-LOC.SG. be_under-SUBJ.IMPF.1P.EXTR.PAT.
rain-DIR.PL. blossoming_nature-GEN.SG. celebration-LOC.SG. be_different-IND-seem-IND.PRES.3P.EXTR.PAT. DECLAR.
father.DIR.SG. TOPIC. 1P.DIR. for. washing_room-ACC.SG. prepare-IND.PERF.3S.EXTR-AGENT. already. while. grandfather.DIR.SG. Daṃdhigūlan.DIR.SG. ADP. female's_brother.DIR.SG. and. TOPIC. be_lilac-IND.PRES.3P.INTR. flatbread-PL.SG. tandoori_oven-ABL.SG. take_out-IND.PRES.3P.EXTR.PAT. orange_banana-DIR.PL. mango-DIR.PL. and. apricot-DIR.PL. and. bauba-DIR.PL. and. cut-REP-IND.PRES.3P.EXTR.PAT. and.
Nilāmulka.DIR.SG. TOPIC. washing_room-DAT.SG. go_into-IND.PERF.3S.EXTR.PAT. Tainā.DIR.SG. 1SG.DIR. and. wall-LOC.SG. sit_behind-IND.PAST.1D.EXTR.PAT. wait-IND.PAST.1D.INTR.
1DU.DIR. day.DIR.SG. be_special-IND.FUT.3S.INTR. know-IND.PAST.1D.INTR. : Naina.DIR.SG. because. some. day-ABL.PL. before. ninth. year-DAT.SG. go_into-IND.PERF.3S.EXTR.PAT. sarī.DIR.SG. TOPIC. first-ADV. wrap_around-SUBJ.IMPF.3S.EXTR-BENEF. time.DIR.SG. be-IND.PAST.3S.EXTR.PAT. : girl-DIR.DU. 1SG.DIR. and. be_last-IND.PERF.3P.INTR. twelve. day-LOC.PL. prepare-IND.PERF.1P.EXTR-AGENT.
mother.DIR.SG. TOPIC. girl-DIR.DU. 1SG.DIR. and. for. be_orange-IND.PRES.3S.INTR. cotton-ESS.SG. with. hand-LOC.SG. yard-DAT.SG. go-IND.PAST.3S.EXTR.PAT. 3PL.DIR. TOPIC. 1P.POSS.DIR. day-GEN.SG. sarī-DIR.PL.
Tainā.DIR.SG. TOPIC. tree-ABL.PL. hear_from_through-IND.PRES.3S.EXTR.PAT. bahīrah-GEN.SG. note-ABL.PL. sing_heicā-SUBJ.IMPF.3S.EXTR.PAT. go_into-IND.PAST.3S.EXTR.PAT. and. shortly. bake-IND.PERF.3S.EXTR.PAT. flatbread-GEN.PL. anise_perfume.DIR.SG. air-ACC.SG. be_full-CAUS.IND.PAST.3S.EXTR-AGENT.
Nilāmulka.DIR.SG. TOPIC. come_out-IND.PERF.3S.EXTR.PAT. sarī-ACC.SG. wrap_around-IND.PAST.3S.EXTR-AGENT. Tainā.DIR.SG. wash-SUBJ.IMPF.3S.INTR. heicā-INSTR.SG. stop-SUBJ.IMPF.3S.EXTR-AGENT. without. go-IND.PAST.3S.EXTR.PAT. and. and. bahīrah-DIR.SG. NEG. hear-POT-OPPOSITION-IND.PRES.3S.EXTR.PAT. NEG. Naina.DIR.SG. start_humming_to_tune-IND.PERF.3S.EXTR.PAT. Nilāmulka-ACC.SG. 1SG.ACC. and. also. sing-INF-reach-CAUS.IND.PAST.3S.EXTR-AGENT. and.
Nilāmulka.DIR.SG. TOPIC. mother.DIR.SG. black-ACC.SG. take-IND.PAST.3S.EXTR-AGENT. and. hand-LOC.SG. two-DISTR. stripe-ACC.SG. paint-IND.PAST.3S.EXTR-DAT. while. Daṃdhigūlan.DIR.SG. come_in-IND.PAST.3S.EXTR.PAT. be_black-IND.PRES.3D.INTR. vārṇaigi-ACC.DU. tie_around_foot-SUBJ.IMPF.3S.EXTR-DAT.
Naina.DIR.SG. TOPIC. while. celebration-TRANSL.SG. indeed. be-IND.PAST.3S.EXTR.PAT. dildhā.DIR.SG. elephant.DIR.SG. and. about. song-ACC.SG. because. 1SG.POSS.LOC. ear-DAT.SG. sing-SUBJ.IMPF.3S.EXTR-AGENT. go_into-IND.PAST.3S.EXTR.PAT. mother.DIR.SG. 1SG.ERG. not. only. Naina-ESS.SG. with. jump_away-IND.PAST.3S.EXTR-ANTIBENEF. monsoon-LOC.SG. dance-SUBJ.IMPF.1D.EXTR.PAT. : celebration-GEN.SG. be_beautiful-IND.PRES.3S.INTR. be_orange-IND.PRES.3S.INTR. sarī-ERG.SG. wrap_around-IND.PERF.3S.EXTR.PAT. Nilāmulka-ERG.SG. but. be_the_same-ADV. do-IND.PAST.3S.EXTR.PAT.
Tainā.DIR.SG. TOPIC. come_out-IND.PERF.3S.EXTR.PAT. day-GEN.SG. cloth-ACC.SG. take-IND.PERF.3S.EXTR-AGENT. Naina-ESS.SG. with. play-IND.PAST.3S.EXTR.PAT. while. wash-IND.PAST.1S.INTR. — after. breakfast-DAT.SG. go-IND.PAST.1D.EXTR.PAT. while. be_little-IND.PRES.3S.INTR. Naina.DIR.SG. mother-ERG.SG. take_care-IND.PAST.3S.EXTR.PAT.

It was two in the morning and [my] younger sister Naina came running into our room where Nilāmulka, Tainā, and I were sleeping and woke us up. "Lañyās, nature is blooming!"

We had been waiting for that day for months — there is not a single girl who does not wait so eagerly for that time of the year! We got up our beds and ran in the yard, under the rain. Even the rains feel different on juniahiyunyi jaṃšā. Dad had already prepared the washing room for us while grandpa and brother Daṃdhigūlan were taking the first lilac nāniai out of the tandoori oven and cutting kælitsai, mārai, vārīkai, and baubai.

Nilāmulka had gone into the washing room and Tainā and me were waiting behind the wall. We both know this was going to be a special day: Naina had entered her 9th year a few days before and it was time for her to wear her first jånirāh, which the girls and I had spent the last twelve days preparing. Mum came into the yard with the hands full of orange cotton for the buneyon and I - our own jånirai for the day.

Tainā started singing rhythmically along the notes of a bahīrah we heard through the trees, and an anise perfume of freshly baked nāniai filled the air. Nilāmulka came out and put on her jånirāh as Tainā went to wash without stopping her heicā, and even if the bahīrah couldn't be heard anymore Naina hummed into and got Nilāmulka and I singing too. Mum took the black and drew Nilāmulka two stripes per hand, as Daṃdhigūlan came to tie her the black vārṇaigīye.

Naina, meanwhile, was fully in the mood for celebration, as she started to sing the song of the dildhā and the elephant right into my ears - to the disappointment of mom, not only did I jump with her dancing in the monsoon, but Nilāmulka did the same in her festive, beautiful orange jånirāh. Tainā came out, got dressed for the day and played with Naina while I washed - then we went for breakfast while mom took care of little Naina.

[TBC]

See also

• Calémere
• Chlouvānem morphology
• Chlouvānem syntax
• Chlouvānem positional and motion verbs
• Chlouvānem exterior and interior verbs
• Chlouvānem Inquisition
• Chlouvānem literature
• Yunyalīlta
• Chlouvānem names
• Chlouvānem calendar
• Chlouvānem Swadesh list
• Chlouvānem phrasebook
• Chlouvānem thematic wordlists
• Chlouvānem Contionary entries

External links

• Chlouvānem on Conworkshop (under construction)