Telnan

Telnan /teɫnən/, endonym: Telná /telnaː/ is a Romance language spoken in the nation of Telna in the center of the Black Sea.

Introduction

Telnan is an Indo-European Romance conlang, most similar to Romanian and Italian. However, some features do come from the earlier languages spoken on the island, and there are some loanwords from Slavic languages, Turkish and Romanian.

Phonology

Vowels

[i], [iː]	[u], [uː]
[e], [eː]	[o], [ɔː]
[a], [aː]

There are also two diphthongs: [ʊ̯ɔ] and [i̯e]

Consonants

[p], [b]		[t], [d]			[k], [g]
[m]		[n]		[ɲ]	[ŋ]
		[r]
[β]	[f], [v]	[s], [z], [ʃ], [ʒ]		[ç]	[x], [ɣ]
				[j]
				[ʎ]
		[t͡s], [d͡z], [t͡ʃ], [d͡ʒ]

Syllable structure

Syllable structure in Telnan is always either CV or CVC, where C represents either one or two consonants and V represents a vowel.

Orthography

Alphabet (with IPA)

Aa	[a]
Bb	[b]
Cc	[t͡s]
Čč	[t͡ʃ]
Dd	[d]
Ee	[e]
Éé	[e] at start of word, [eː] otherwise
Ff	[f]
Gg	[ɣ] before [i], [g] otherwise
Hh	[x]
Ii	[i]
Íí	[i] at start of word, [iː] otherwise
Jj	[j]
Kk	[k]
Ll	[l]
Mm	[m]
Nn	[ŋ] before [k] or [g], [n] otherwise
Oo	[o]
Óó	[o] at start of word, [oː] otherwise
Pp	[p]
Qq	[k]
Rr	[r]
Ss	[s]
Šš	[ʃ]
Tt	[t]
Uu	[u]
Úú	[u] at start of word, [uː] otherwise
Vv	[β] in consonant clusters, [v] otherwise
Xx	[ks] at end of word, [gz] otherwise
Yy	[i]
Zz	[z]
Żż	[dz]
Žž	[ʒ]

Consonant digraphs

ni	[ɲ]
li	[ʎ]
gj	[ç]

Stress

In Telnan, the penultimate (second-to-last) syllable is stressed, although this can differ in certain words or loanwords.

Morphology

There are four types of base words in Telnan (plus interjections and articles). They are:

• Nouns
• Verbs
• Adjectivals
• Seperate case

Each root word can be one of these four (peš {fish}, mer {go}, roš {red}, ru {near}). However, usually the root word is a noun. 'Seperate case' is classified seperately from adjectivals in Telnan and describes nouns' location, time or motion. Adjectivals go after the noun/verb, whilst seperate cases go before. Seperate cases are unmodifiable, except to verbs (by adding -ar)

Affixes to change word class

Verb	Noun	Adjectival
-ar (infinitive)	-o (masc.), -a (fem.)	-an

Morphosynactic alignment

Telnan is a nominative-accusative language.

Nouns

The

Syntax

Word order

The SVO (subject-verb-object) word order is used

Example texts

The apple was red near the river = Il mar rošer ru li rio (the apple red.be-PST near the river)

The mouse ran up the clock = Il maš lergad surpi li čaš (the mouse run-PST up.on the clock)