Netagin

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Revision as of 15:05, 30 August 2020 by IlL (talk | contribs) (→‎Vowels)
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In the Unbegotten timeline, Netagin is a classical language of Edna's conworld, belonging to the Idavic language family. Netagin has influenced many other languages such as Ouřefr and Shalaian. Netagin is intended to be optimized for writing piyyutim: like Hebrew, Netagin has stressed suffixes, so that words can rhyme like in Jewish piyyutim; it does not, however, have a Semitic-style consonantal root system.

It's inspired by Hebrew, Old English, Khmer, Windermere and Maltese.

Phonology

Consonants

Conservative

p b t d ṫ ḋ ċ ġ c g cw ' s ṡ ħ hw h m n ṅ γ l r w j /p b t d c ɟ tʃ dʒ k g gʷ ʔ s ç x xʷ h m n ɲ ŋ l r w j/

Vowels

Less conservative; vowels in stressed syllables are lengthened, unstressed vowels reduced when historically short

a e i u ā ē ī ū > /a eə e o oə y i ø/

a e i o ea oa eo ie /a e i o eə oə ø y/

Reduced vowels: a/o i/e /a~ə ɨ/

Russian/Hebrew style alternation between pretonic a and propretonic ə

Stress

Usually final, some penultimately-stressed "segolates" CVCVC or CVCCV

Morphology

Nouns

Netagin has 3 genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and two cases (nominative, genitive); the feminine gender evolved from the Proto-Idavic abstract/honorific gender.

Netagin case affixes are regular:

  • masculine nominative -a, -u; genitive -a, -eaħ
  • feminine nominative -as, -eas, genitive -os, -eaħ
  • neuter nominative -0, -at, genitive -e, -eaħ

Verbs