Ngolu

Ngolu Ilia (Te)
Spoken:	Áu
Total speakers:	100,000 (approx.)
Genealogy:	Isolate (as far as known)
Typology
Morphological type:	Isolating/futional
Morphosyntactic alignment:	Nominative-Accusative
Basic word order:	VSO
Credits
Creator:	Imralu
Created:	2013-2014

Ngolu, also known as Te or Ilia Te (endonym: ilia (te) IPA: [ìʎá(té)]) is a language isolate spoken throughout the space habitat Áu by the Ngolu people, whose number is estimated to be around 100,000. As the Ngolu are almost entirely monolingual, and while travel to and from Áu remains almost impossible, the language is not in any danger of extinction. At this stage, little is known of dialect differences.

Ngolu is an isolating/fusional, head-initial (right-branching) language with VSO word order and nominative-accusative alignment. Verbs (verbals) make up the only open class of word, with nouns (nominals) constituting a closed class of heavily fusional words that fill the roll of pronouns and articles in other languages, marking grammatical person, gender, number, case, definiteness and specificity.

Terminology

The Ngolu usually call their language ilia [ìʎá], which simply means 'language' or 'speech'. Many Ngolu in Áu do not recognise foreign languages such as English as communication when they hear them, and tend to refer to anything said in another language as maramaria [màɾàmàdʒá] ('babbling' or 'nonsense'). Ngolu on Earth have observed other languages being used between multiple people and typically recognise foreign languages as being capable of conveying meaning. The word ilia in that case refers to all languages. To disambiguate their own language, they may call it ilia te [ìʎáté] 'good language' (or sometimes ilia golu [ìʎáŋòlú] or ilias áu [ìʎásáw]).

The word áu [áw] means 'world' but specifically refers to the world Áu, not to Earth (which is known as aásu [àásù] or uuásu [ùwásù]). The English ethnonym 'Ngolu' derives from golu [ŋòlú] meaning 'person' or 'people'.

Phonology

Vowels

Vowels	Front	Central	Back
High	i ‹i›		u ‹u›
Mid	e ‹e›		o ‹o›
Low		a ‹a›

Consonants

Consonants	Bilabial	Labiovelar	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m ‹m›		n̪ ‹n›			ŋ ‹g›
Plosive	b ‹b›		t̪ ‹t›			k ‹k›	ʔ ‹q›
Ejective			tʼ ‹tt›			kʼ ‹kk›
Voiced Fricative		v ‹v›		z ‹z›	ʒ ‹j›
Voiceless Fricative				s ‹s›	ʃ ‹x›		h ‹h›
Tap/Plosive			ɾ̪~d̪ ‹r›
Lateral			l̪ ‹l›