Sinatolean

Sinatolean(sinadoleya; [ɕinaˈdɔleja]) is the official and national language of the Sinatolean Federation, a federative archipelago nation. Before the unification and subsequent formation of the Federation, Sinatolean was still used as a lingua franca in the region as far back as around 900 BCE. It is the most spoken Sinatolean language, with an estimated 680,000 total native speakers as of 2024.

Sinatolean is a heavily agglutinative language. In fact, the autonym of the language is itself an agglutinated phrase:

sin       -a        dol      -e   ya
person -SING island -PL speech

Thus, sinadoleya means "speech of the island person".

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	p b		t d	(c) (ɟ)	k g	ʔ
Nasal	m	(ɱ)	n	(ɲ)	ŋ
Fricative	(f) (v)		s z, (ɕ) (ʑ)		(x)	h
Affricate			t͡ɕ d͡ʑ
Semivowel	w			j
Lateral			l	(ʎ)	(ɫ)

Broad and slender

Main article: Sinatolean broad and slender consonants
Like in Irish, the realisation of consonants change depending on the vowel after it. For example, a /g/ before an /i/, /ø/ or /e/(slender vowels) changes to /ɟ/, while the same for /k/ changes it to /c/. These changes are not shown in the orthography. The following table only shows the changes for plosives(/p, b, t, d, k, g, ʔ/).

Phoneme	Broad	Example
	Slender
/p/	/p/	pola [pɔla] "move(jussive)"
	/f/	pisani [fisaɲi] "those dogs"
/b/	/b/	boso [bɔsɔ] "roof"
	/v/	labin [laviɲ] "wave"
/t/		tolo [tɔlɔ] "triggerfish"
/d/	/d/	dole [dɔle] "islands"
	/ɟ/	didika [ɟiɟika] "beach"
/k/	/k/	angaka [aŋaka] "temple, shrine"
	/c/	kēnene [ceːɲeɲe] "waterfalls"
/g/	/g/	ganeu [gaɲəw] "pet food"
	/ɟ/	ginja [ɟiɲd͡ʑa] "june, 6 months"
/ʔ/		āyo [ʔajɔ] "hey (Sinatʼ regional variation)", janiʼpi [d͡ʑaɲiʔfi] "jasmine tea"

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Close-mid	e ø
Mid		(ə)*
Open-mid			ɔ
Open		a

/ə/ is a common unstressed allophone that can theoretically be used for any vowel, though it is mostly only used for /e/ when it precedes a semivowel like /w/ or /j/, such as in ganeu [gaɲəw], "pet food".

Morphology

Calendar

Months

Month
Number	English	Sinatolean
		Modern	Tuananga Yadān
1	January	janua	nganada
2	February	peblan
3	March	māja
4	April	abīl	ōneya
5	May	mēhi	kinānalua
6	June	ginja
7	July	geuli	mīlja
8	August	ogost
9	September	setembo	saukānān
10	October	ōkotubo	saukān
11	November	nobembo	sauke
12	December	desembo

Tunanga Yādan(Emeár: tõaanga [d̪ʷãːŋɐ]) is a calendar system of Emeárin origin that was the regional standard calendar before the arrival of Europeans. Most Sinatolean speakers don't use this system anymore, apart from the elderly as well as some disconnected tribes. The Sinatolean variation, often dubbed the Yādan variation, is still used by native Sinatoleans to form mononyms. For example, Dolekamrinu's birthname was Sinaginja, "June person". His younger sister, born a year later in July, was named Adiasinamīlja, "small July person."

Nouns

Number

Sinatolean differentiates between singular and plural nouns. Singular nouns are marked with an -a suffix, while -e is used to indicate plurality.

Determiners

Demonstratives

Sinatolean uses suffixes for demonstratives.

	Singular	Plural
This	-nga	-nge
That	-pya	-pye

These suffixes have to be used after the number-suffix(-a or -e), so dole would be "islands", while dolenge would be "these islands"; dolnge would be grammatically incorrect.

Possessives

Possessives are both separate words or suffixes, but never at the same time. Whether one uses words or suffixes is entirely up to the speaker, though some studies have shown that some regions more prevalently use suffixes over separate words, though the opposite is true in other areas.

Suffixes have also sometimes been associated with a low level of education in the past, such as in the Sinatolean translation of Flowers for Algernon(Sinatolean: Algenonoi Ilāye), in which the main character's initially uneducated prose predominantly uses suffixes to indicate possession, e.g. komalang [sic] Charlie Gordon, "My name is Charlie Gordon."