Lethe's conlang
From KneeQuickie
"[Our language now is]...an overly complex, vulgar way of speaking... not only have they borrowed words [and grammatical structures, unadulterated] from the old language, but also from every language around, to feed their slangs and unintelligibilities... [They] force themselves to remember all of these fineries, just for the sake of speaking correctly... among the vulgar masses." - attributed to a prominent native politician who spoke at a recent Kaehao conference on city- and island-wide language standardization
Lethe's conlang is called Esti now. This information isn't current - don't trust it, even if it tries to bribe you with a hundred dollars and a coupon for a free meal from Applebees.
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General Language Description
Esti is what some citydwellers call 'the bastard language'. True Esti as differentiated from more isolated languages of the same family which may have the same name is a language which borrows heavily (both grammatically and lexically) from neighboring languages. Technically, it's not a pidgin or lingua franca, because it's not used for communication between speakers of different languages (Japanese is used then, as the islands were a former Japanese territory and many Japanese still live there) and Esti is surely not simple and easy to learn or understand. About ten to twenty million people in city speak Esti as a first, second, or third language. Nobody knows why Esti diverged so rapidly from its ancestor languages - some theorize that it was the gangs who did it, and others say that it was to keep their speech constantly changing so that nobody in on it would ever understand them. Anyhow, it's created one hell of a mess.
Phonology
Stops
Voiceless: /(p) t t_j c k q G\ ?/
Aspirated: /t_h c_h/
Ejective: /(p_>) t_> c_> k_>/
Voiced: /b d J\/
Aspirated: /b_h/
Nasals: /m_0 n_0 J N/
Spirants (traditional classification)
Labial: /W f v/
Sibilant: /s_d s_d_> z_d S Z s\ z\/
Velar: /C x x_> G X R/
(Voiced nasalized: /v~ z~/)
Rhotics: /r r_m/
Approximants: /l j/
Vowels: /i y e 2 E 9 1 @ a u 7 o O/
/p/, /t/, /c/, /k/, /q/, and /?/ are voiceless stops at the bilabial, alveolar, palatal, front velar, back velar, and glottal points of articulation. Of these, /p/, /k/, /q/, and /?/ are virtually invariant; /t/ has a dental allophone [t_d], and /c/ has a postalveolar affricate realization [tS)] or an uncommon alveopalatal realization [t_-]. There is also a palatalized stop phoneme /t_j/, which is listed as part of the core phonology only because it is the lone palatalized phoneme to occur outside of the vicinity of the palatalizing vowels [i ], [1], and [e].
/p_>/, /t_>/, /c_>/, and /k_>/ are glottalized versions of their respective unvoiced stops. /p_>/, /t_>/, and /k_>/ are invariant; /c_>/ may be realized as an ejective alveopalatal affricate [ts\)_>] or ejective postalveolar affricate [tS)_>].
The aspirated voiceless stops /t_h c_h/ and the voiced aspirate /b_h/ are aspirates of their unaspirated counterparts. Invariant save for dialectal (and indeed prefereantial no matter your location) de-aspiration.
/b/, /d/, and /J\/ are the voiced versions of /p/, /t/, and /c/; /d/ has a dental realization [d_d], and /J\/ has a postalveolar affricate realization [tS)] or an uncommon alveopalatal realization [d_-].
/m_0/ and /n_0/ are voiceless bilabial and alveolar nasals. /N/, the voiced velar nasal, occurs word-finally only; medially, it has shifted forward to /J/ (and is otherwise invariant).
/W/ and /f/ are the voiceless labial spirants. /s_d/, /S/, and /s\/ comprise the voiceless sibilants; some people pronounce /s_d z_d/ as [T D]. /C/, the voiceless palatal spirant, is sometimes realized as /s\/ in words for which there are no minimal pairs in [C]/[s\]; along with /x/, for which there is an allophone [C] (and a dialectal one [X] in the vicinity of back vowels), and the invariant voiceless back velar spirant /X/, it comprises the velar series of spirants (as categorized in traditional analyses by suffixes whose initial spirant changes according to which velar spirant the word stem ends with).
/s_>/ and /x_>/ are the glottalized sibilant and the glottalized velar spirant. Both are invariant. (historically, /s_>/ > * any sibilant + ? and /x_>/ > * any velar spirant + ?; labial spirants + ? resulted in vocalization of ? (usually to something like [f1_x?] but also to [a] or even deletion altogether))
/v/ is the sole voiced labial spirant, which may be realized as /w/ intervocalically. /z_d/, /Z/, and /z\/ are the voiced sibilants; /G\/, allophonically [g], and /R/ are the voiced velar spirants.
/v~/ and /z~/ are the invariant voiced nasalized fricatives, both peripheral phonemes borrowed at a relatively late date from neighboring languages. Most Esti speakers realize /v~/ as [vn], [nw], or [v1~n] and /z~/ as [zn], [nz], or [z1~n]; in formal speech, however, it is generally impolite to use these “vulgar” pronunciations.
The rhotics /r/ and /r_m/ are an alveolar apical trill and an alveolar laminal fricative trill (Czech r-hacek). /r/ may be realized as an alveolar tap [4] according to speaker’s preference. As with /s\/ and /C/, the distinction between both rhotics is neutralized in words where no minimal pair exists, and the trill used is speaker’s preference.
The alveolar approximant /l/ has a dental realization /l_d/; the palatal approximant /j/ may be realized as /j\/according to speaker’s preference.
Vowels are typically invariant excepting conditions of rhythmical length, stress, and influence by neighboring sounds. However, /2/ and /9/ are now nearly indistinguishable in isolation, and the schwa /@/ is gaining a number of realizations in stressed position (for example, in stress-attracting inflections) such as /e/, /7/, or /1/.
Grammar and whatnot
General traits
Polysynthetic in native noun inflections, posessive endings, and verbal inflections, inflecting otherwise. Almost enough grammatical structures that if you managed to sort them out by language of origin the smallest group might fill a sheet of paper and the largest an unabridged dictionary; this wouldn't count the four or five groups inbetween.
Verbs
Verbs inflect for five common and three rare tenses and many more aspects; depending on area, some tenses and aspects may have different meanings or may not even be understood. The common tenses are the perfect, the past, the aorist, the present, and the future (the even two of which imply a progressive meaning). The rare other tenses are the remote past, the remote future, and the future progressive; these tenses are used but not necessarily in normal speech. Aspects coming soon.
Verbs are sorted into three (sometimes four) classes: native, strong, and weak (and sometimes invariant). Native verbs are verbs inherited directly from Old Esti; strong verbs are foreign verbs with a fossilized prefix or prefixes coming before the tense marker; weak verbs are foreign verbs conjugated just like native verbs; and invariant (sometimes 'dependant') verbs are usually auxiliaries or lesser-used verbs which take no inflections, requiring instead clitics, separate pronouns, a governing verb, and contextual interpretation.
Nouns
Nouns inflect for a fair amount of cases. Sometimes, a noun will be put into a different case with a clitic, postbase (infix between a word and its ending which may change the word's shade of meaning or part of speech), or particle.
