Aethêllan
Overview
Gwythyr is one of my main conlangs and was created out of joy, as linguistic experiment, and also to be the main classical language for my series of Fantasy novels. Gwythyr is spoken by the dominant species of Anmarla and has an approximately 15 million speakers. At the time of my main novel series, the language and its native speakers are extinct, however Gwythyr is used as the language of academics, state and religious ceremonies, and record/document keeping. However only the upper classes can read and speak it and even then only a minority of the upper classes. The seven languages of the nine different kingdoms during this time are all descended from Gwythyr. Gwythyr is in turn descended from Vamynouyynem.
This is a work of love and I ask any readers that, outside of any accidental grammatical mistakes, that they do not make any edits, however minor, without my permission and that this work is protected by copyright. Your understanding is greatly appreciated.
Background
Gwyhtyr is an SVO synthetic-agglutinative language. The majority of information is placed on the nouns and verbs, and though it is an SVO language technically speaking it does allow for free word order.
Phonology
Single Letters (Romanisation)
| Bilabial | Labiode. | Dental | Alveol. | Postalve. | Retrofl. | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosives | p (p) pw (pw) |
b (b) bw (bw) |
t (t) tw (tw) |
d (d) dw (dw) |
k (k) kw (kw) |
g (g) gw (gw) | |||||||||||||
| Fricatives | f (f) fw (fw) |
v (v) vw (vw) |
θ (th) | ð (dh) | s (s) sw (sw) |
h (h) | |||||||||||||
| Nasals | m (m) | n (n) nw (nw) |
ɲ (ñ) | ||||||||||||||||
| Trill | r (r) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Glides | Approxim. | ʍ (hw) | w (w) | ɹ (r) | j (j) | ||||||||||||||
| Lateral Appr. | l (l) | ɭ (l) | |||||||||||||||||
Mutations
- Both Approximants and Lateral Approximants are de-voiced before nasals.
- Final Obstruent Devoicing.
- /l/ becomes /ɭ/ after vowels.
- /ɹ/ becomes /r/ before plosives.
- NB /l/ & /ɭ/ not distinguishing phonemes.
Diphthongs
Diphthong IPA ao ɐʊ ey eɪ ôe ɔː ŷe ɪəː
Vowels
| Vowels | IPA Symbols | Vowel | IPA Symbols |
| a | æ | o | ɒ |
| â | ɐː | ô | ɵː |
| á | eɪː | ó | əʊː |
| e | e | y | ɪ |
| ê | eːə | ŷ | iː |
| ÿ | ɐɪː | ||