Ilbiyoni
| Ilbiyoni Ιlbiyonĭm | |
|---|---|
| Timeline and Universe: | Lorech |
| Spoken: | National language in: Ilbiyon
|
| Total speakers: | 1,610,740 |
| Typology | |
| Morphological type: | Fusional |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | Ergative-absolutive |
| Basic word order: | Generally VOS |
| Credits | |
| Creator: | A. Ayres |
| Created: | 2011- |
Ilbiyoni or Ilbiyonim - pronounced /ˌɪlβʲo̞nɨm/ (Western) or /ˌylbyˈjɔ̞nəm/ (Eastern) - is a language isolate spoken in the Ilbiyon archipelago, a string of islands located in the Great Lake Lyric, which divides the nations of Elitho from Western Jinyero/Esfoth. Despite contact with both cultures dating back hundreds of years, Ilbiyon has retained its independence, and its language is relatively uninfluenced by Celinese and Jinyera - indeed, some claim that Ilbiyoni predates both languages.
As well as being spoken by 900,000 speakers in the independent Principality of Ilbiyon, it is also spoken in the Lake Lyric islands that are under Elithoan and Jinyer administration, and in small areas of mainland Elitho and Jinyero proper. There is also a robust community of non-Ilbiyoni researchers and explorers who have learnt the language in order to understand the myriad tomes of the Ĕlsinor Ilbiyonĕs - the Ilbiyon Palace of Books, the most expansive library in the world.
Nomenclature
Ilbiyoni's native name, Ilbiyonim, is a compound noun, composed of the words ilbi (lake) and yonim (language). Some believe that 'Lake Ilbiyoni' was one of several dialects, some of which were spoken on the mainland. Modern Ilbiyoni itself has a number of varieties, with the speech of each island being characterised by its own idiosyncracies; whilst these are usually classified as 'dialects' or 'regional varieties', an ongoing debate about whether Western and Eastern variety groups should be classified as competing standards of a single pluricentric language, or as languages in their own right.
