Kunesian

Kunesian is a language which is spoken on the same conworld as Bearlandic. It is an isolating language with a rather complex phoneme inventory and a quite messy but still predictable orthography. That is, the orthography is predictable to those who are familiar with it. The language is said to possess every sound you can hear in the jungles of Kunesia, including the sound of the vomiting after eating some poisonous berry (/χ/), that of spitting out the next poisonous berry (/p͡çᶣ/), that of a growling tiger (/rʶ/), and that of a hissing snake, which is simply /s/.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial		Dental	Alveolo-palatal	Retroflex	Palatal		Velar	Uvular
		Plain	Palatalised				Plain	Labial
Nasal		m	mʲ	n		ɳ	ɲ		ŋ	(ɴ)
Stop	Aspirated	pʰ		tʰ		ʈʰ	cʰ		kʰ	qʰ
	Voiceless	p	pʲ	t	tʲ	ʈ	c		k	q
	Voiced	b	bʲ	d	dʲ	ɖ	ɟ		g	ɢ
Affricate	Voiceless				t͡ɕ			p͡çᶣ
	Voiced			d͡z	d͡ʑ	ɖ͡ʐ	ɟ͡ʝ
Fricative		ɸ		s, θ	ɕ	ʂ	ç	çᶣ	xʷ	χ
Approximant		β					j	ɥ	ɰ	ʁ
Rhotic				ɾ		ɽ͡r				rʶ
Lateral				l		ɭ	ʎ		ɫ

Vowels

	Front		Cenral		Back
	Unrounded	Rounded		Unrounded		Rounded
Close	i	y ~ ʉ		ɨ ~ ɯ		u
Mid	ɛ ~ e	œ ~ ø		ʌ ~ ɤ		ɔ ~ o
Near-open	æ
Open	a			aɨ̯

Pitch-accent

Kunesian has a pitch-accent in which the stressed syllable can have either high or low pitch.

Creaky voice

All vowels distinguish modal and creaky voice.

Noun phrases

Plural

Plural can be marked using the particles ti ... tai, which function like some kind of circumfix just like the French negation ne ... pas. It is however not necessary to mark plurals and it is usually only done to stress the plurality or as a collective.

ti potrai tai
/tʰí pʌʈáɨ̯ tʰɨ/
PL house PL
houses, a group of houses, a village

Relational particles

To indicate a noun's relationship to another one, Kunesian uses relational particles. Some of the most important relational particles and their uses are:

• li: possession, focus on possessed rather than possessor.
  • potrai mela li: the man's house
• du: possession, focus on possessor rather than possessed.
  • mela potrai du: the man who has a house
• me: the last noun is an important part of the first one.
  • potrai nipit me: house with books = library
• to: the last thing is located inside the first one.
  • mure rente to: a forest with monkeys
• kim: the first thing is inside the last.
  • rente mura kim: a monkey in the forest
• anku: the two nouns refer to the same.
  • mela kusto anku: the man who is a liar

Adjectives

Adjectives precede their nouns. In complex noun phrases with multiple nouns, an adjective may refer to a single noun or to several nouns. To indicate where the adjective "ends", one of the particles ni, koi and sufi may be used, which have a positive, a negative, and a neutral connotation respectively. Compare these phrases:

nipu gilipo sufi pinokas me
/ɲýpu ɟíʎpo súçᶣɨ p͡çᶣý̰kɐs mʲé/
red shop ADJ.END.NEUTRAL banana of
a red shops which sells bananas

nipu gilipo pinokas me koi
/ɲýpu ɟíʎpo p͡çᶣý̰kɐs mʲé qʰí/
red shop banana of ADJ.END.BAD
a red shop which sells red bananas

In the first of these two sentences, the adjective nipu "red" applies to the shop only, so nothing is said about the color of the bananas. In the second sentence however, the adjective applies to both nouns, thus making both the shop and the bananas it sells red. Note also the use of koi in the second sentence.