Classical Blafu

Classical Blafu was the language of the Blafu Union during the Era of West-East Contact. It is a largely isolating language, and was historically the main language of scholarship throughout Odirá. Scientific terminology is still largely drawn from Classical Blafu.

Phonology

Consonants

		Bilabial	Dental	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	Aspirated	Ph	Th	Trh	Ch	Kh
	Unaspirated	P	T	Tr	C	K
	Voiced	B	D	Dr	J	G
	Prenasalized	Mb	Nd	Ndr	Nj	Ng
Nasals		M	N	Nr	Ñ	Ng'
Fricatives	Voiceless	F	S	Sr	Ç		H
	Voiced	V	Z	Zr	Jh
Liquids	Lateral		L	Lr	Ly
	Non-lateral		R	Rr
Glides		W			Y

Vowels

Classical Blafu had four phonemic vowels, /i e a u/. The vowels can occur with one of three tones, level (unmarked), rising (marked with an acute) or falling (marked with a grave).

Syllables

Classical Blafu had a simple syllable structure. No closed syllables were permitted, no vowel sequences were permitted, and the only consonant clusters permitted were stop-liquid or stop-glide clusters. Clusters of dental stops plus r are distinguished from retroflex by the insertion of an apostrophe between the two consonants (e.g., t'r is /tr/, tr is /ʈ/)

Grammar

Classical Blafu is largely isolating, with little compounding or inflection, relying instead of syntax.

Inflections

The only inflections that existed in Classical Blafu were

• Repetition (verbs): -nu

Syntax

Basic word order in Classical Blafu is subject verb object. Adjectives may precede or follow their heads, and prepositions are used. Alternately, subject object verb order can be used, with the direct object marked with the preposition makhe