Loshi
Introduction
Setting
Loshi (Loshi: ელსი /yʃi/) is a Locian language spoken primarily in Loshaith (Loshi: ელოსჯაჯდ /yʔɔʃɛːðˀ/), being the official language of the country. It's closest relatives are its sister language Rozian, and its daughter language Irocian. Loshi is spoken by roughly 10-12 million people in Loshaith alone, with another 5 million spoken in its extended territories as the language of business and commerce.
Typology
Loshi is a primarily agglutinative language with some synthetic tendencies. Nouns decline for 11 cases (Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Possessive, Instrumental), 3 numbers (Singular, Dual, and Plural), and can be either animate or inanimate. Animacy is primarily semantically based, however the semantic reasoning is not always intuitive to L2 speakers. (ოკალნ okán "egg" is animate, but გნიჯოკ níoki "claw" is inanimate), and it can be used to distinguish meaning: ჯოკ äk can mean either "human, person, individual", or "body, corpse, cadaver" depending on whether it is declined as animate or inanimate. Verbs decline for aspect, mood, person, number, and animacy. Morphologically verbs behave in a very agglutinative fashion, with each category pairing with a single morpheme.
Phonology
Orthography
Loshi uses a modified version of Mkhedruli (Loshi: კნეტლოლი [netˈluː]. It's most prominent feature is it's complexity. Sound changes throughout the language's history have yet to be recorded in the written language, and thus the writing systems reflects the pronunciation of centuries past.
Alphabet
| Letter | Name | Name IPA | IPA |
|---|---|---|---|
| ა | Ani | [ɐɲ] | [ɐ] |
| ბ | Bani | [pˀɐɲ] | [pˀ] |
| გ | Gani | [kˀɐɲ] | [kˀ] |
| დ | Däni | [tˀɛɲ] | [tˀ] |
| ე | Eni | [eɲ] | [e] |
| ი | Ini | [iɲ] | [i] |
| კ | Kani | [kɐɲ] | [k] |
| ლ | Laz | [ɫɐʃ] | [ɫ] |
| ნ | Ná | [nɑː] | [n] |
| ო | Oni | [ɔɲ] | [ɔ] |
| პ | Pá | [pɑː] | [p] |
| ს | Sani | [sɐɲ] | [s] |
| ტ | Tá | [tɑː] | [t] |
| ჯ | Äni | [ɛɲ] | Silent |
Digraphs
Loshi's native orthography makes extensive use of digraphs to represent it's pronunciation. However, there exist many digraphs that represent the same phoneme, resulting in a large number of homophones.
| Vowel Digraph | IPA |
|---|---|
| იჯ | [iː] |
| ეჯ | [iː] |
| აჯ | [ɛː] |
| ოჯ | [iː] |
| ილ | [i] |
| ელ | [iː] |
| ალ | [ɑː] |
| ოლ | [uː] |
| ჯი | [i] |
| ჯე | [i] |
| ჯა | [ɛ] |
| ჯო | [ɛ] |
| სჯ | [ʃ] |
| კს | [x] |
Consonants
| Categories | Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Post-Alveolar | Palatal | Velar |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | /m/ | /n/ | /ɲ/ | |||
| Stop | /p /pˀ/ | /t/ /tˀ/ | /k/ /kˀ/ | |||
| Fricative | [f] [v] | [θ] [ð] | /s/ | /ʃ/ | [ç] [ʝ] | /x/ [ɣ] |
| Lateral | /l/ | /ʎ/ |
Allophony
Nasals
- /n/ is realized as [ŋ] before /k/ or /x/ and [ŋˀ] before /kˀ/, but [ŋ] before [ɣ].
კოლნკჯოლსჯ kunkuz [kuːŋkuːʃ]
სჯტოლნკ ztunk [ʃtuːŋx]
ბანგოდ bangod [pˀɐŋˀkˀɔð]
ლჯოსალნგ ljäsáng [ʎɛˈsɑːŋɣ]
- /n/ is realized as [m] before [ɔ uː p], as [ɱ] before [f], and as [ɲ] before [i iː].
ნიკჯოლტლოსი nikutläz [ɲiˈku:tlɛʃ]
ნოჯინო míno [ˈmiːmɔ]
გელტჯატანპ gitätamp [kˀitɛtɐɱf]