Islhontish
| File:Flag-Isllen.png | |
|---|---|
| Islhenti Isλętæλa | |
| Pronounced: | Native: /is.ɬɛ̃.'tɑɪ̯.ɬɑ/ Anglicized: /ɪ.'sɫɛn.ti/ |
| Timeline and Universe: | Alternate Earth |
| Species: | Human |
| Spoken: | Unknown |
| Writing system: | Syllabary |
| Typology | |
| Morphological type: | Undecided |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | Undecided |
| Basic word order: | Undecided |
| Credits | |
| Creator: | D. Matthew Mikalowsky |
| Created: | July 2014 |
Background
Phonology
Isλętæλa has 12 consonants, three pure vowels, two nasal vowels and two diphthongs. The vowel inventory is rather symmetric, with an equal measure of front and back vowels. Also its diphthongs are both formed with a with off glides toward i and u, which are the two topmost points of the "vowel triangle." Consonants, on the other hand, are mostly coronal with few dorsal and even fewer laryngeal.
One notable item missing from Islhenti is labial consonants, with the exception of /w/. I decided that /w/ would be retained due to its similarity to /u/, and that all other labials would have fallen out. This was inspired by Tsalagi.
Consonants
| Coronal | Dorsal | Laryngeal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | n [n] | ||
| Plosive | t [t] | k [k] and q [kw] | j [ʔ] |
| Fricative | s [s] | h [x~h] | |
| Lateral | λ [ɬ] | ||
| Affricate | z [t͜s] and tλ [t͜ɬ] | ||
| Approximant | l [l] and w [w] | ||
|---|---|---|---|
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i [i] | u [u] | |
| Middle | ę [ɛ̃] | ǫ [ɔ̃] | |
| Low | a [a~ɑ] | ||
| Diphthong | æ [ɑɪ̯] and ao [ɑʊ̯] | ||
|---|---|---|---|
Sound Changes
The collection of sound changes linked above are primarily the work of another poster on the CBB, and are subject to change as the exact phonotactic rules are laid out.
This is my first foray into diachronics, so it will take a bit for me to get up to speed with them all.
Grammar
Coming... at some point. Soon™.
Syllabary
The syllabary for Islhenti was created with influence from the form of letters in the Georigan alphabet, but also the shapes were inspired by the various glyphs in the Cherokee syllabary. However, whereas most of the forms in the Cherokee syllabary appear similar to Roman majascule, the glyphs in Islhenti are made to more resemble Roman miniscule.
In addition to these glyphs, there are several diacritics that can be added to glyphs to alter them further. When a diacritic would be placed above a letter with an ascender, or below a letter with a descender, a carrier symbol is added to hold the diacritic in question.
| ø | t | k | j | s | h | z | tλ | q | n | l | λ | |
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File:ISL-ja.png |  |
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| i |  |
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File:ISL-ji.png |  |
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| u |  |
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File:ISL-ju.png |  |
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| æ |  |
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| ao | File:ISL-koe.png | File:ISL-joe.png | File:ISL-hoe.png | File:ISL-qoe.png | ||||||||
| Initial s | Medial s | Carrier | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Other |  |
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| Diacritic |  |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Function | Nasalizes vowel* | Changes æ to ao | Changes ao to æ | Adds w | Deletes vowel |
| Placement | Above | Above | Below | Above | Below* |
- Headings for the table are given in the Romanization, not the IPA.
- A gold highlight indicates the glyph has an alternate form when nasalized, or uses a "carrier" due to its ascender/descender.
- When a vowel is nasalized, it is also lowered. (Syllables containing a and those with diphthongs cannot be nasalized.)
- The vowel-killer diacritic is the only one that can optionally appear above a letter when a descender would be in the way.
- Syllables beginning with w are formed by adding the w-diacritic to a bare vowel glyph, and wao is automatically formed when it is added to the æ glyph.
Creator Comments
This language came as the result of a thought experiment in which I pondered what it would be like to remake the Cherokee Syllabary (which I will hereafter refer to as Tsalagi) into one in which the character shapes are based on lowercase Latin letters, and not the uppercase versions. From there, everything sort of snowballed.
I began work on a direct port of the syllabary, and became inspired by some of the letterforms of Georgian's script. Thus, there was some integration there as well. Eventually, I figured that this may end up shaping into a language all its own and not just a rehash of Tsalagi. So, I began altering the phonology of Tsalagi, adding things here, removing them there, and in the end, simplifying the syllabary quite a bit. One of the first things on my agenda, was in making sure that none of the very similar letterforms used in Tsalagi made their way into my own language. After the syllabary was finished... well, I had no idea what to do with it. Hence my next source of inspiration.
I had never worked on an a posteriori conlang before... and I had never felt like making a Romlang either. Both were things I didn't fully appreciate at the time. Some folks over at the CBB were posting their inventories, and their words and phrases, and it always seemed like Spanish/Portuguese/Italian 2.0. I eventually came to realize that there was a TON more work involved and me writing them off like that was because I hadn't looked into the process before. Well, I still didn't want to make a straight-up Romlang... so I thought "what if I morphed the phonology to agree with what I made for Tsalagi 2.0?" So, this is the strange bastard love-child of a Classical Latin lexicon, an approximation of Tsalagi's sound inventory, Georgian-inspired glyph shapes, and the Cherokee Syllabary!
