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

Romanisation

		Bilabial		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

1. Both Approximants and Lateral Approximants are de-voiced before nasals.
2. Final Obstruent Devoicing.
3. /l/ becomes /ɭ/ after vowels.
4. /ɹ/ becomes /r/ before plosives..

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

Grammar & Syntax

Syntax

Independant Clauses are SVO whilst Dependant and Relative Clauses are SOV. There is also a slight distinction between Prepositional Clauses depending on whether the preposition attaches to the Direct Object; expressing location of the Direct Object during the action, or the Indirect Object; expressing the location of where the action affecting the Direct Object happened.

An Example in English and how it could be interpreted in Gwythyr depending on the location of the preposition:

I killed the man on the table.

1. In English this can interpreted as I killed the man who was on the table, or on the table is where I killed the man. In Gwythyr if one wanted to convey the first meaning then the preposition would attach to the Direct Object, whereas if one meant the other interpretation then the preposition would attach to the Indirect Object.

Stress

The stress is always placed on the second last accentuated vowel, and in the case where this is not accentuated then the stress swaps to the nearest accentuated vowel. In the case of two syllable words then the stress is always placed on the accentuated vowel and in the rare case where both vowels are accentuated the first one is favoured.

• In words with words that are more than four syllables long the first accentuated and second last accentuated vowel are stressed.
  • E.g donsênansêwe where the stress is on both sên and sê.