Lortho

Lortho [loɾtʰo]
Spoken in:	Lortho
Conworld:	A planet which orbits a binary star
Total speakers:	(insufficient data)
Genealogical classification:	(Family) (Branch) (Subbranch) (Language)
Basic word order:	Verb Subject Object
Morphological type:	Agglutinating
Morphosyntactic alignment:	Nominative-Accusative
Created by:
Brian Bourque	March 2017

Introduction

Lortho (IPA : [loɾtʰo]) is an a priori constructed language created by Brian Bourque in the beginning of 2003. It originally started as a prop for a strategy board game where only the script was created for aesthetics. Fast forward about 13 years and it has now evolved into a fusional-agglutinative language. The verbs are changed in conjugation; however, suffixes and prefixes are added to nouns to denote case.

Inspiration

Brian got his main inspiration from his daughter. As she started progressing to the ability to make sounds and mimic speech, there were a few words that she had created to mean certain things. A few of these words have entered the Lortho lexicon.

Alphabet and Script

Writing System

Lortho is an alphabet written from left to right.

The alphabet consists of 21 letters, of which one is a vowel. All other vowels are written as diacritics.

Diacritics

The diacritics are variants of the vowel [i] and are positioned at different heights to denote the vowel as seen below.

Lortho vowels. From left to right they are: [i], [ɑ], [o], [u], and [ɛ]

Sample

[konpʰɑɾin loɾtʰomɛ] I speak Lortho

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial		Labiodental		Alveolar		Postalveolar		Velar		Glottal
Plosive	p   pʰ	b			t   tʰ	d   dʰ			k   kʰ
Nasal		m   mː			n   nː
Tap or Flap					ɾ
Fricative			f		s		ʃ				h
Lateral Approximant					l lʰ

Vowels

There are five vowels, four of which are written using diacritics. Lortho is very strict when pronouncing vowels.

	Front	Near-front	Central	Near-back	Back
Close	i				u
Near-close
Close-mid					o
Mid
Open-mid	ɛ
Near-open
Open					ɑ

Diphthongs

There are four diphthongs in Lortho: [aɪ],[eɪ], [aʊ], [ɔɪ]

Syllable Structure

The syllable structure is (C)V(V)(C).

Romanization System

For ease of reading outside of its script, a system of Romanization has been developed as shown in the tables below.

Alphabet

IPA

dʰ

d

kʰ

k

lʰ

l

tʰ

t

pʰ

p

ʃ

s

n

nː

m

mː

h

b

f

i

ɾ

Romanization

dh

d

kh

k

lh

l

th

t

ph

p

sh

s

n

nn

m

mm

h

b

f

i

r

Vowels
IPA	ɑ	ɛ	o	u
Romanization	a	e	o	u

Diphthongs
IPA	aɪ	eɪ	aʊ	ɔɪ
Romanization	ai	ei	au	oi

The Romanization system will be used from here on throughout the page.

Grammar

The grammar in Lortho is accomplished through both inflection and agglutination.

Noun Cases

Lortho has ten cases:

Case	Modifier	Example	English
Nominative	-	kansaptha	forest, woods
Accusative	-me	kansapthame	forest (direct obj.)
Dative	-mela	kansapthamela	forest (indirect obj.)
Genitive¹	-nalo	kansapthanalo	our forest
Sublative	-ina/ena	kansapthaina	in/into the forest
Ablative	-(e)nat	kansapthanat	out of (from) the forest
Allative	-dan	kansapthadan	to/towards the forest
Prolative	-danar	kansapthadanar	through the forest
Instructive	-len	thomidin kansapthalan	I live off of the forest
Vocative	fa-	still in development

Possessives

The possessives are formed by using personal prefixes to the nouns:

Person	Singular			Plural
	masc	fem	neut	masc	fem	neut
1st person	ni-	nu-	-	nima-	numa-	-
2nd person	lin-	lun-	-	nani-	nanu-	-
3rd person	li-	lu-	la-	limi-	limu-	lima-

Gender and Number Agreement

There are three rules for noun-adjective-verb agreement:

1. Verbs must match number and gender of the noun.
2. Adjectives must match noun gender, but not number or grammatical case.
3. When a specific noun is counted, the noun does not take the plural since the ordinal number denotes pluralization.

Examples

English	Lortho
We walk through their forest	malhirinan limakansapthadanar
He sat on his chair	shailanikhi lidhammoina

Verbs

There are three major verb types: -o verbs, -t verbs, and -n verbs. Each follow a general rule for conjugation.

-o verbs

-o verbs are conjugated by subtracting the -o and adding the personal endings.

-t verbs

-t verbs are conjugated by changing the -t to -d then adding the personal endings

-n verbs

-n verbs keep their infinitive form and personal endings are simply added to the verb. The exception to this rule is the verb [hɑɾlɑn] to be, which will be discussed later.

Present Tense
-o Verbs konpharo [kon.'pʰɑ.ɾo] to speak		-t Verbs phramit ['pʰɾɑ.mit] to push		-n Verbs shailan [ʃɑɪ.'lɑn] to sit
konpharin, -un	-inan, -unan	phramidin, -dun	-dinan, -dunan	shailanin, -un	-inan, -unan
-anni, -annu	-amin, -amun	-danni, -dannu	-damin, -damun	-anni, -annu	-amin, -amun
-i, -u, -a	-imi, -imu, -ima	-di, -u, -a	-dimi, -dimu, -dima	-i, -u, -a	-imi, -imu, -ima

Irregular Verbs

At present, there are very few irregular verbs in Lortho; however, the irregular verbs which do exist are somewhat regular in their own right. One such verb is harlan to be.

The verb harlan is conjugated slightly different from the regular -n verbs. The -an is dropped and then the personal endings are added to the root, harl-.

harlan [hɑɾlɑn] to be
harlin, -un	-inɑn, -unan
-ɑnːi, -ɑnːu	-ɑmin, -ɑmun
-i, -u, -ɑ	-imi, -imu, -imɑ

Sample Text

Sample text in Lortho script. Text taken from Relay 24 in CALS

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"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't." - Mark Twain Brian Bourque (talk) 17:15, 18 March 2017 (PDT)