Sinatolean

Sinatolean
sinadoleya
Pronunciation	[ɕinadɔleja]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2024
Native speakers	6,800,000 (2024)
Language family	Sinatolean Central Sinatolean
Early forms	Proto-Sinatolean Proto-Central Sinatolean
Standard form	Standard Sinatolean
Dialects	Sinat’ dialects Southern Islands dialects Nelahgan dialects
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Regulated by	Sinat’ Societal Studies Institute

Sinatolean(sinadoleya; [ɕinadɔleja]) is the official and national language of the Sinatolean Federation, a federative archipelago nation. Before the unification and subsequent formation of the Federation, Sinatolean was still used as a lingua franca in the region as far back as around 900 CE. It is the most spoken Sinatolean language, with an estimated 6,800,000 total native speakers as of 2024.

Sinatolean is a heavily agglutinative language. In fact, the autonym of the language is itself an agglutinated phrase:

sin       -a        dol      -e   ya
person -SING island -PL speech

Thus, sinadoleya means "speech of the island person".

Phonology

Consonants

Sinatolean has a total of 27 consonants; 16 phonemic consonants, with an additional 11 allophones of these phonemic consonants.

	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	p b		t d	(c) (ɟ)	k g	ʔ
Nasal	m		n	(ɲ)	ŋ
Fricative	(f) (v)		s z, (ɕ) (ʑ)		(x)	h
Affricate			t͡ɕ d͡ʑ
Semivowel	w			j
Lateral			l	(ʎ)	(ɫ)

Broad and slender

Main article: Sinatolean broad and slender consonants
Like in Irish, the realisation of consonants change depending on the vowel after it. For example, a /g/ before an /i/ or /e/(slender vowels) changes to /ɟ/, while the same for /k/ changes it to /c/. These changes are not shown in the orthography. The following table only shows the changes for plosives(/p, b, t, d, k, g, ʔ/).

Phoneme	Broad	Example
	Slender
/p/	/p/	pola [pɔla] "move"
	/f/	pisa [fisa] "dog"
/b/	/b/	boso [bɔsɔ] "roof"
	/v/	labin [laviɲ] "wave"
/t/		tolo [tɔlɔ] "triggerfish"
/d/	/d/	dole [dɔle] "islands"
	/ɟ/	didika [ɟiɟika] "beach"
/k/	/k/	angaka [aŋaka] "temple, shrine"
	/c/	kēnene [ceːɲeɲe] "waterfalls"
/g/	/g/	ganeu [gaɲəw] "pet food"
	/ɟ/	ginja [ɟiɲd͡ʑa] "june, 6 months"
/ʔ/		āyo [ʔajɔ] "hey (Sinatʼ regional variation)", janiʼpi [d͡ʑaɲiʔfi] "jasmine tea"

Vowels

Short vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Close-mid	e
Mid		(ə)*
Open-mid			ɔ
Open		a

/ə/ is a common unstressed allophone that can theoretically be used for any vowel, though it is mostly only used for /e/ when it precedes a semivowel like /w/ or /j/, such as in ganeu [gaɲəw], "pet food".

Long vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	iː		uː
Close-mid	eː
Open-mid			ɔː
Open		aː

In Sinat’, many speakers glottalise initial long vowels, simultaneously also shortening the vowel, such as in āyo, "hey", which in Sinat’ would be pronounced [ʔajɔ], but in Standard Sinatolean as well as most other dialect groups would be pronounced as [aːjɔ].

Morphology

Calendar

Months

Month
Number	English	Sinatolean
		Modern	Tuananga Yadān
1	January	janua	nganada
2	February	peblan
3	March	māja	gngāja
4	April	abīl	ōneja
5	May	mēhi	kinānalua
6	June	ginja
7	July	geuli	mīlja
8	August	ogost
9	September	setembo	saukānān
10	October	ōkotubo	saukān
11	November	nobembo	sauke
12	December	desembo

Tunanga Yādan(Emeár: tõaanga [d̪ʷãːŋɐ]) is a calendar system of Emeárin origin that was the regional standard calendar before the arrival of Europeans. Most Sinatolean speakers don't use this system anymore, apart from the elderly as well as some disconnected tribes. The Sinatolean variation, often dubbed the Yādan variation, is still used by native Sinatoleans to form mononyms. For example, Dolekamrinu's birthname was Sinaginja, "June person". His younger sister, born a year later in July, was named Adiasinamīlja, "small July person."

Nouns

Number

Sinatolean differentiates between singular and plural nouns. Singular nouns are marked with an -a suffix, while -e is used to indicate plurality. If a word already ending in -a has to be indicated as singular, the final vowel is simply extended, e.g. angaka "temple, shrine" becomes angakā "a shrine, a temple". If an -a ending word has to be indicated as plural, as a vowel-vowel(VV) syllable is impossible in Sinatolean, a /j/ is placed between the two vowels, e.g. angakā "a temple, a shrine" becomes angakaye "shrines, temples".

Word derivation

Sinatolean, as well as Sinatolean languages as a whole, are very agglutinative, so many words can be derived from combining words. For example, take angaka "shrine, temple". It is a combination of the verb anga "to pray" and the suffix/word (-)ka, "location, locative marker". Thus, angaka means "praying place". Words ending in -ka usually denote a place: e.g. didika, lit. "sand-place"; "beach". Other words that end in -ka include sineka, "country", sinekuka, "republic" and intaka, "public housing complex".

-ya denotes speech or language, such as in sinadoleya, "Sinatolean language", lit. "island-people-speech". Words ending in -ya typically denote languages or dialects, such as pilanseya [filanɕeja] "French language", or inglandaya(often erroneously misspelled as inglandya) [iŋ(g)landaja] "English language".

Determiners

Demonstratives

Sinatolean uses suffixes for demonstratives.

	Singular	Plural
This	-nga	-nge
That	-pya	-pye

These suffixes have to be used after the number-suffix(-a or -e), so dole would be "islands", while dolenge would be "these islands"; dolnge would be grammatically incorrect.

Possessives

Possessives are both articles placed after the noun or suffixes, but never at the same time. Whether one uses articles or suffixes is entirely up to the speaker. Some studies have shown that some regions more prevalently use suffixes over articles, though the opposite is true in other areas.

One study has also shown that some speakers prefer suffixes for short words, e.g. nak, "bird", while prefering articles for longer words like yoteang, "coffee". So, the sentence "My bird likes my coffee" would be Nakālang yoteang yanang minga, instead of vice versa(Nak yanang yoteangālang minga)

Suffixes have also sometimes been associated with a low level of education in the past, such as in the Sinatolean translation of Flowers for Algernon(Sinatolean: Algenonku Ilāye), in which the narrator's initially uneducated prose predominantly uses suffixes to indicate possession, e.g. Komelang [sic] Charlie Gordon, "My name is Charlie Gordon." Later, when (spoilers!) the narrator's intelligence is significantly increased, he begins to use articles to indicate possession, such as in kibiolo kalang, "my intuition".

Suffixes

	Singular	Plural	Neutral
My	-ālang	-elang	-olang
Our	-āleng	-eleng	-oleng
Your	-nala	-nela	-nā
His/Its	-gāla	-gāle	-lāga
Her	-lua	-lue	-lū
Their	-gēla	-gele	-lēga

Articles

	Singular	Plural	Neutral
My	yanang	lānang	kalang
Our	yaneng	lāneng	kaleng
Your	nesang	nasanga	sanga
His/Its	ikala	ikalay	kalay
Her	ngalau	ngelau	ngelay
Their	ikēla	ikēley	keley

Syntax

Word order

Sinatolean, like all Sinatolean languages, has a strict SOV order.

Copulae

Sinatolean has no copulae. Thus, sentences like "I am tired" would grammatically be "I tired"(lag auman). Sinatolean is the only Sinatolean language with no copulae whatsoever; for comparison, the equivalent phrase of Sinatolean lag auman in Mowinda-Moyeng would be le’ awan jengāzi [leʔ (a)wan ɟeŋaːzi] lit. "I tired am".

Dialects

Sinat’ dialects

Though Sinat’ is the region with the largest amount of Sinatolean speakers, most Sinat’ dialects actually differ quite a lot from the standard, as well as most other dialects.

• Initial long vowels are often shortened or pre-glottalised, sometimes both. For example, the word īagene, "spontaneous", would be pronounced [ʔjaɟeɲe] instead of [iːaɟeɲe].
• Short /i/ before /e/ or /a/ becomes /j/. For example, kaienu, "guitar" is pronounced [kajenu] instead of [kaienu]. In this instance specifically, a Sinat’ speaker could theoretically geminate the /j/ due to the existence of two eligible vowels around the original /i/.