Ngolu
| Ngolu Ilia (Te) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken: | Áu |
| Total speakers: | 100,000 (approx.) |
| Genealogy: | Isolate (as far as known) |
| Typology | |
| Morphological type: | Isolating/futional |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | Nominative-Accusative |
| Basic word order: | VSO |
| Credits | |
| Creator: | Imralu |
| Created: | 2013-2014 |
Ngolu, also known as Te or Ilia Te (endonym: ilia (te) IPA: [ìʎá(té)]) is a language isolate spoken throughout the space habitat Áu by the Ngolu people, whose number is estimated to be around 100,000. As the Ngolu are almost entirely monolingual, and while travel to and from Áu remains almost impossible, the language is not in any danger of extinction. At this stage, little is known of dialect differences.
Ngolu is an isolating/fusional, head-initial (right-branching) language with VSO word order and nominative-accusative alignment. Verbs (verbals) make up the only open class of word, with nouns (nominals) constituting a closed class of heavily fusional words that fill the roll of pronouns and articles in other languages, marking grammatical person, gender, number, case, definiteness and specificity.
Terminology
The Ngolu usually call their language ilia [ìʎá], which simply means 'language' or 'speech'. Many Ngolu in Áu do not recognise foreign languages such as English as communication when they hear them, and tend to refer to anything said in another language as maramaria [màɾàmàdʒá] ('babbling' or 'nonsense'). Ngolu on Earth have observed other languages being used between multiple people and typically recognise foreign languages as being capable of conveying meaning. The word ilia in that case refers to all languages. To disambiguate their own language, they may call it ilia te [ìʎáté] 'good language' (or sometimes ilia golu [ìʎáŋòlú] or ilias áu [ìʎásáw]).
The word áu [áw] means 'world' but specifically refers to the world Áu, not to Earth (which is known as aásu [àásù] or uuásu [ùwásù]). The English ethnonym 'Ngolu' derives from golu [ŋòlú] meaning 'person' or 'people'.
Phonology
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
| High | i ‹i› | u ‹u› | |
| Mid | e ‹e› | o ‹o› | |
| Low | a ‹a› |
Each vowel may be 'strong' or 'weak'. The pronunciation of strong vowels varies across accents but it generally equates to a high tone whereas 'weak' vowels have a low tone. There is only ever one 'strong' vowel per word and it is nearly always the final vowel. Where it is not, it is always the penultimate vowel and the in that case the final vowel is always /i/ or /u/. Non-final strong vowels are indicated in the romanisation using an acute accent, ‹áéíóú›.
The high vowels, /i/ and /u/, when weak and adjacent to another vowel are pronounced non-syllabically as [i̯~j] and [u̯~w]). Non-syllabic /i/ merges with and palatalises any preceding dental/alveolar consonant.
Consonants
| Bilabial | Labiovelar | Dental/Alveolar | Post-alveolar | Velar | Glottal | |
| Nasal | m ‹m› | n ‹n› | ŋ ‹g› | |||
| Plosive | b ‹b› | t ‹t› | k ‹k› | ʔ ‹q› | ||
| Ejective | tʼ ‹tt› | kʼ ‹kk› | ||||
| Voiced Fricative | v ‹v› | z ‹z› | ʒ ‹j› | |||
| Voiceless Fricative | s ‹s› | ʃ ‹x› | h ‹h› | |||
| Tap | ɾ ‹r› | |||||
| Lateral | l ‹l› |
- The normal pronunciation of all /n t tʼ ɾ l/ is dental. When these consonants are followed by a non-syllabic /i/, they are palatalised to [ɲ tʃ tsʼ dʒ ʎ] and the /i/ disappears.
- /ɾ/ is frequently pronounced as a voiced dental plosive.
- When /s/ and /z/ are followed by a non-syllabic /i/, they are not distinguished from /ʃ ʒ/.
- /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ cannot be followed by non-syllabic /i/.
