Hello, y'all. This is a series of posts explaining my constructed language Reluáz.

The Introduction

Reluáz is the constructed language that I put the most effort on. I've worked on it ever since I visited Prague last year... I was amazed to find that Czech does not sound Slavic when spoken. Many people speak in loud murmurs and slightly overdone rolled r's. I wanted to make Reluáz sound like spoken Czech because I like how it sounded. I'm not sure if it came out even close, but I'm still happy with the results.

Reluáz is designed to be morphologically and phonetically similar to the Indo-European languages of Europe such as French, Spanish, German, Latvian, Russian, Welsh, and Classical Latin. It is worthy to note that a huge amount of vocabulary has been derived from Classical Latin, making Reluáz a sort of a distant Romantic relative.

The Phonology and the Alphabet

The phonology corresponds with the grapheme unless otherwise noted (in X-SAMPA).

a
b
v
g
d
e [E] (before a vowel, e functions as the sound [j])
j [Z]
z
i (at the end of a word, it either indicates palatalization (of preceding consonant) or becomes the sound [j] (after a vowel)* )
c [k]
l
m
n
o
ł [K]
p
r
s
t
u (before a vowel, u functions as the sound [w])
f
h
ć [t_s]
ź [d_z]
č [t_S]
š [S]

The Concise Guide to the Diacritics
Acute accent: used to mark the stress of the word. í is pronounced as a stressed [E].
Grave accent: used to distinguish homonyms. Pronunciation does not change.
Trema: used to prevent diphthongs ea, ee, ei*, eo, eu and ua, ue, uo, uu from forming. The trema is installed above the second grapheme of the would-be diphthong.

Note: the carons above c and s and the acute accents above c and z are not considered to be separate diacritics like the others. These graphemes (ć,ź,č,š) are considered to be separate sounds.

* The syllable [Ej] is common in Reluáz. However, one cannot write it simple as ei, as that would become [ji]; the orthography remedies this situation by creating a separate grapheme for that syllable, æ. It may also be written as ae, and in the texts that use this spelling, [aE] is noted as aë.

The (Relatively) Brief Outline of Phonological Rules and Word Derivation

Reluáz is a direct descendant of another one of my constructed languages, Sajyanal (lit. lions' tongue). Sajyanal was overcome with a number of cases that was nothing to sneeze at. These cases worked under an inflectional system rather than a synthetic one. This is obvious in the fact that there was no one standard ending for, for example, the accusative case. There were ten different, vaguely similar accusative endings for each of the ten declension patterns. In other words, there was a lot of endings in Sajyanal.

This all changed once the Krom people invaded the Sajya people's territory. The Krom (age old contraction of ka rom, meaning red people), with their isolating-inflectional language, watered down the case system of Sajyanal and introduced the concepts of subtle vowel harmony and rampant consonant gradation. From the time of the invasion and onward, Krom and Sajyanal have merged into one language which would, much later, develop into Reluáz. Reluáz has inherited mainly Krom vocabulary and consonant gradation, and Sajyanal nominal affixes and a watered down morphological system. Krom vowel harmony was lost in the standardization of written language, as the difference between "lax" vowels ( [a], [e], [i ], [o], [u ] ) and "tense" vowels ( [{], [E], [1], [9], [y] ) was not written. Educated people started to pronounce words as written, but, as is with language standardization, only they pronounced words as reformed. Only after a while, when education became widespread, did common people learn the "standard" language. Even so, there a still communities that follow a tradition of vowel harmony. As a result, nobody could understand these people, and their language became unintelligible with Reluáz so much that it was used in telephone conversations during the Great War to pass secret messages, much like Cherokee in World War II.

As mentioned before, I actually derive a lot of words from Latin. This would logically lead the reader to think that the Krom language is also based off of Latin. Not only did I derive from slightly obscure roots, but I also used obvious links like "etra" for to be and "mi" for the first person pronoun. Nonetheless, more often than not the Latin derivations are so severely distorted that they are sometimes unrecognizable, as in "eeg" compared to "lacus," or lake. I have a strict set of rules for deriving words from Latin, so these corruptions are not just composed on the fly.

I'm finished for now. I know it's a lot to read, but I'd appreciate if a kind soul would read and reply, criticizing and asking questions.

Coming up next...

Nominal Morphology (the Basics)
Verbal Morphology (the Basics)

Wow, I haven't posted in a while. I kinda forgot about it... oops. Oh yeah, for further reference, "ĉ" is a variable for any consonant, and "w" is a variable for any vowel except for u.

The Nominal Morphology (the Basics)

Reluáz has three cases in use: the nominative, the genitive, and the dative. Like mentioned before, there where more cases in Sajyanal, but the number lessened with the advent of the Krom invasion. The endings for these cases are as follows:

Nominative:
Singular: -ĉ, -w, -u.
Plural: -ĉi, -ws, -ut.

Genitive:
Singular: -ĉà, -wt, -uà.
Plural: -ĉás, -wtás, -uat.

Dative:
Singular: -ĉem, -wm, -um.
Plural: -ĉímus, -ẃmus, -úmus.

Examples:

Eeg (lake), eegi. Eegà, eegás. Eegem, eegímus.
Cmarya (empire), cmaryas. Cmaryat, cmaryatás. Cmaryam, cmaryámus.
Turru (situation), turrut. Turruà, turruat. Turrum, turrúmus.

The Pronouns

Reluáz is generally pro-drop. While commoners may drop them, nobility is expected to always use them except for the first person pronoun.
Some prounouns are contracted before vowels. They are then attached to the following word with an apostrophe.
Pronouns, like regular nouns, are declined, but they are quite irregular and don't follow any patterns most of the time.

mi, m' - I, me. mà - my. mem - to me.
vu, v' - thou, thee. và - thy. vem - to thou.
yo - he, him, one*. yòd - his, one's*. yom - to him, to one*.
co, c' - she, her, one*. còt - her, one's*. com - to her, to one*.
so, š' - it. sòt - its. som - to it.

nu, n' - we, us. nua - our. nem - to us.
li, l’ - you**. lua - your. lem - to you.
re - they. rèt - their. rem - to them.

on - you, one**. onà - your, one's. omus - to you, to one.

*Depending on the gender of the speaker, these pronouns can mean “one”, but most of the time, on is used instead.

**li is the pronoun for more than one second person. on serves as a polite equivalent of vu most of the time, but can also be used in the case when the speaker does not know who he is talking to, like on signs or in slogans. It also acts as the equivalent of "one".

Examples of genitive pronoun usage:
Ton mà - my house.
Nido và - thy book.
Bef yòd - his beer.
Mun còt - her city.
Hreša sòt - its roof.
Bani nua - our parents.
Linda lua - your language.
Tatte rèt - their bar.
Eddi onà - your compassion, one's compassion.

As you can see, these genitive pronouns go after the noun they modify.

The following are the reflexive pronouns used in Reluáz.
canto - myself
si (vu) - thyself
santo - himself
nato - herself
šego - itself
cantos - ourselves
sis (li) - yourselves
santos - themselves
ustíd (on) - yourself, oneself

Examples:

Čaré si ba. - Don't kill thyself.
Yo s'ualun santo. - He washed himself.
Mu cùlac canto de Cloetenà. - I call myself Kloiten.

Other pronouns:

sì - here, ì - this, so - this person.
luná - there, agó - that, salá - that person.

Examples:

On ses sì. - You are here.
Ì sen čot mem. - I like this. (lit. It is liked to me)
Duseré salá ba. - Don't touch that person.
M'ueteac lunám. - I want to go (fly) there.
So santan calti lindas. - This person knows many languages.
Ìt sen cant! - This is important!

I'm done for now. The Verbal Morphology might come later today.

When the e is before the vowel-e, is it pronounced as the "ye" in yesterday, or is it pronounced as the "je" as in jester?



It is pronounced as the "z" as in zipper or, as the "s" in pleasure?



Is this pronounced akin to the stereo-typed Berliner's German accent "ch"?



Are these prounced as the "ch" in change and, the "sh" in shoulder?

e would become a yod vowel, i.e. "ye as in yesterday." I don't know how you could've confused those two...


I clearly showed a capital z, which, in X-Sampa code, does mean "s as in pleasure," or aka as the voiced postalveolar fricative.


Wha...? I'm not sure what you mean by this. What accent?


Yes.

Maybe [x]?

VROOR:
[K] is pronounced like Welsh <ll>.

Because you used the letter-j as the example.



There are those who are not familiar with the X-Sampa code.



In that case, nevermind.

But I'm not either: I just go to the Wikipedia list, find the sounds I need, and everybody (almost) is happy.

Here is the list.
It is helpful in representing more exact sounds.

I am not unhappy, I am just not sure how to pronounce the words of your language. Because I am interested in your language, why would I be upset? I said, "never mind" because I do not know what other references I can make to express myself and, so I gave-up. But, since I have the references on the X-Sampa code now, I can pronounce your language more correctly, so I should be happy about it.



Thank you.

What I meant by the "unhappy" put in there is that some people dislike X-Sampa even if they know it. I personally would go for IPA as well since it seems to be more understandable, but seeing as I can't type it that easily (I do have a good website with IPA characters; I bet if I spent a lot of time I could persevere), I have to stay with X-Sampa until I find a better way to type IPA.

For random reference, here is the IPA site: http://rishida.net/scripts/pickers/ipa/ . It's surprisingly useful, and I recommend it. It is slightly cumbersome to use, though.


*Workin' on verbal morphology section! (No, I'm not making the language up as I go... I'm trying to translate my cryptic notes into more understandable language )