Lefso

Modernized Lefso
レ中ソ
The official flag of the Lefso language
Pronunciation	[ˈlɛˑɸsoː]
Created by	Micor558
Date	2024
Setting	Kuril Islands
Native speakers	140 Speakers (2024)
Language family	Allavian Revolutionary Allavian Eupraric Scripting Lefso Scripting Modernized Lefso
Early forms	Allavian Eupraric-Japanese Scripting Archaic Lefso Early Lefso Middle Lefso Late Lefso Modernized Lefso; Archives I - II
Standard form	Lefso var. (Archive III / Navoc Hook)
Dialects	Kanje-Dominant Dialects ("Kanje", "Antarctic Lefso") Tonal-Dominant Dialects ("Lefse") Slavic-Leaning Dialects ("Rusiji") Japanese-Leaning Dialects ("Fukuse")
Writing system	Odinya, [w:Hiragana
Official status
Official language in	[United Colonies of Eupraria]
Language codes
CLCR	qle

Introduction

Modernized Lefso (Also: “Lefso”, “Bing bong”; Native: “レ中ソ”) is a constructed language spoken by less than 1,000 individuals, Modernized Lefso is recognized as the de facto and de jure official and national language of a micronation, The United Colonies of Eupraria.

Modernized Lefso was formed as a result of five factors. The drift of English within Eupraria towards various creoles and dialects was known collectively as “Allavian”. Euprarian natives liked how pilot pens (the number one selling pen in Eupraria) glided across paper when writing Japanese. Eupraran natives began making authentic-sounding words from garbled results of Ceaser Cipher encrypted text. During Regional War Two, Fascist Italy and the Four Square Council were influenced by Japan, which quickly affected the way Allavian was written and spoken. Modernized Lefso is being changed due to constant Slavic or Japonic influence.

Modernized Lefso is quite volatile and known for being heavily influenced by Japonic and Slavic culture. Modernized Lefso is the most successful auxiliary language spoken and exchanged through Eupraria, with major influence outside these regions. Modernized Lefso is commonly spoken within spread-out pockets of land, which expand outwards - a process caused by colonialism and Euprarian imperialism.

Modernized Lefso remains the most influential conlang within the United Colonies of Eupraria, where its Sprachraum resides, Modernized Lefso has migrated out of Eupraria and formed various pidgins. Modernized Lefso was formed via constant contact with Japanese and dialects with Old Lefso, heavily influenced by Slavic languages - primarily Russian. Modernized Lefso exists on a dialect continuum with Older Lefso Varieties and Japanese.

Lefso is an agglutinative, synthetic, syllabic language with moderately complex phonotactics, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch accent. Word order is normal subject-object-verb with grammatical particles (toppings) marking the grammatical function of words, with a topic-comment sentence structure. Phrases in Lefso are exclusively head-final and left-branching. The placement of particles is mixed, with some preceding information, while most succeed. Sentence-ending particles inflect emotional, emphatic qualities, make questions, or conclude lists. Nouns have no gender articles. Verbs are conjugated primarily for tense and voice, but not for person. Adjectives are also conjugated.

In Modernized Lefso, a unique symbol known as a “Lefse” is used to direct the tone, stress, and length of a sound in a phrase, which is what the name “Lefso” is derived from, evolved from the unification of the Hard Symbol (み - approximation), Soft Symbol (Ժ), Lenition Marking (て), and Elongation Marking (ラ) - along with tones that weren’t added until later on due to conflicting accents across all states who used Modernized Lefso as a de jure.

Modernized Lefso combines a Latin/Cyrillic/Katakana-themed abugida-alphabet (Odinya) and a modified Kanji system (Kanje) with the two Japanese writing syllabaries: Hiragana and Katakana (known under the common name “Kana”).

The flag of Modernized Lefso is a 13-pointed light yellow star positioned to “rise” above a blue rectangle with thin white on its top and bottom borders. Placed atop a red background with three uneven stripes of increasing darkness vis-a-vis distance to the top edge of the flag, and with four stars arranged in a small square-like shape on the top-left corner.

The red, white, and blue are the colors in the flag that also make up both the United Kingdom, Russia, and Japan (with just white and red); While the blue, white, and yellow are the colors in the flag that also make up the United Colonies of Eupraria–the country where it’s the de facto and de jure—also the birthplace of the language. The blue stripe with white along its top and bottom rim represents both an ocean, and a stripe of Norway–the country that celebrates with Lefse’s (the food that inspired the name of Modernized Lefso’s unique phonetic modifier character, thus the name of the Language itself). The 13-pointed Yellow star has many meanings. It’s most commonly seen as a depiction of a sun rising above an ocean; When paired with the red background, it resembles a sunrise. This showcases the meaning of Japan (Land of the Rising Sun). The star also acts as a reference to the Hatsune Miku song–Mesmerizer, which partly contributed to the Great Japonic Kick. The color of the star represents the sun at dusk, the star seen in Mesmerizer, and the exaggerated color of a Norwegian Lefse.

Phonology

CALS: Phonology

Caption text

WALS PROPERTY	LEFSO VALUE
Consonant Inventories	Moderately Large
Vowel Quality Inventories	Large (7 - 14)
Consonant-Vowel Ratio	Moderately High
Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives	In both plosives and fricatives
Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems	None missing in /p t k b d g/
Uvular Consonants	None
Glottalized Consonants	No glottalized consonants
Lateral Consonants	/l/, no obstruent laterals
The Velar Nasal	No initial velar nasal
Vowel Nasalization	Contrast absent
Front Rounded Vowels	None
Syllable Structure	Moderately Complex
Tone	Complex tone system
Fixed Stress Locations	No fixed location
Weight-Sensitive Stress	Unbounded: Stress can be anywhere
Weight Factors in Weight-Sensitive Stress Systems	Long vowel or coda consonant
Rhythm Types	Undetermined
Absence of Common Consonants	All present
Presence of Uncommon Consonants	None

Modernized Lefso's phonology is the system of sounds used in Lefso pronunciation. Unless otherwise noted, this covers the Navoc Hook dialect.

There is no overall consensus on the number of phonemes–with at least 12 being registered. Phonetic length and tone are significant in the language (for vowels and consonants). Some consonant clusters exist but have dwindled in number following the Great Japonic Kick. Modernized Lefso has a very significant pitch accent, where the location or absence of a pitch modification may alter the word, usually marked “excessively”. For example, in khorosho, /khrosho↓/ (okay), and /khrosho↑/ (shotgun). Tone systems are complex and are often marked differently depending on context.

Phonotactics within Modernized Lefso is influenced by layers of English, Japanese, and Russian, causing a gradient of words to form across the language.

Lexical Strata

Modernized Lefso is a blend of linguistic vocabulary, and can be broadly divided into four categories based upon origin.

Odinji

Odinji describes all native Lefso words and loanwords preceding Middle Lefso.

Nihoji

Nihoji comprises all introduced loanwords of Japanese origin within succeeding timeframes of Middle Lefso, usually introduced within the Lefso Modernizations. Consonant clusters are heavily confined, with the presence of vowel harmony.

Rusiji

Rusiji comprises all introduced Russian loanwords within timeframes succeeding Middle Lefso. Consonant clusters are exceedingly common within this category.

Foreji

Foreji comprises all introduced loanwords that don’t fall into the prior two categories.

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labio-dental	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Retroflex	Alveolo-palatal	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	m			n
Plosive	(p), (b)			(t), (d)					(k), (g)		(ʔ)
Affricate				(t͡s), (d͡z)	(d͡ʒ)		(t͡ɕ), (d͡ʑ)
Fricative	(ɸ)	(f)		(s), (z)	(ʃ), (ʒ)	(ʐ)	(ʑ)	(ç)	(x), (ɣ)
Palatal app.								(j)
Central app.				(ɹ)*
Lateral app.			(l), (ɫ)
Trill				(r)
Flap or tap				ɾ

1. • conventionally transcribed as r
     • Usually only seen bound with vowels.

Various regions recognize different phonemes as consonants, the most common consensus being at least 15 consonants /m n p b k g ɸ z f s ɹ w dz x l /, these consonants are called golden consonants (Kinoji).

Voice onset time

Plosive aspiration of the consonants /p b d t/ can vary upon placement. For front-placed plosives of /p b d t/, these consonants remain tenuis unless marked otherwise via lenition, in which they turn aspirated. Aspiration also occurs for non-front-positioned /p b d t/ letters unless otherwise marked with stress. Lenition and Stress are both marked with bowls.

The /g/ plosive is almost exclusively aspirated unless marked otherwise via stress, in which it turns tenuis.

Lenition and Stress

Lenition and Stress are always marked with the usage of bowls. However, native patterns commonly emerge within Lefso. When the term “Stress” is referred to in Modernized Lefso, it’s a Stress Bowl modifier for a character, which can alter depending on emphatic inflection and character modification. Aspirated Plosives become tenuis, the /y/ component in a soft vowel is shortened and lowered in volume, and vowels are raised in volume and sometimes length–affecting /ɨ/ exclusively.

If a /kh/ has lenition applied during emphatic inflections, it becomes a uvular fricative; with voice depending on placement. Initial and Non-initial with a consonant succeeding component become voiceless, and Non-initial components with a vowel as a succeeding component become voiced, with a /r/ trill being used if placed succeeding said succeeding vowel component.

An initial or ending /f/ with stress during emphatic inflection may become a /ɸ/, however, for fast dialogue, it’s often ignored; with the /f/is inflected as a /ȹ/–the voiceless labiodental plosive–a sound not recognized by the International Phonetic Alphabet, but occasionally seen in Bantu languages, within Modernized Lefso, there is only one word that uses this character–(fu), transcribed as /ȹɯ̌ˑ/ ‘jet’ or ‘strong stream’, which differentiates from /fɯ̌ˑ/–the pronunciation for (不).

Lenition of an end-positioned /g/ during emphatic inflection may become a /ɣ/.

Allophony

Allophony describes how a single sound may be pronounced differently depending on placement and surrounding components of a word.

1. Plosives, especially /b/, /t/, and /d/; are weakened and more aspirated if placed toward the end of a word. However, stress in unchanged if present within a consonant cluster.

Sonorants may be partially devoiced if a voiceless consonant is present in the same syllable, often within a pitch-lowered segment of a word.

1. Alveolars are commonly retracted before /ɹ/.
2. The velar stops /k/ and /g/ advance further within the mouth before front vowels.
3. The voiceless billabial fricative /ɸ/ is more stressed if paired with an /u/ at the back of a word.
4. A voiceless /sh/ and /s/ may be partially voiced if succeeding a /e/ at the end of a word.
5. Sonorants are devoiced if the plosives /p b t/ precede.

Unstressed Syllables

Unstressed syllables can have a nucleus of any vowel present, However, Generally, certain vowel nuclei are used for unstressed vowels, such as:

1. [u], commonly perceived with a lowered tone when within an unstressed syllable. An example being bufofo.
2. An r-colored /a e i o u/ nucleus, these tend to be elongated and placed at the end of a word.
3. [ɨ], commonly perceived with a rising tone when within an unstressed syllable.
4. [ɯ̟], commonly seen with a preceding non-plosive consonants in syllables upfront.

Placement of syllables and pace of voice may effect the stress of syllables. A notable example being the voicing of /sh/ when placed at the end of a word (zh).

Caption text

IPA Symbol	Mouth	Location	Lips	Formant 1	Formant 2	Formant 2 - Formant 1	Vowel Origin
a	Near-Open	Front	Unrounded	265 Hz	920 Hz	Example	Example
ɛ	Open-Mid	Front		Unrounded	710 Hz	2,690 Hz	Example
e	Close-Mid	Front		Unrounded	590 Hz	2,690 Hz	Example
o	Close-Mid	Back		Rounded	865 Hz	2,820 Hz	Example
ɪ	Near-Close		Unrounded	290 Hz	2,370 Hz	Example
i	Close		Front	Unrounded	350 Hz	2,760 Hz	Example
u	Close		Back	Rounded	265 Hz	540 Hz	Example
ɨ	Close		Mid	Unrounded	340 Hz	1,300 Hz	Example
ɯ̟	Close		Near-Back	Unrounded	340 Hz	1,410 Hz	Example