Kythish

Introduction

Kythish (cwiþeś), also known as Hacean, is a Germanic language spoken in the cantons of Kythe, on the world of Oktosii. It is derived from Old English, with a sizeable Celtic influence.

Phonology

Alphabet

Kythish is written using a variant of the Latin alphabet, omitting some letters and adding several more. Majuscules are not used. The collation order is as follows:

a á b c ć d ð e é f g ǵ h i í j l m n ŋ o ó p r ŕ s ś t þ u ú v w ẃ ƿ y ý z ź

In addition, there are four glyphs used exclusively for more divergent dialects, these are as follows:

ç ḉ (collated between ć and d)

ø ǿ (collated between ó and p)

There are also 7 consonantal digraphs, 6 standard and one dialectal, which result from initial consonant mutation. In the rare occurrence that they need to be collated, they are placed directly between the parent consonant and the next letter in the alphabet. These digraphs are as follows:

bh ch çh dh gh ph th

Note: Sometimes hƿ is considered a digraph, due to pronunciation differences, but it has no special collation position.

Phonemes

See Kythish phonemes.

Morphology and Syntax

In general, Kythish word order follows the SVO, IP-V2 pattern; that is, the verb must always be the second concept in a clause or subclause. There are two exceptions to this, though neither are uniform: In perfective constructions, the verb may be at the very end of the sentence (SOV), and in imperative constructions, the verb will often be first (VSO). In addition, Kythish is a Place-Manner-Time language.

Adjectives and Adverbs

Kythish adverbs and adjectives are considered one and the same natively, and both follow the word they modify, though there is no practical restriction on head-final phrases for nouns.

A small number of adjectives and adverbs are bare stems, but most are derived from nouns or verbs, or indeed other adjectives and adverbs, using suffixes:

-ec, -eg, -eś	Pertaining to [noun]. In addition, -eś is almost exclusively used for the names of languages derived from place or race names.
-sum, -swm	Pertaining to [verb] (or, less frequently, [noun]). The latter suffix was formerly dialectal.
-lýs	Without [verb] or [noun].
-fowƿ	Epitomising or bountiful in [verb] or [noun].

See the Kythish lexicon for more.

Nouns

A reasonable proportion of Kythish nouns are bare stems — such as ŋúr, "small ship" or hẃd, "guard dog" — but many more are formed using still-active suffixes. For example, the huge majority of nouns derived from verbs have the suffix -e (with an anomalous schwa pronunciation), — such as ceine, "a lesson", from ceinan, "to teach" — and agent nouns (such as "runner" in English) are formed using -ár — such as ceinár, "teacher". Some basic nouns have a final schwa -e not because they are derived from a verb, but because their etymon ends in an unstressed vowel — such as duźe, "pet dog".

Nouns are conjugated for four cases, (nominative (stem), accusative (-en), dative (-wm) and possessive (-as)) a dual (-az) and a plural (-aen). The overwhelming majority of Kythish nouns are regular; however, there is a certain degree of leeway. Nouns ending in a sonorant consonant, for example, can drop the vowels in the suffixes and append just the final consonant, as is the case for many other suffixes. Stylistically, this is preferred for monosyllabic roots and less common in polysyllabic ones. Thus:

Nominative	Accusative	Dative	Possessive
ŋúr	ŋúren, ŋúrn	ŋúrwm, ŋúrm	ŋúras, ŋúrs
duźe	duźen	duźwm	duźas
ceinár	ceináren	ceinárwm	ceináras

The dual and plural forms follow the same patterns, and are also given accusative, dative and possessive suffixes — e.g. duźaen, duźaenen, duźaenwm, duźaenas.

Nouns can be irregular in one of three different ways: irregular dual or plural (such as mon, "man" -> meinaz, "two men" -> mein, "men".), irregular in accusative, dative or possessive (such as, again, mon -> monn in accusative, pronounced exactly the same as the nominative), or where the dual or plural form are irregular in accusative, dative or possessive. Any regular noun can belong to the last class, where there is a growing trend to form the accusative of regular plurals as -n, such as hẃdaen -> hẃdaenn. In all of these situations, a regular form can be used and still be correct, if a little odd sounding at times. (For example, monaz is the preferred dual of mon in some areas.)