Maltcégj

Introduction

Maltcégj is an a priori, agglutinative, semi-analytic head-initial language created by BenJamin P. Johnson in 2001. It has a strict VSO sentence structure that is modified with large numbers of verbal and nominal particles.

Writing Systems

Alphabet and Pronunciation

Letter	IPA	Letter	IPA	Letter	IPA
a	/a/	j	/ʒ/	ʀ	/ɹ̩/
b	/b/	k	/k/	s	/s/
c	/ʃ/	l	/l/	t	/t/
d	/d/	ɮ	/ɮ,ɬ/	þ	/θ/
ð	/ð/	ʌ	/ɫ̩/	u	/u/
e	/ɛ/	m	/m/	v	/v/
f	/f/	n	/n/	w	/w/
g	/g/	o	/o/	x	/x/
ǧ	/γ/	ǫ	/ɔ/	y	/ɪ/
h	/h/	p	/p/	ẏ	/j/
i	/i/	r	/ɾ/	z	/z/

Orthography

Primary stress is indicated in words of more than one syllable with an acute accent over the primary vowel. In diphthongs, the accent is placed on the first vowel.

Where two vowels appear together but are not a diphthong, the second vowel is marked with a diæresis if it is a front vowel; with a single dot if a back vowel (i.e. ï, ÿ, ë, ȧ, ǫ̇, ȯ, u̇), e.g. oï. Even if this would not result in a standard diphthong, this convention is still followed any time there are two disyllabic pertingent vowels, e.g. kúluï 'all', itáliȧ 'Italy'.

If the second vowel is stressed, however, the first vowel is marked instead, e.g. italiáno → italïáno 'Italian'.

No capital letters are used.

Native Writing System

Maltcégj is also written using a featural alphabet which treats the vowels as diacritics, and also uses diacritics to describe manner of articulation and consonant clusters. In all there are only seven “letters”; all other phonetic functions are filled by diacritics or modifications of these seven characters. (Actually, there are really only four: the labial, dental, palatal, and glottal forms are just directional variations of the same character, and the rhotic is just a turned lambdic.)