Stilio

Stilio zlacuru
Spoken in:	Ministry of Magic
Conworld:	Harry Potter
Total speakers:	???
Genealogical classification:	a priori magic snakes and snake-like reptiles Stilio
Basic word order:	VSO
Morphological type:	Agglutinating
Morphosyntactic alignment:	Fluid-S++
Writing system:
Created by:
Francis Nolan/Robert Marshall Murphy	2002/2012 A.D.

Parseltongue (in this article) refers to Stilio, a reconstructed form of Parseltongue. This language has a unique morphosyntactic alignment (which is largely Ergative-absolutive, while incorporating elements of Fluid-S), and defaults to VSO word order. It is, however, strongly non-configurational.

Phonology

Snakes have vastly simplified mouths compared to human-being. We are capable of making every sound they make, though some are easier than others. Snakes have no lips. Their palate is occupied with the vomeronasal organ (Jacobson's organ), which acts as a sense of smell. Snakes have no uvula. Their glottis can move aside when eating large prey. They have no epiglottal region.

Sentient and non-sentient snakes hiss their entire volume of air without interruption, so a Parseltongue utterances cannot be longer than about fifteen seconds. Stops are typically initial, and in a verb. Whatever vocal-cords they are graced with by magic, snakes cannot speak very loudly or vary pitch beyond very low frequencies. Humans speaking above a whisper, voicing consonants and vowels, are something like "shouting barbarians" to the snakes we were allowed to interview.

Snake mouth anatomy

Given snake anatomy, even with the aide of magic, Parseltongue

has no labial consonants
has no retroflex consonants
has no palatal or alveolar-palatal consonants
has no uvular or epiglottal consonants
has no voiced consonants
is all spoken in creaky-voice
has no corarticulated consonants
of the clicks, has only the dental and the lateral
may begin an utterance with a stop, but they are unpleasant elsewhere in speech.
- (An exception to this is relative clauses, where verbs are still fronted as much as possible)
allows all affricates (though typically only utterance initial or final)
must end an utterance with a sibilant/fricative or - much less commonly - a vowel
has ejective forms of the stops and affricates

Consonants

Consonants (IPA above, Romanization below)
	Dental	Alveolar		Post-alveolar	Velar		Pharyngeal	Glottal
	Dental	Central	Lateral	Post-alveolar	Central	Lateral	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Nasal		n̥			ŋ̊
		n			m
Unaspirated Stop		t			k
		t			k
Ejective Stop		t'			k'
		f			q
Click/Tap	ǀ	ɾ	ǁ
	/	®	\
Fricative	θ	s	ɬ	ʃ	x	ʟ̝̊
	d	s	z	c	x	l
Approximant		ɹ	l		ɰ	ɫ̥	ħ	h
		r	l		w	l	g	h

Most English speakers round their lips anyway when saying word-initial /r/, and any /ʃ/, which snakes regard as quite irritating. For those unfamiliar with the sound /ɰ/, pronounce a 'w' but leave off the lip-rounding. The dental click (/) is used in the English "tsk tsk tsk", while the lateral click (\) is used to spur on a horse. The alveolar tap (®) is found as the 'r' and 'l' of East Asian languages, or the 'd'-like sound in the middle of 'water'. The lateral fricative (z) is found in Welsh but may be very unfamiliar to English speakers elsewhere. The pharyngeal approximant (g) is a very raspy, rattling 'h'.

A history of Latin alphabet orthography has given rise to the system as presented in the tables. Some consonants are exactly the same as IPA notation: t k x s l h. Others require some thought: n for /n̥/, m for /ŋ̊/, f for /t'/, q for /k'/, d for /θ/, c for /ʃ/, z for /ɬ/, r for /ɹ/, w for /ɰ/, and g for /ħ/. The dental and lateral clicks, and the alveolar flap receive non-letter symbols: \ / ®.

All affricate possibilities are realized in Parseltongue, though most are very rare. Parseltongue does not distinguish between affricate and non-affricate pairs, so the tie-bar is not commonly written, even in IPA. The possibilities are: td ts tc tz kx fd fs fc fz qx.

Allophony

k/x/q/kx/qx + l > ɫ
k/x/q/kx/qx + z > ʟ̝̊

Vowels

Vowels (IPA above, Romanization below)
	Front	Center	Back
High	i		ɯ
	i		u
Near-high	ɪ
	y
High-mid	e		ɤ
	e		o
Low-mid	ɛ		ʌ
	œ		v
Near-low	æ	ɐ
	æ	a

The Parseltongue system of vowels consists of nine sounds. As with consonants, there is no lip-rounding. Hence, u means /ɯ/ and o means /ɤ/. English-speakers must remember to distinguish between i and y: y always functions as it does in the English "myth" or "system", while i always a "long 'e'".

Korean-speakers will have an advantage distinguishing e from œ from v: 에 vs. 애 vs. 어.

The presence of diphthongs is disputed (see Phonotactics below).

Parseltongue uses all the letters of the English alphabet except 'b', 'j', and 'p'. Uses four other symbols: /, \, ®, œ, æ.

There are two non-phonemic sounds that snakes are readily capable of making, the trilled 'r' and the glottal stop. However, /r/ is a highly erotic sound which no snake would make in polite company, and stopping the flow of air during an utterance is indicative of sickness or eating.

English speakers should take care to pronounce all the vowels carefully and no rush through unstressed syllables. The English central vowel /ə/ predominates in speech, just as the Parseltongue a does, but it is not a "reduced" vowel.

Phonotactics

Parseltongue can be extremely difficult to analyze phonotacticly. Even with enunciating as one would to a fool or simpleton, snakes never cease the continuous airstream. Syllable boundaries, therefore, are somewhat arbitrary. Snakes we interviewed regard this as an unimportant, human problem, akin to transcribing choking or sneezing. For our purposes, we should regard Parseltongue syllables as capable of having either a vowel or a fricative in the nucleus. The overwhelming majority of syllables are V, CV, or CVC. Like Estonian, Parseltongue distinguishes geminate consonants and vowels with a high degree of specificity. Under some analyses, there are three levels of gradation, but this is disputed and typically called a supersegmental feature. In our notation, doubling of any letter indicated gemination.

A fricative (in the onset or in the nucleus) may be long or short. A syllabic fricative may be preceded by a stop, and hence, part of an affricate. It may also be preceded by an approximant or another fricative. Open syllables, in this case, are common. A fricative, nasal, or approximant can be analyzed as the coda of a fricative-nucleus syllable.

If a vowel is the syllable nucleus, it may be preceded by a tap, click, either nasal, a stop (which may be preceded by a fricative), a fricative, an affricate (which may be preceded by a fricative) or an approximant (which may be preceded by a stop or a fricative). The coda of a vowel-nucleus syllable may be a nasal (which may be followed by a fricative), a fricative, l or h, or it may be left open. Clicks and taps may only follow an open, vowel-nucleus syllable.

Aesthetically, snakes find it very distasteful to have stops or clicks in the middle of an utterance. Hence, while it would be possible through appropriate case use to have any word order, verbs almost always come first.

Accent is very hard to detect at times in Parseltongue. It appears that almost all words are emphasized on the first syllable, though pronouns tend to be enclitic. Unusually stress patterns are marked with an apostrophe herein (i.e. ' ).

Grammar

Parseltongue uses a system of cases similar to Latin or Estonian. Nouns and verbs are not marked for number or gender, but there are four noun-classes as well as four verb-classes.

Nouns

There are four 'core' cases - Nominative, Accusative, Agentive and Patientive - and five 'oblique' cases - Dative, Possessive, Partitive, Genitive, and Ablative. The definite article is a prefixed /s/, while indefiniteness is marked in the verb.

The oblique cases function generally like Indo-European cases, but with some notable exceptions.

Dative: Some linguistics prefer to call this the "topico-dative" because it can function similarly to the Japanese は/wa, or the Korean 는/은. These instances are typically best translated as "in regards to" or "as for". Otherwise, the Dative is often equivalent to the English prepositions "to, for, by, with, from" and/or indicates the Indirect Object.

The other four cases fall under the 'genitive' umbrella in many languages

Partitive: Like the Uralic languages, the partitive means "some of" or "part of" or "any". It cannot, however, be used for the object of an atelic action. 'Half of my possessions’; ‘some of the branches’; ‘the poor among of the people’
Possessor: Like the English 's. This is the subjective genitive. "Love of God" would have to mean (in this case) "God's love", not "my love of God"
Genitive: This can be Epexegetical or Attributive/Descriptive.
Ablative: Objective Genitive, "concerning, against, about, on, from", separation, adverbial

Pronouns

'Measure words' can also be used as pronouns, with or without numbers attached.

1st person
Case	Form	Ex.
N
A
A
P
D	madas
P
P
G
A

2nd person
Case	Form	Ex.
N	gasas	tzoægasas // You fell.
Acc	gasgg	kxvgasgg // You are green.
Abs	gassi	sayhagassi hœd / You (will) Leave him (alone)!
Pat	gassa	haceagassa cig / You (will) go away!
D	gassaas	to you
Par	gashh
Pos	gasy
G	gas	/She is longer than you
Abl	gasswa
V	gass	/ You who rattle, rattle!

Verbs

All verbs have a lexically contained expectation for which case the subject will be in. Hence, all verbs are active or passive and volitional or non-volitional by default, which will also indicate which paradigm it follows. When given an unexpected case, intentionality or casuality will be signified:

	Active Non-Volitional	Passive Non-Volitional	Active Volitional	Passive Volitional
Nominative	Involuntary Agent	Involuntary Cause	Unintentional Agent	Unintentional Cause
Accusative	Direct Object	Descriptive	Unintentional Patient	Pseudo-Passive Object
Agentive	Agent!	Cause!	Ergative Subject	Intentional Cause
Patientive	Intentional D.O.	Pseudo-Passive Agent	Absolutive Obj	Stative

Verbs inflect for an astronomical eight persons:

#	Name	Person	Demon.	Time
-1	Negative	No one	None	Never
0	Indefinite	Someone/anyone	Some	Some time
½	Dim. Proximal	My mid-section	This poor	"These days"
1	Proximal	I	This	Now
1½	Mesioproximal	We (you and I)	This*	"Just now"
2	Mesiodistal	You	That	Then
3	Distal	He/She/It	Yon	"That time"
4	Obviative	Him	Other	"That other time"

As with nouns, Parseltongue verbs do not mark number. Tense is assumed or conveyed via adverbs.

Aspect is either imperfective or perfective. There are three mood: Indicative - for independent clauses; Subjunctive - for dependent clauses; and Illocutionary - for magical or imperative clauses. The subjunctive is very plain, conjugating only for aspect, but not person or evidentiality.

All indicative/independent verbs in Parseltongue must be marked for evidentiality. Snakes senses are (in decreasing order of assuredness):

Taste/Smell: Snakes extend their tongues into the air/water and pull "smells" into their mouths, where their "noses" (Jacobsen's organs) are. This gives them a very refined and directional sense. Knowledge obtained this way is the most certain and so is most analogous to human's "I see" or "I know".
Heat/IR: Snakes have special sensors where other animals' "noses" would be which detect heat or Infra-red radiation. Snakes report not "seeing" a field - as humans do with sight - but "feeling" the nearness and/or warmth of things. This is most akin to a human saying "I feel like you are ..." or "I sense not everyone in the room agrees with ...".
Hear/Vibration: A snake's entire body functions like an "ear", sensing vibrations. This knowledge is very accurate, but because it comes from their whole body (not just their head) it is more like "gut knowledge". Magic causes snakes internal ear to hear external speech. Only a Parselmouth magician may speak to a snake and be heard. For the rest of us (Muggles and non-Parselmouth magicians) Parseltongue may be learned and spoken amongst ourselves only.
Sight: Most snakes have poor vision, with a majority not being binocular. This mood is used metaphorically as a person would say, "I suppose" or "I guess".

To be at

Imperfective
Smell
	-1	0	½	1	1½	2	3	4
IR
Hear	tsæ	tsv	mæ		mœ		sa
Sight
Imperative						saa

Miscellany

Cambridge professor Francis Nolan was commissioned to produce consistent phrasing across four movies (i.e. Chamber of Secrets, Goblet of Fire, and Deathly Hallows 1 & 2). He did not create a full grammar and dictionary, only a handful of phrases. As a professor of Finnish and Estonian, he subscribes to the theory that gemination in those languages follows three levels of gradation. In his notes, he often uses /ʕ/ but labels it a voiceless fricative, so we have used /ħ/ instead. Of the vowels, he only uses /a ɪ i ɛ e/, but the actors pronounce /œ æ/ on occasion. There are no stops or affricates in his phrases, but the snake in Philosopher's Stone says /θeiŋksː/. We also take it as a conceit to the actors that /j/ was used in place of the much more difficult /ɰ/. Ejectives, clicks, the tap and /ɹ/ were also not on Nolan's radar. Imprecise enunciation must be assumed with the actors to produce distinct cases. This is substantiated by Nolan's own notes which indicated Ergative and Absolutive cases (but question strict E-A alignment).

In our defense, 92% of the Parseltongue heard in the films is in the imperative voice!

Idioms

(like a) Human's face in the nose: "It's self-evident." Snakes' faces are unreadable, but they generally know how to read human body language, mainly through smell and temperature sensing. Smells are "in one's nose" because smell samples are brought into the mouth by the tongue and placed upon the Jacobsen's organ.
This must pass over the nose: Food is passed over the Jacobsen's organ as it is eaten. If something is noxious, to eat it would be unbearably intense. Snakes say this meaning "It's too awful" or "I don't want to!"
Passing over roughness aids molting: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger in the end."
Some eggs are inside, some eggs are outside: "Different strokes for different folks." Some snakes have pouches for their eggs to hatch inside their bodies, giving the appearance of live births. Many snakes do not.
I am the venom.: Not all snakes are poisonous, but all snakes spur themselves on to overcome fear and strike out (often metaphorically) by willing themselves to be their own venom. "I can do this!"

From the Films

#1

ˈaiʃa=ħassi	ˈsɛɬɬ
Excuse-2-IMPV-PERF=2-ERG	lord-V

#2

ˈsɰɛhh	naˈħini
what-PAR	name-VOC

ˈʃia=ħassi	ˈŋaθas
speak-2-IMPV-PERF=2-ERG	1-DAT

#3

sa	ˈŋaħalas	ˈnɛsswa	ˈlɛha	ˈsɛɬɬ
Exist-3-IMPF	muggle-N	door-ABL	post.	lord-V

#4

ˈsaɪhaħassi	hɛθ
leave-2-IMP=2-ERG	3-ABS
haˈʃeaħassa	ʃiħ
go-2-IMP=2-ABS	adv

Lexica

Parseltongue-English

A

aic: "to excuse, to pardon, to forgive", volitional, active verb

C

ci: "to speak, to say, to talk", volitional, active verb
cig: "away, from the center, from me", adverb

G

gasas: "you, there, then, that", medial pronoun

H

ha'ce: "to go, to sidewind", volitional, passive verb

L

lœha: "in front, before, between the eyes", postposition

M

madax: "I, here, now, this", proximal pronoun
magalas: "muggle", animate, non-prey noun

N

nœs: "(open) door, doorway, portal"

S

sa: "to be, to be at, to have, 있다 (有)", non-volitional, active verb
say: "to leave alone, to pass by, meta. to choose not to eat", volitional, active verb
swe: "what, who, whom, whose, which", interrogative pronoun, may be used without a verb
sœz: "lord, master, owner, snake-charmer", animate, non-prey noun