Telnan

Telnan /teɫnən/, endonym: Telná /telnaː/ is a Romance language spoken in the nation of Telna in the center of the Black Sea. Please excuse me if the page is not very fleshed out.

Introduction

Telnan is an Indo-European Romance conlang, most similar to Romanian and Italian. However, some features do come from the earlier languages spoken on the island, and there are some loanwords from Slavic languages, Turkish and Romanian.

Syllable structure

Syllable structure in Telnan is always either CV or CVC, where C represents either one or two consonants and V represents a vowel.

Phonology and orthography

Alphabet (with IPA)

Aa	[a]
Bb	[b]
Cc	[t͡s]
Čč	[t͡ʃ]
Dd	[d]
Ee	[e]
Éé	[e] at start of word, [eː] otherwise
Ff	[f]
Gg	[ɣ] before [i], [g] otherwise
Hh	[x]
Ii	[i]
Íí	[i] at start of word, [iː] otherwise
Jj	[j]
Kk	[k]
Ll	[l]
Mm	[m]
Nn	[ŋ] before [k] or [g], [n] otherwise
Oo	[o]
Óó	[o] at start of word, [oː] otherwise
Pp	[p]
Qq	[k]
Rr	[r]
Ss	[s]
Šš	[ʃ]
Tt	[t]
Uu	[u]
Úú	[u] at start of word, [uː] otherwise
Vv	[β] in consonant clusters, [v] otherwise
Xx	[ks] at end of word, [gz] otherwise
Yy	[i]
Zz	[z]
Żż	[dz]
Žž	[ʒ]

Consonant digraphs

ni	[ɲ]
li	[ʎ]
gy	[ç]

The reason long vowels (with an acute diacritic) are not long at the beginning of words is that historically there was a /h/ there. However, over time the /h/ sound completely dissapeared from the language. For etymological reasons, the following vowel is replaced with the long version of it, despite it being pronounced short. Look at 'ístoria' and 'ónor', for example.

Stress

In Telnan, the penultimate (second-to-last) syllable is stressed, although this can differ in certain words or loanwords.

Morphology

Morphosynactic alignment

Telnan is a nominative-accusative language.

Nouns

The

Syntax

Word order

The SVO (subject-verb-object) word order is used

'Be'

As in most Indo-European languages, the word 'be' exists in Telnan. It is 've'. The past tense form of 've', however, is '-er' which goes on the end of the word.

Example texts

The apple was red near the river = Il mar rošer ru li rio (the apple red-be.PST near the river)

The mouse ran up the clock = Il maš lergad surpi li čaš (the mouse run-PST up.on the clock)