Nother/Atlantic
Description
An Indo-European language spoken by the demihumans of Nother.
- Timespan: Modern day.
- Setting: Atlantia (Ədləntɛ), a fictional Mediterranean island.
- Author: Muke Tever | ✎
Phonology and Orthography
The Atlantic language has twelve vowels: eight short and four long.
| front | central | back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| high | i | u | |
| close-mid | e ee | o oo | |
| open-mid | ɛ ɛɛ | ə | ɔ ɔɔ |
| low | a /ɑ/ |
Consonants are as follows:
| nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| vl stop | p | t | k | |||
| vd stop | d | g | ||||
| vl fric | f | θ | s | ʃ | sy /ç/ | x |
| vd fric | v b /v/ | z | ʒ y /ʒ/ | |||
| sonorant | l | r /ɾ/ | y /j/ | |||
H is silent. Y is pronounced as /ʒ/ after a consonant or before /i/ and /u/.
Accentuation consists of a high or low pitch accent on the first mora of a word.
- ont /ònt/ "eye"
- sɔrrɛ /sɔ́ɾɾə/ "curse"
For historical reasons, most verbs have high pitch.
Morphosyntax
Nouns
Atlantic nouns inflect only for number.
The singular is the unmarked form.
For words ending in -ɛ, the plural is formed by adding -s, thus -ɛs. For words ending in -e, the plural is formed by removing the -e and adding -ɔs. The plural of all other words is formed by appending -ɔs to the singular.
Exceptions exist, such as words in original long -ee: vee "hand", whose plural is veeos. Words whose -ee is secondary, such as ree "matter, affair", (earlier roye) have a regular plural such as reɔs.
A few words, mainly body parts, have a special dual in -o.
Verbs
Conjugating Atlantic verbs isn't too difficult: the endings are added regularly, with little change. The hard part is in remembering what conjugation a form takes, as well as the different stems each verb has.
The finite forms of the verb belong to one of three different stems: the progressive, the aorist, and the durative.
The progressive refers to an action in progress, and usually translates English plain or progressive verbs, such as enter or are eating. Aorist forms refer to an event as a whole, usually a completed one, and generally translates English past forms, like walked, or forms used in series of verbs: for example, in wants to go, "go" would be translated by the aorist. The durative is mostly falling out of use, except in verbs concerning thoughts and opinions: think, believe, know, want, like are usually represented by duratives in Atlantic.
The conjugations are labelled by characteristic consonants in the first person singular: votic have v, and kappatic have k.
Progressive endings
| v / k | sg | du | pl |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | -vɛ -kɛ |
-bdə | -(ə)ndə |
| 2nd | -rɛ | -bɛ | |
| 3rd | -tɛ | -(ə)ŋtɛ |
| simple | sg | du | pl |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 0 | -bdə | -ndə |
| 2nd | -r | -b | |
| 3rd | -t | -ŋt |
Aorist endings
| v / k | sg | du | pl |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | -va -k |
-bdə | -(ə)ndə |
| 2nd | -rɔ | -dɔ | |
| 3rd | -tɔ | -(ə)ŋtɔ |
| simple | sg | du | pl |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 0 | -bdə | -ndə |
| 2nd | -r | -d | |
| 3rd | -t | -ŋt |
Lexicon
- see Atlantic Lexicon
- The lexicon as a PDF file, dated 2 May 2004
