Svalbardian

Svalbardian is a fictional language by Jörg Rhiemeier which represents the language of the indigenous people of the Svalbard archipelago in the League of Lost Languages (in reality, Svalbard has no indigenous population). Svalbardian is an isolate; no relatives are known, though some scholars conjecture a relationship to the Razaric languages of the British Isles. The language has borrowed a few words from Old Albic (e.g., kiwi 'ship' < Old Albic ciph) and recently from Norwegian (e.g., muru 'snowmobile' < Norw. motor).

So far, only a phonology sketch exists.

Phonology

Consonants

Svalbardian has only five consonant phonemes, though some of these have very broad allophony.

	Labial	Alveolar	Velar
Oral	p~b~ɸ~w	t~d~s~r	k~g~x~ɣ
Nasal	m	n~ŋ

Allophony

The oral consonants are realized as

• voiced stops [b d g] after nasals
• fricatives [ɸ s x] before oral consonants and word-finally
• glides [w r ɣ] intervocally
• voiceless stops [p t k] elsewhere

The non-labial nasal is [ŋ] before [g] and [n] elsewhere.

Vowels

The Svalbardian language has three vowels, /a i u/.

Transcription

The transcription system used here is partly phonetic, distinguishing allophones.

	Labial	Alveolar	Velar
Voiceless stops	p	t	k
Voiced stops	b	d	g
Fricatives	f	s	x
Glides	w	r	g
Nasals	m	n	n

The vowels are straightforwardly spelled a i u.

Syllable structure

The maximal syllable structure is CVC.

Accent

Svalbardian has a weak stress accent on the first syllable of the word.

Dummy sample text

This is not a sample of "real" Svalbardian, but a dummy text meant to demonstrate the phonology.

• Phonemic: /pamkimatankatmak tak tamtankapuki kum tukpit nakmamnit/
• Phonetic: [pamgimaraŋgatmax tax tamdaŋgawuɣi kum tuxpis nakmamnis]
• Orthographic: pamgimarangatmax tax tamdangawugi kum tuxpis nakmamnis