I've been waiting so long to be able to post anything abt this omg
Lokendon Valonan language (natively: lokendden valend gute /'lɔkəndən 'vælən 'gotə/) is a naturalistic conlang of mine that's set in a conworld I call Ezia. Specifically, it's a remake of an old conlang that I made in 10 hours as a challenge, which I later inserted into my conworld. I wrote a huge document abt the language and was inspired to redo it but without the time limit. At the moment the language is far from complete but the framework is done. This topic is a bit of a devlog and this post is an overview of what's already done
Example sentence
romanization: aken nite qgoe dhi londke / aken nite dhi londgqoe
ipa: /'akəɴ 'netə ɢoj ðe 'lɔnkə/ / /'akəɴ 'netə ðe 'lɔnɢoj/
gloss: fly-2p.sg.nhab 1p-obq ALL DEF moon-PREP / fly-2p.sg.nhab 1p-obq DEF moon-ALL
translation: "fly me to the moon"
(both sentences are possible)
Lore
In short, the language is spoken on an island natively called lokendden along with another language from a separate family, Ekahian. The language itself probably comes from a whole another continent, from where Proto-Valonans, presumably, migrated using a northern current that circles around the entire planet
The status of the language varied with time. The government historically preferred Pulerian, another language from the same family as Ekahian, but post-revolution changed preference towards Ekahian and Valonan. Many later policies, though, have done harm towards the language. In the post-war era (the modern day) they were reversed, though the situation is still not perfect (knowledge of Ekahian is still expected across the country). Though, it's become a popular second language to learn
The history has caused the language to have many loans from Ekahian, and vice versa. The languages influenced each other in different ways too!
Periodization
Lokendon Valonan has gone through many changes throughout history. There is an "old" version of the language (abbreviated [olv]) and a proto-language it's descended from - Proto-Eastern-Valonan (abbr. [pev]). Modern Lokendon Valonan (abbr. [mlv]) is also split into the early [emv] and late [lmv]. The actual timeline will take a long time to explain, besides the fact that it's still wip, so I won't go into that here
Chronologically: [pev] - [olv] - [mlv] ( [emv] - [lmv] )
Phonology
I'll only show here the modern phonology, with some notes abt spelling and the phonotactics
notes:
- /n/ is romanized as <nd> when not following dental or alveolar consonants
- /nd/ is romanized as <ndd>
- /ɴ/ is romanized as <nq> when following dental or alveolar consonants
- /qʰg/ is romanized as <q'g>
- [ɸ] and [β] are allophones of /θ/ and /ð/ before rounded vowels (all of the back vowels)
- long vowels shorten in unstressed syllables, while short vowels are reduced to /ə/. In romanization this only affects short vowels, all of them being written with <e>
- /ə/ is lost before nasals and liquids (the sound change is still ongoing)
- long vowels /i:/ /u:/ /e:/ /o:/ are diphthongized to [iə̯] [uə̯] [eə̯] [oə̯] (still ongoing)
- diphthongs /jo/ and /oj/ are romanized as <eo> and <oe> because they come from olv diphthongs /eo̯/ and /oe̯/ to keep consistency, and, as native vowel clusters aren't allowed, it can't cause ambiguity
- all words are stressed on the first syllable
- consonant clusters are only allowed medially
Orthography
The in-world orthography of the language does exist, but it's not finished yet
Morphology
Lokendon Valonan has 8 parts of speech, starting with:
Verbs
As will be seen in the following screenshot, mlv verbs conjugate in:
- number (singular, plural)
- person (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
- aspect (habitual, non-habitual)
- tense (past, non-past)
They also can have a passive voice prefix, which is mostly used for emphasis, as all verbs can be used as both transitive and intransitive
notes:
- consonants in brackets are used after verbs that end in a vowel
- vowels in brackets are used after verbs that end in a consonant
- the change deleting /ə/ in some contexts makes past-nonpast distinction disappear in most conjugations for some speakers
(e.g. bakevlen /bækəvlən/ and bakevelen /bækəvələn/ both becoming [bækvln])
Nouns
Lokendon Valonan nouns have number and case, but they don't decline in number. Instead, verb agreement is used to express it
The 4 cases are nominative (subject), oblique (object), prepositional (for non-suffixed prepositions) and genitive (possessor)
notes:
- oblique: (t) appears in nouns that end in vowels, like with verb conjugation
- genitive: deletes the final vowel if there is one, otherwise identical to nominative
- vocative: (r) is the same as (t) in oblique (appearing after vowels)
Adjectives
Adjectives in mlv agree with nouns, which is why the declension table is the same for both
Adverbs
Lokendon Valonan adverbs can be formed with various suffixes. They go after words they modify, in contrast to adjectives, which are the opposite and go before nouns they modify
Articles
There are three articles in Lokendon Valonan:
- definite (specific noun)
- indefinite (any noun)
- negative (no noun)
notes:
- Valonan articles are always used with nouns as opposed to English articles, where only few proper nouns have articles before them and plural nouns don't have indefinite articles. The only exception to this is pronouns, which don't have an article
- lack of genitive articles is important for possession marking
- the lack of articles in genitive (except for do) is useful for avoiding ambiguity with possession, as only the possessor lacks the article. This results in a paradigm "possessor-article-possessee" as in the example ekag dhi cuhn "the country of Ekaho", or, rarer (possibly because of the influence of Ekahian) "article-possessee-possessor", as in the example dhi cuhn ekag
this paradigm was actually got loaned into Ekahian and replaced their native genitive case (an example of Lokendon Valonan influence on Ekahian)
Pronouns
Pronouns in Lokendon Valonan are not so different from nouns. In fact, their declension is mostly identical!
There are three types of pronouns:
- personal
- indefinite
- definite
Interrogatives are also grouped as pronouns here, though some of them do not work like ones, so keep that in mind when looking through the list, shown on this screenshot:
Note how singular only personal pronouns are considered archaic. Though they're also gendered, many modern speakers use them interchangeably when emulating old speech
Prepositions
Lokendon Valonan has few prepositions (only 13!). To create more complex meaning, prepostions can be combined, as in the following screenshot:
All simple prepositions also have a "suffix form", where they get attached onto a noun as in the example londlih "moonlike" from lih londke "like moon"
This also works with complex prepositions, though only one preposition gets suffixed as in qgoe dhohle or lo dhohqgoe "onto there" from qgoe lo dhohke "on to there" (either can be used)
Conjunctions
Lokendon Valonan has 6 conjunctions (translation in brackets): a (or), meh (and), chel (though), la (if), vu, (then), mel (because)
Note that vu is used only as as a responce to a clause with la, and is not used for time (preposition juch is used instead)
Numerals
Like pronouns, numerals decline in the same way as nouns and adjectives. There is no distinction between cardinal and ordinal numbers, and they can be used as both nouns and adjectives
Valonan numerals follow a base 5 and go as follows: eo (1), sew (2), ne (3), bo (4), teh (5)
Numbers 6-9 are expressed with a combination of teh and a number 1-4
Number 10 in Lokendon Valonan is expressed with the word sewteh, while numbers 11-14 follow the same pattern as numbers 6-9, but with sewteh instead of teh. This pattern is then repeated indefinitely
Some powers of 5 have their own words: sewteh (10), netteh (15), boteh (20), tehteh (25)
Number 30 is expressed as ne sewteh, literally translated as "three tenths", or sew netteh, "two fifteens". 40 is bo sewteh (four tenths) or sew boteh, (two twenties). A hundred can be expressed as sewteh sewteh (ten tenths), teh boteh (five fourties), bo tehteh (four twenty-fives) or with an Ekahian loan aket