User:Ceige/Levita-Ile
Levita-Ile /le'vita 'ile/, a sketchlang (at least for now) by Ceige, is a language bearing an English-substrate with heavy amounts of Polynesian and other island-oriented language influences, the bulk of which are phonetic, but sometimes even grammatical influences occur. The language started to break from English in the nascent Haile-Hofu (EN:Sail-Surf) solar-culture, with large developments occuring in the later extra-solar colonisation era. After reaching a point of recognisable divergence from English and then stability (that is, after finding its unique character), it spread mostly through its association with the Haile-Hofu culture, which was largely considered inoffensive and accessible to large swathes of the international population.
Today, it is largely spoken on planets with healthy self-identifying Haile-Hofu cultures, with a still sizeable portion of the native speaker population existing in the Haile-Hofu diaspora embedded in other cultures. There are large amounts of second-language speakers up to 1 ERD (extraterritorial radial distance), with the language enjoying positive reactions from people across the galaxy due to its cultural associations.
History
Levita-Ile was first conceived by speakers of English, Spanish, Japanese, Hawai'ian and other languages around the Pacific, Oceania and Carribean. It originally appeared like Verlan, as slang vocabulary between members of the Sail-Surf community. The Sail-Surf community was derived from a collection of beach and aquatics oriented subcultures, which converged once space colonisation allowed the essential creation of entirely new countries tailored to the tastes of the builders and future inhabitants. The appearance of proto-Levita-Ile lexicon is believed to have been a way for members of the Sail-Surf community to identify with each other and differentiate themselves from people less interested in their way of life, but still in heavy contact with them, such as the Vacationers and Edenists.
The potential speaker population however lacked the ability to grow efficiently, due to the level of dedication needed to gain prestige in the culture against the need to support oneself economically. This changed considerably after major advances in energy and materialisation technoloiges, which also heralded the beginning of extensive extrasolar colonisation. The Sail-Surf culture expanded massively in this time, and with the population explosion and large-scale changes to the culture, Levita-Ile ended up being established as a type of pidgin for the community.
The language originally had more Japonic influences, but these ultimately were shed from the language and absorbed into the Japonic community instead, through conceptual reassociation. Since the Levita-Ile culture often borders the Japonic community, and is in close contact with it in many cases, it could be argued that the Japonic influences were never lost, but native-speaker perception is that most Japonic influences are just loaned from the Japonic cultures.
Phonology
Consonants:
- P, M, F, V
- T, N, L
- K, H, Y
- ' (okina)
Vowels:
- a, e, i, o, u
Restrictions:
- While orthographically, the okina can come word initially, phonetically, it is not pronounced in that position by all speakers.
Grammar
Nouns
Nouns did not inherit the English plural or genitive, instead marking case by prepositions or position relative to the verb. Plural forms have been created anew from the Levita-Ile lexicon.
Pronouns
The English pronoun system has collapsed, with a new, simplified system taking its place, loosely derived from the original.
Demonstratives and Articles
the shifted to become le, with some appropriate Romance influence.
Adjectives
Adjectives follow the noun phrase.
Verbs
The English way of forming verb phrases has also changed massively. In particular, reduplication of the verb to indicate the continuative/frequentative has been established.
Word Order
Word order is largely VSO, or VOS.
Syntactic Alignment
The language has nominative-ergative, accusative, and absolutive cases, which make use of prepositions to mark themselves with the exception of the absolutive.
Vocabulary
Sources
Levita-Ile derives the bulk of its vocabulary from English, although through derivational processes, the similarity is often lost. Another large source of vocabulary are the various Polynesian languages, and often (Carribean) Spanish and Japanese. Onomatopoeia are often adopted by the language due to the easiness of remembering them, while more technical terms are derived from the culture considered most prestigious for that field of knowledge.
Derivation
Levita-Ile vocabulary derives mostly from English as established beforehand, through a series of phonetic changes, and vowel changes inspired by both the phonology and orthography of 21st Century English. Sometimes derivation breaks away from the usual patterns, especially where Polynesian (Polynesian here including various other near-tropical maritime cultures) influences apply. Most of the derivational process is there to make sure words meet the phonological requirements of Levita-Ile, such as the low number of consonants and CVCV syllable structure.
The commonmost notable changes to English words in the derivational process are:
Consonants:
- /f/ and often /þ/ merge into /f/
- /b/, /v/ and /w/ (and occasionally /ð/) merge into /v/
- /t/ and /tS/ often merge into /t/
- /d/, /r/, /l/ and often /ð/ and /t/ (and occasionally /z/) merge into /l/
- /dZ/, /Z/, /ð/, /lj/, /j/ and /z/ often merge into /y/
- /s/, /S/, /h/ and often /g/ (and occasionally /z/) merge into /h/
Vowelssee notes below:
- ă /æ/ > eCa
- ä /ä:/ > aCa, oCa
- â /ei/ > aiCa, eiCa, eCa
- ĕ /e/ > eCe, iCe
- ê /i:/ > eiCe, eiCa
- er /ë:/ > oCe, uCe, aCe
- ĭ /i/ > eCi, iCi
- ï /i:/ > eiCi, iCi
- ī /äi/ > aCi, eCi, oCi, oiCi
- ir /ë:/ > oCi, uCi, aCi
- ŏ /o/ > oCo, aCo
- ö, or /o:/ > oCa, uCa
- ô /ou/ > uCo
- ŭ, ŏ /ä/ > aCu, aCo
- ü /u/ > uCo, uCu
- û /(j)u:/ > uCu ~ iCu
- ur /ë:/ > oCu
N.B.: Mostly for monosyllables. These however can all change according to the orthography of the original English word, as there is a trend to take the vowel's real pronunciation, modify that, then insert a vowel into a second syllable representing the orthography of the first syllable, although it is not entirely regularly applied as a rule, and doesn't work as well when a word has multiple syllables in the first place.
Wordlist
Actions
- haile, sail
- lulu, roll (lulu-lulu, rolling)
- mani-hene, remind" < mind-again
Emotions
- pehano, fervant admiration, adoration, love < passion
Interjections
- (h)ai, yes
- nao, no ?
Numerals (Namua)
- Vano
- Tiu
- (Fi)lei
- (Fu)vao
- Favi
- Heki
- Heve(ne)
- Aite
- Nani
- Tene/Tine
Numbers often use le and vi to indicate ordinality.
Particles
- hu, so, how
- na, and
- va, of
- vi, which is
Places (Loko)
- hakai, sky
- hei, sea
- hulo, sun < Sol
- opitola, hospital
- tanu, town
- uhana, "ocean"
- veite, beach
Pronouns
- leme, them ?
- vo/nani, what ??
Quantities
- fiu/naoma, "few, little in number" ? < few/not much
- matu, much
Substances
- hena, sand
Time
- lai(e), day ?