Modern Arithide

Arithide (Arithīde)
Pronounced:	'ærɪθi:d (arɯ'θi:de)
Timeline and Universe:	Ilethes
Species:	Human   Areth
Spoken:	Arithia; major auxiliary language in the West
Total speakers:	(tba)
Writing system:	Lazeic alphabet
Genealogy:	Arophanic   Arithidic     North Arithidic       Arithide
Typology
Morphological type:	Inflecting
Morphosyntactic alignment:	Accusative
Basic word order:	SOV
Credits
Creator:	Eugene Oh
Created:	late 2005

Modern Arithide is the standard and official tongue of Arithia, and the modern descendant of Classical Arithide through Koine Arithide. It is spoken natively by the Areth, although significant numbers of people speak it as a second or third language across Arophania and Marcasia, thanks to historical reasons.

See also Arithide language for more information

on the language's history and a diachronic analysis.

Phonological system

The phonology of Modern Arithide is notable for its large numbers of both consonants and vowels, although its phonemic repertoire is smaller due to the high degree of allophony.

Consonants

Consonants
	Bilabial		Labiod.		Dental		Alveolar		Post-alv.		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal		m						n				ɲ		ŋ
Plosive	p	b					t	d					k	g
Fricative			f	v	θ	ð	s	z	ʃ	ʒ			x	ɣ	h
Affricate					ts	dz
Approximants		w										j
Trill								r
Lateral Approximant								l

Vowels

Whereas Modern Arithide has 11 vowel letters, the short <a e i o u y> and the long <ā ē ī ō ū>, the true number of its phonemic vowels is twenty, plus 4 vowels occurring only in unstressed position, and 12 diphthongs.

Vowels
	Front		Near-front		Central		Near-back		Back
High	i	y							ɯ	u
Near-high								ʊ
High-mid			e							o
Mid					ə
Low-mid			ɛ							ɔ
Near-low			æ
Low					a

Orthography

Romanisation

The romanisation of Arithide is based strictly on the rule of a 1:1 correspondence in orthography between the Roman and Lazeic alphabets, such that any transcript is fully reversible; besides ignoring sound-changes that have occurred since the Arithide Renaissance, this also leads occasionally to pronunciations strange to the Western ear. Alternative romanisations are mainly phonetically-based, and involve less mind-work in pronunciation.

Consonants

Letter	Sound		Letter	Sound		Letter	Sound
Pp	p~pʰ		Ff	f
Bb	b		Vv	v, f		Mm	m, ɱ
Tt	t~tʰ		THth	θ
Dd	d, ð		DHdh	ð, θ		Nn	n, ŋ
			Ss	s
			Zz	z, dz
TIti, CHch1	ʧ		SJsj, SHsh1	ʃ
DIdi2	ʤ		GIgi1	ʒ
Kk	k~kʰ		Hh	h
Gg3	g, j, w					GNgn, NGng4	ŋ
						Rr5	r, ʁ, s, :
						Ll5	l
						Jj6	j
						Ww6	w

¹

Diphthongal sequences of [ti], [tj] + vowel gave rise to the new phoneme /ʧ/, which received its own letter in the Renaissance period; similarly, from [si], [sj] + vowel developed /ʃ/, which also gained its own letter at the same time. The new letters are used to indicate the /ʧ/ and /ʃ/ sounds where not historically derived, such as in loanwords; or where the conditioning vowel has been lost, especially at the ends of words. Additionally, [ʃ] deriving from a word- or syllable-finally devoiced /ʒ/ is written with <sh> instead of <gi>.

²

The sound /ʤ/ only occurs in syllable-initial position due to historical reasons: it arose from the diphthongal sequence [di], [dj] + vowel. When <di> occurs without a subsequent vowel the value of the digraph is the consonant+vowel combination [di].

³

The post-vocalic [g]-lenition that began in the Renaissance with [g] > [ɣ] proceeded further in the modern era to give [j] after [a], [e], [i] (as well as modifying the vowel qualities) and [w] after [o]. Etymological orthographic rules dictate the preservation of <g> in such cases.

⁴

From the [gn] and [ng] sequences developed the /ŋ/ phoneme, in the former case by nasalising the [g], and in the latter by velarising the [n] and losing the [g]. Whereas historical [ng] has since received its own letter and is written with it unless the [g] was preserved by a succeeding vowel (in which case the orthographical sequence <ng> is retained), historical [gn] has been preserved in spelling due to the strong retentiveness of the latter [n] element, even where the sequence has coalesced to a simple [ŋ].

⁵

In combination with preceding vowels, [r] has been lost, instead giving rise to a host of (mostly) rounded long vowels; the new sounds have retained the traditional orthography using <r>. Analogically, a similar scenario has occurred with [l], albeit without loss of the [l] sound, resulting merely in altered vowel qualities. 

⁶

The devocalisation of pre-vocalic [i] to [j] and [u] to [w] that occurred during the Mediaeval period necessitated two new letters due to syllabification ambiguity and stress shifts.

Vowels

Monographs represent monophthongs; each letter may be read in up to four different ways depending on its surrounding letters and its level of stress. In the table below, the variants are listed in order of occurrence, then precedence. The last value of each always represents the unstressed realisation of the vowel concerned.

Letter	Sound		Letter	Sound
a	[a, ɔ, ə]		ā	[a:, a]
e	[e, ɛ, ə]		ē	[e:~jɛ, e]
i	[i, ɪ, ɯ]		ī	[i:, ɪ]
o	[o, ɔ, œ, ə]		ō	[o:, œ:, o]
u	[u, ʉ, ɯ]		ū	[y:, ʏ]
y	[y, ʏ]1

¹

Prevocalically, <y> has devocalised to [j] uniformly. This proceeded through an intermediate stage where it was pronounced [ɥ]. Postvocalically, it coalesced with its precedent to diphthongise, for which see the following table

Digraphs generally indicate diphthongs. Across the board, however, spelling fossilisation has occurred, leading to irregular sound-letter correspondences even in the native script, such as <oi>:[ei]. [ja] <ja> is the only sound not to have changed at all; besides it, regularly pronounced digraphs, i.e. <eu>, <jo>, <ju>, <ua>, <we> and non-post-consonantal <je> are the result of recent spelling reforms, as is the fact that w-headed digraphs occur only at the beginnings of words, while the post-consonantal allographic equivalent is u-headed.

Letter	Sound		Letter	Sound		Letter	Sound		Letter	Sound		Letter	Sound		Letter	Sound
ae	[ai]		ea2	[a:]		ja	[ja]		4			ua, wa	[wa]		ay	[au]
ai	[e:]		ei	[i:]		je	[je, e:]		oe	[oi]		ue, we	[we]		ey	[eu]
1			3			jo	[jo]		oi	[ei]		5			oy	[ou, əʉ]
au	[o:]		eu	[eu~jo]		ju	[jʉ]		ou	[u:]		uo, wo	[o:]		6

¹

<ao> came to be uniformly spelt with the homophonic <ay> [au] by the early Modern period

²

In certain proper names, e.g. of cities, the original diphthong was split into two syllables to preserve the distinct [ea] ending

³

[eo] <eo>merged with [jo] and hence <jo>

⁴

Where <ua> occurs, it is the result of a spelling reform that replaced all <oa> [ua] with 

⁵

[ui] <ui> became [y] and never again arose subsequently

⁶

[uy] <uy> merged with [y:] <ū>

See also

• Arithide Sample Text Corpus

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