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
ISO 639-3 Code:	qlt
Created by:
Brian Bourque	Conceived in 2003, Manifested in 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

A friend was creating a board game similar to Risk; however, instead of taking place on Earth, this new game was to take place on an inter-planetary scale. The game creator wanted to develop an extraterrestrial theme and requested a fictional script. The name of the race on this game is "Lortho" (IPA: [ˈloɹ.θo]) and thus the seed was planted. I was unable to work on this piece for quite sometime until I joined the CONLANG mailing list and observed both seasoned and novice conlangers discussing all aspects of linguistics. Since then I decided to move forward and bring Lortho into fruition. The language itself was not invented until the spring of 2016.

Much of the language stems from the languages that I know, namely Persian, French, and Korean. Although the language is a priori, much of its construction resembles that of an Indo-European flavor; albeit unintentionally. The phonology is largely inspired by Persian (Farsi) in that each letter is strictly pronounced regardless of their position in the the syllable/word. The agglutinating aspect of the language was largely influenced by Korean; however, the cases were inspired by both Hungarian and Finnish. The orthography was inspired by Central/East Asian orthographies which is further expounded here.

Another source of inspiration is my daughter. Through her development of learning how to make speech sounds leading to coherent speech and communication, she "created" words to communicate her wants and needs. Some of these words found their way into the Lortho lexicon.

Why?

Many people have asked me, "Why? What is the goal?" The answer is fairly straightforward: I am an artist and I love languages. So, I merged the two. I have an affinity towards non-Latin writing systems and I truly enjoy calligraphy. Therefore, aesthetics are very important in Lortho. If I am honest with myself, I would love to see this language in a movie or television series, but that isn't the main goal. The goal is to make a functional language and its associated world to where I can create works of art pertaining to this world/culture. I want to instill a sense of awe and wonder as if an old relic of eons past had been discovered and its beauty is unsurpassed by anything compared to contemporary times.

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

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.

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

Writing System

The writing system of Lortho is called Dhadakha, so named from the first three letters. It is an alphabet with some featural aspects in denoting aspirated vs tenuis consonants. Dhadakha is comprised of 21 letters, one of which is a vowel. The writing system has some qualities reminiscent of an abugida; however, there are no conjunct consonants and vowels are given equal status as consonants. Ligatures are formed by consonant + vowel with the vowels [i] and [ɛ] being the exceptions. Lortho's script was inspired by the Devanagari, Uchen, and Tengwar writing systems.

UPDATE:

This script has been revised to include a "common" script. More to come.

Vowels

The vowels are written as ligatures:

[dʰi]	[dʰa]	[dʰɛ]	[dʰo]	[dʰu]
Lortho vowels (bookish)

[dʰa]	[dʰɛ]	[dʰo]	[dʰu]	[dʰi]	[dʰ]
Lortho vowels (simplified)

Grammar

Nouns

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

• kansaptha
  (n. neut.)

1. forest, woods

Case	Modifier	Example	English
Nominative	-	kansaptha	forest, woods
Accusative	-me	kansapthame	forest (direct obj.)
Dative	-mela	kansapthamela	forest (indirect obj.)
Genitive1	-nau	kansapthanau	of the forest
Lative	-ina/ena	kansapthaina	in/into the forest
Ablative	-nat	kansapthanat	out of (from) the forest
Allative	-dan	kansapthadan	to/towards the forest
Prolative	-dar	kansapthadar	through the forest
Instrumental	-len	thomidin kansapthalen	I live off of the forest
Vocative2	fa(l)-	fakansaptha, lharid!	Run, forest!

¹ -nau is the alienable genitive whereas -tho is the inalienable genitive.

² the vocative case is the only case which forces the word order to change to SVO vs. the normal VSO.

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 limakansapthadar
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 suffix -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
give  -PST-3MSG PN.3MSG book.F  -ACC PN.3FSG-DAT
     He gave the book to her
     • In this example, the verb agrees with the subject he (i).
  2. madhid-im  -ikh-u    khanishu-me  u      -mela
give  -PASS-PST-3FSG book.F  -ACC PN.3FSG-DAT
     The book was given to her
     • 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

Folklore

The Unlucky Fox

Romanization: shadar lharane dasat dharakhinat harlikhi nuphi. khabalikhi nuphi dalhotamekhon dhaharlikha halhadar a. kilikhikhi ikhi molha kansapume. harlikha dirdhalama lidalhota mokansapoina. khar khesikhi nuphi kansapume denalikhu kansapu lukhothume hana tushadikhu khashume nuphinalo. tharikhu bonhan monu saurammu thasame nuphinalo.

IPA: ˈʃɑ.dɑɾ lhɑ.ˈɾɑ.nɛ ˈdɑ.sɑt dʰɑ.ˈɾɑ.kʰi.nɑt ˈhɑɾ.li.kʰi ˈnu.pʰi kʰɑ.ˈbɑl.ikʰ.i ˈnu.pʰi dɑl.ˈho.tɑ.mɛ.kʰon dʰɑ.ˈhɑɾ.li.kʰɑ ˈhɑl.hɑ.dɑɾ ɑ ki.ˈli.kʰi.kʰi ˈi.kʰi ˈmol.hɑ kɑn.ˈsɑ.pu.mɛ ˈhɑɾ.li.kʰɑ diɾ.dʰɑ.ˈlɑ.mɑ li.dɑl.ˈho.tɑ mo.kɑn.ˈsɑ.pɔɪ.nɑ. kʰɑɾ ˈkʰɛ.si.kʰi ˈnu.pʰi kɑn.ˈsɑ.pu.mɛ dɛ ˈnɑ.li.kʰu kɑn.ˈsɑ.pu lu.ˈkʰo.tʰu.mɛ ˈhɑ.nɑ tu.ˈʃɑ.di.kʰu ˈkʰɑ.ʃu.mɛ ˈnu.pʰi.nɑlo ˈtʰɑ.ɾi.kʰu ˈbon.hɑn ˈmo.nu saʊ.ˈɾɑm.mu ˈtʰɑ.sɑ.mɛ ˈnu.pʰi.nɑ.lo

Leipzid Gloss: shadar lhara-ne dasat dharakhi -nat harl-ikh-i nuphi ago.ADV year -PL beyond.ADV mountain.M-ABL be -PST-3MSG fox.M Once upon a time, there was the fox khabal-ikh-i nuphi dalhota-me -khon dha-harl-ikh-a halhadar a search-PST-3MSG fox.M food.N -ACC-but NEG-be -PST-3NSG much.ADJ PN.3NSG The fox searched for food, but there was not much of it kilikh-ikh-i ikhi molha kansapu-me see -PST-3MSG one huge-N tree.N -ACC It saw a huge tree harl-ikh-a dir -dhalam-a li -dalhota mo -kansapo-ina be -PST-3NSG SUPERL -good -N PN.POSS.3MSG-food.N that -tree.F -SUBL Its favorite food was in that tree khar khes -ikh-i nuphi kansapu-me denal-ikh-u kansapu lu -khothu-me hana tushad-ikh-u khashu-me nuphi-nalo when scratch-PST-3MSG fox.M tree.F -ACC close-PST-3FSG tree.F PN.POSS.3FSG-wall.F-ACC and bury -PST-3FSG head.F-ACC fox.M-GEN When the fox scratched the tree, the tree closed its wall (here it means bark) and buried (trapped) the fox's head thar-ikh-u bonhan mon -u saurammu thasa -me nuphi-nalo eat -PST-3FSG twenty other-F animal.F head.N-ACC fox.M-GEN Twenty other animals ate the fox's body

I know this story is a little morbid; however, I was compelled to write a backstory as to why in Lorthoan culture calling someone a "fox" is considered derogatory, as in someone who is utterly unlucky. The story was partly inspired by the competition on the Conlang subreddit for reaching 20,000 followers and the theme was the numeral 20.

Resources

Lortho

Lortho on CALS
Lortho in the 24th Conlang Relay
Lortho on ConWorkShop
Lortho Lexicon
Lortho on Linguifex
Lortho on Miraheze.org
The World of Damashi
Lortho - Hosted by LCS (new)

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)

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)

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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)