Lortho

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

Introduction

Lortho (IPA : [loɾtʰo]) 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. Fast forward about 13 years and it has now evolved into an agglutinating language.

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 mː		n nː
Tap or Flap				ɾ
Fricative			f	s		ʃ		h
Lateral Approximant				l lʰ

Vowels

Monophthongs

There are five vowels, four of which are written using diacritics. Lortho vowels 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

The Romanization system will be used from here on throughout the page.

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 diacritical marks which are placed after, albeit attached, to the consonants as seen below.

Lortho vowels. From left to right they are:
[i], [ɑ], [o], [u], and [ɛ]

Grammar

Noun Cases

Lortho has ten cases:

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 kansapthalan	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
Person	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:

Verbs must match number and gender of the noun.
Adjectives must match noun gender, but not number or grammatical case.
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

Imperative

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

Examples:

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

Vocabulary:

konpharo (konphar-) v. to speak
natharo (nathar-) v. to quell, pacify
mannu pronoun you (fem. sing.)
namin pronoun you (masc. pl.)
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

"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)

Lortho

Contents

Introduction

Inspiration

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Monophthongs

Diphthongs

Syllable Structure

Phonotactics

Romanization System

Orthography

Alphabet

Vowels

Grammar

Noun Cases

Possessives

Gender and Number Agreement

Examples

Verbs

-o verbs

-t verbs

-n verbs

Conjugation Table

Irregular Verbs

Imperative

Sample Text

Resources

Linguistics

Conlangs

Lortho

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