Roguel

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Overview

Roguel is a heavily agglutinative conlang spoken in the western isles of Austronesia, a large archipelago (comparable to ATL's Indonesia), on the planet of Minerva (an alternative earth). It is an umbrella term for several languages, including Littoral Roguel and Plains Roguel. The standard form, based on Central Roguel, the dialect of the capital Goretiko, is an official language of the Republic of Serehano (alongside Low Blagulfian), with about 2.5 million first language speakers and over 6 million second language speakers.

It belongs to the Central subbranch, Central Roguelian branch of Roguelian family, part of Roguelian-Tayno-Paskhetsian stock, itself a part of the controversial West Austronesian phylum. Like other member of Central Roguelian branch it features noun incorporation, predominantly suffixing morphology, and has OVS as its predominant word order.

Its writing system is a syllabary alphabet devised by [?], the Chief of Nupovo in 1563, roughly modelled on the Smofian script (a full alphabet).

Phonology and Orthography

Notes:

  • /dz/ has a free variant [z], with which it is interchangeable. Word initially, /dz/ is more common.
  • /c c' ɟ/ are being evolved into [tʃ tʃ' dʒ], with additional (more conservative) allophones as palatal fricatives. However, their original values are preserved after /ɲ/.
  • Standard /ʃ/ is traditionally pronounced [ç], but it is now considered obsolete, mostly found in the elderly and in rural areas.
  • /ɬ/ is pronounced [θ] in some dialects.
  • /ts'/ and /c'/ can be realized as [s'] and [ç'~ʃ'] after another consonant.
  • /β/ is realized as an on-glide [w] after a consonant (including itself).
  • /p, t, k, ts, c, m, n, ɲ, l, ɾ, s, ʃ, ɬ, h, j/ are the only consonants permitted to occur in coda position. When voiceless ones precede voiced onsets, they become voiced. If the two consonants have the same place of articulation, they merge into a geminated one, e.g. /pp'/ [p'ː]; /pb/ [bː]
  • /h/ is realized as [x] when stressed, and as [ʔ] in coda position.
  • The cluster /tl/ and /tɬ/ are both realized as the affricate [tɬ͡].