Ataši

Disclaimer! This language is still under construction and as such is not yet complete.

Introduction

Marèngil is a constructed language inspired by both Elvish and Dwarvish, languages spoken by the elves and dwarves respectively in the fictional world of Middle Earth, invented by J. R. R. Tolkien. Thus, the language is spoken by an elf-like people, but of a more hardy stock, akin to the dwarves. These elves are known as the Marên, and live in a mountainous, dry, jungle-like continent on the planet Tárìk. The continent is not much bigger than Greenland in square mileage, but is home to some 450 million people. It is very mountainous and has a large collection of waterways and cave systems. The planet could be likened to Caladan, from Frank Herbert's Dune, with very little deserts or arid, inhospitable biomes.

While the words themselves have no correlation to Elvish or Dwarvish, it is intended to be like them in terms of phonology and syllable and sentence structure. It keeps a similar tonal musicality to Elvish, it also has aspects of the harsher Dwarvish, and with a combined phonetic inventory of the both. The point of it is not to create an epically exotic language, but to create a language that will, with any luck, have a similarity to another. There is no gender to nouns or pronouns, which stems from the close similarity in stature, strength and intellectual functions between male and female. Equality is treated in the same way as the right to live is treated. It is simply a fact. They greatly appreciate a sense of humor, thought at humor doesn't translate well into English.

Phonology

IPA Consonants

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar		Post-alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
			central	lateral
Plosive	p   b		t   d				k   g
Fricative	f   v	θ   ð	s   z	ɬ	ʃ   ʒ		x	h
Affricate			t͡s	tɬ	t͡ʃ   d͡ʒ
Nasal	m		n				ŋ
Tap/Flap			r
Approximant				l		j	w

IPA Vowels

	Front	Middle	Back
Close	i   i:		u   u:
Near-close	ɪ		ʊ
Close-mid	e   e:	ə	o   o:
Open-Mid	ɛ		ʌ
Open		a   a:

Romanization

IPA Romanized Consonants

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar		Post-alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
			central	lateral
Plosive	p   b		t   d				k   g
Fricative	f   v	th   dh	s   z	ll	sh   zh		kh	h
Affricate			c	tl	ch   j
Nasal	m		n				ng
Tap/Flap			r
Approximant				l		y	w

IPA Romanized Vowels

	Front	Middle	Back
Close	i   ï		u   ü
Near-close	ì		ù
Close-mid	e   ë	è	o   ö
Open-Mid	à		ò
Open		a   ä

Orthography

Alphabet

(In Progress)

Stress and Vowel Length

Stress in Marêngil is indicated by diacritics above the vowel of the stressed syllable. The stress is most often on the penultimate syllable, but can also occur elsewhere. Likewise, length is also denoted by diacritics. The letter "a" will be used as the placeholder letter for any of the vowels.

• a (no stress, short)
• ä (no stress, long)
• á (stressed, short)
• â (stressed, long)
• à (secondary vowel)

This last diacritic shows that the modified vowel takes on a different sound. It is never long, nor is it stressed, and appears infrequently.

Phonotactics

(In Progress)

There are many syllable structures in Marêngil, but with that comes a number of rules.

• V
• VC
• VCC
• CV
• CVC
• CVCC
• CCVC
• CCVCC
• CCCV
• CCCVC
• CCCVCC

Rules

• No more than three consonants can occur next to each other in a single world. (e.g.: VCC+CCVC)
• No more than two vowels can occur next to each other in a single world. (e.g.: CV+V+VCC)
• Under no circumstances should two sounds of the same manner of articulation appear adjacent to each other.
• No consonants of the same place of articulation should appear adjacent to each other, excepting central alveolar consonants.
• A fricative cannot be in the same consonant cluster an affricate or vise versa.

Syntax

Marêngil is a strictly head-initial language that acquired no changes to this structure. The word order strictly follows order of case; Nom., Acc., Dat., Loc., Gen.