Lortho

Lortho ['loɾ.tʰo]
Spoken in:	Dhamashi
Conworld:	A circumbinary planet
Total Speakers:	6 million
Genealogical classification:	Proto-Lamona    - Old Lortho       - Lortho          - ?
Basic word order:	Verb-Subject-Object
Morphological Type:	Agglutinating
Morphosyntactic Alignment:	Nominative-Accusative
Created by:
Brian Bourque	March 2017

Lortho 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. It is an agglutinating language with some minor fusional aspects.

The people (Kalanune) who speak Lortho live on Dhamashi, a circumbinary plant which has two natural satellites. The planet's surface has many similarities to Earth where it has oceans, mountains, deserts, and forests. The planet has three major continents: Mashonu, Kashti, and Lamona. The Kalanune live on Lamona.

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.

Phonology

Consonants

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

Vowels

Monophthongs

There are five vowels in Lortho which are strictly pronounced regardless of placement or stress.

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

Diphthongs

There are four diphthongs in Lortho:

• [aɪ]
• [eɪ]
• [aʊ]
• [ɔɪ]

Syllable Structure

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

Phonotactics

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Romanization System

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

Consonants

IPA

dʰ

d

kʰ

k

lʰ

l

tʰ

t

pʰ

p

ʃ

s

n

nː

m

mː

h

b

f

ɾ

Romanization

dh

d

kh

k

lh

l

th

t

ph

p

sh

s

n

nn

m

mm

h

b

f

r

Monophthongs
IPA	i	ɑ	ɛ	o	u
Romanization	i	a	e	o	u

Diphthongs
IPA	aɪ	eɪ	aʊ	ɔɪ
Romanization	ai	ei	au	oi

Orthography

Alphabet

Lortho is an alphabet written from left to right. It consists of 21 letters, one of which is a vowel.

Vowels

The vowels are written as ligatures:

Lortho vowels

Grammar

Nouns

Lortho has ten cases. The following word will be used for demonstration:

kansaptha (n. neut.) forest, woods

Case	Modifier	Example	English
Nominative	-	kansaptha	forest, woods
Accusative	-me	kansapthame	forest (direct obj.)
Dative	-mela	kansapthamela	forest (indirect obj.)
Genitive	-nalo	kansapthanalo	of the 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 kansapthalen	I live off of the forest
Vocative	fa(l)-	fakansaptha, lharid!	Run, forest!

Possessives

The possessives are formed by using personal prefixes to the nouns. The same word kansaptha will be used in the table below.

Person	Singular			Plural
	masc	fem	neut	masc	fem	neut
1st person	nikansaptha	nukansaptha	-	nimakansaptha	numakansaptha	-
2nd person	linkansaptha	lunkansaptha	-	nanikansaptha	nanukansaptha	-
3rd person	likansaptha	lukansaptha	lakansaptha	limikansaptha	limukansaptha	limakansaptha

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.

Conjugation Table

Present Tense
-o Verbs konpharo [kon.'pʰɑ.ɾo] to speak root: konphar-		-t Verbs phramit ['pʰɾɑ.mit] to push root: phramid-		-n Verbs shailan [ʃɑɪ.'lɑn] to sit root: shailan-
konpharin, konpharun	konpharinan, konpharunan	phramidin, phramidun	phramidinan, phramidunan	shailanin, shailanun	shailaninan, shailanunan
konpharanni, konpharannu	konpharamin, konpharamun	phramidanni, phramidannu	phramidamin, phramidamun	shailananni, shailanannu	shailanamin, shailanamun
konphari, konpharu, konphara	konpharimi, konpharimu, konpharima	phramidi, phramiu, phramia	phramidimi, phramidimu, phramidima	shailani, shailanu, shailana	shailanimi, shailanimu, shailanima

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 root: harl-
	Singular			Plural
	masc	fem	neut	masc	fem	neut
1st person	harlin	harlun	-	harlinan	harlunan	-
2nd person	harlanni	harlannu	-	harlamin	harlamun	-
3rd person	harli	harlu	harla	harlimi	harlimu	harlima

Passive Voice

The passive voice is formed by adding the infix -im- after the root before any other additional suffixes. The passive voice does not apply to the present tense.

Example:

• madhit (madhid-) v. to give
  1. madhid-ikh-i i khanishu-me u-mela He gave the book to her
     give-PST-3MSG PN.3MSG book.F-ACC PN.3FSG-DAT
     • In this example, the verb agrees with the subject he (i).
  2. madhid-im-ikh-u khanishu-me u-mela The book was given to her
     give-PASS-PST-3FSG book.F-ACC PN.3FSG-DAT
     • In this example, the verb agrees with book since there is no subject initiating the action.

Moods

Imperative

The imperative form of the verb is simply the root with the vocative case (which can be either implied or explicit).

Examples:

1. famannu, konphar!
   • Hey you, speak!
2. fanamin, nathar namineme!
   • Hey you, be quiet! (lit. quiet yourselves)
3. fabrian, shailan!
   • Brian, sit!

Vocabulary:

1. konpharo (konphar-) v. to speak
2. natharo (nathar-) v. to quell, pacify
3. mannu pronoun you (fem. sing.)
4. namin pronoun you (masc. pl.)
5. shailan (shailan-) v. to sit

Sample Text

Text	Translation
konpharin lorthome	I speak Lortho

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

Resources

Linguistics

Endangered Alphabets - a not-for-profit organization to catalog 14 alphabets threatened by extinction
Glossika Phonics - a YouTube channel for IPA pronunciation
International Phonetic Alphabet
NativLang
Omniglot
Online Etymology Dictionary (English)
Reddit:Linguistics
Wikitongues
World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS)

Conlangs

Conlang Atlas of Language Structures (CALS)
Conlang Bulletin Board (CBB)
Conlang Critic - a YouTube vlogger who offers insights on conlangs
Conlang Mailing List
Conlang Relay Museum on CALS
ConWorkShop - an online one-stop-shop for cataloging your conlang
Fiat Lingua - an online archive of conlang articles
Language Creation Society
LCS on YouTube
Reddit: Conlangs
Reddit: Neography (Constructed Scripts)
Speculative Grammarian - A satirical periodical about linguistics and conlangery
Zompist Bulletin Board (ZBB)

Lortho

Lortho on CALS
Lortho in the 24th Conlang Relay
Lortho on ConWorkShop
Lortho Lexicon
Lortho on Linguifex
The World of Damashi

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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)