So this is part of my Lonely Galaxy project. See this thread for more info on the world surrounding this language.
The Yinrih are arboreal canid monotreme-esque aliens with four prehensile paws and a prehensile tail. The best way I can describe them is that they have the head and body of a canid, paws like an opossum (except with an outer thumb, four fingers, and an inner thumb), and the tail of a binturong. They are very good climbers but have to walk on all fours. They've terraformed every suitable body in their solar system, but until they contact humanity they're as alone as we are, so first contact is mutual.
Since the Yinrih don't use their tongue, teeth, or lips when speaking, they refer to languages as "throats" rather than "tongues", hence the name of the language "Commonthroat". You can also guess that it's a lingua franca filling a similar niche as English does on Earth. The Yinrih have a bunch of other languages, but only one language family. They started writing as soon as they started talking, so their history covers their entire existence as a sapient species, and they never completely sundered into isolated cultures like we humans did before we invented writing.
Phonology
To a human, Commonthroat, as well as other yinrih languages, sounds like the quiet yipping and growling made by a dreaming dog. The gammut of sounds that a yinrih can produce is very limited compared to a human's vocal repertoire. There are six actual "sounds" in Commonthroat: three vowels and three consonants.
Vowels
Vowels carry most of the weight. There are three vowel qualities, or phonations: a whine, a growl, and a grunt. These vowels can either be plain (monophthongs) or contoured (diphthongs). A plain vowel can have one of two lengths (short or long), one of two tones (low or high) and one of two volumes, or strengths as they are called here (weak or strong).
A contour consists of two plain vowels which serve as the endpoints of a gradient. The attributes of each plain vowel determine the "shape" of the gradient. There are two rules that govern what vowels can form contours. First, two plain vowels that differ only in length cannot form a contour. Second, the two vowels must have the same phonation type. If either of these two rules are broken, a hiatus occurs between the vowels and they form two syllables.
The following tables show the notation used for vowels.
Lowercase letters are short. Uppercase letters are long.
Whines:
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weak strong
low b B c C
high d D f F
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weak strong
low g G h H
high j J k K
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weak strong
low l L m M
high n N p P
Since humans can't actually utter Commonthroat, the best way to convey how a word is pronounced is to describe its phonetic features one by one. For plain vowels, this is simple enough: give its length, tone, strength, then phonation. <b> is a short, low, weak whine. <P> is a long, high, strong grunt.
Describing contours gets a little trickier. If both of the vowels in a contour share a phonetic feature, we use the same description we would for a plain vowel with that feature. If both vowels are long, then the contour is simply described as long. If both vowels are high, the contour as a whole is high, and so on. If there is a gradient between the two vowels, we describe it as follows:
A vowel that goes from low to high tone is called "rising", and if it goes from high tone to low tone it's "falling".
A vowel that goes from weak strength to strong, we call that "strengthening" (increasing volume), and if it goes from strong to weak it's called "weakening" (decreasing volume). Hopefully it makes sense so far.
But what about length? If the first vowel is short and the second is long, then the change from one vowel to the other occurs earlier in the syllable, so we call these contours "early". If the first vowel is long and the second is short, the change occurs later in the syllable, so these contours are called "late".
Consonants
Consonants are simple compared to vowels. There are only three: a huff, a chuff, and a yip. A huff is an exhalation through the nose. A chuff is similar to a huff, but trilled. It sounds somewhat like a short purr. Yinrih chuff as a form of greeting, like a human smile. A yip is a quiet little bark.
Here's a table of the consonant symbols
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symbol sound
q huff
r chuff
s yip
The syllable structure is (C)V(C), and a yip cannot occur in coda position. With the phonology and phonetatics covered, here's an exhaustive list of every possible monosyllable in the language. It comes out to 2016 in total.
[WIP]
Before moving on to the grammar, here are a few final notes on the vagaries of the yinrih vocal tract. Yinrih can produce a few more sounds, but these are considered paralinguistic, at least in Commonthroat, just as English-speakers use clicks to express disaproval or a bilabial trill to indicate the speaker is cold. Yinrih can produce a hissing noise that can be plain or trilled. A trilled hiss is used to express unwelcome surprise, similar to a human saying "arrgh!" or "ouch!"
The language as a whole is very quiet by human standards. Yinrih can't project their voice in the same way a human can. They've had to spend a lot of effort making their machines and other technology as quiet as possible in order to hear one another talking. For example, yinrih mechs, which are four-footed like their pilots, are completely silent save for the dull thud of the machine's tread across the ground.
Yinrih also can't sing like humans can, both because they can't project their voice and because tone, volume, and timing are phonemic, so they can't put words to a melody. But they can howl. One particular style of liturgical music involves a schola howling a polyphonic chant to evoke emotion, while a chorus recites vocals at intervals to convey meaning.
Grammar
Nouns
When you think of nouns having inflections, most people think of noun cases. Noun cases relate a particular noun to its syntactic role in the sentence. Commonthroat inflects nouns for deixis. Deixis is how a noun relates to the real world person, place, or thing it's referring to. In most languages, deictic words include terms for the relative position of an object like "this", "that", "yonder", as well as the person of the noun. English usually requires you to use pronouns I, you, when referring to the speaker or listener. Sometimes you can include a clarifying noun phrase set off by commas When did we humans lose our fur?. Spanish lets you use a regular noun, but I've only seen this in the first person plural ¿Cuándo los humanos perdimos el pelaje? (By the way, it was about 2 million years ago, and it was because we started sweating).
Here are the six deictic suffixes used on nouns:
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suffix meaning
-l 1st person
-qn 2nd person
-g 3rd person indefinite
-Mr 3rd person proximal
-qN 3rd person medial
-p 3rd person distal
-BD interrogative
sFsFl I, the friend
sFsFqn you, the friend
sFsFg a friend, some friend, friends in general
sFsFMr This friend
sFsFqN that friend
sFsFp yonder friend
sFsFBD What friend?
The first person identifies the referent of the noun as the speaker.
The second person identifies the referent of the noun as the listener.
The 3rd person indefinite indicates that the referent is unimportant, not known, or that the noun describes a general class of entities.
The 3rd person proximal identifies the referent as something close to the speaker.
The 3rd person medial identifies the referent as something far from the speaker but close to the listener.
The 3rd person distal identifies the referent as something far away from both the speaker and the listener.
The interrogative indicates the speaker is requesting that the referent of the noun be identified.
Grammatical number is optional. It is indicated by quantitative adjectives, which come before the noun. You can indicate plurals by using the adjective <h>.
There are no pronouns. You must use a noun inflected in the first or second person to refer to yourself or the listener, respectively. While this may seem awkward, it allows for some rather laconic expressions, and allows for clarification of the relationship between speaker and listener.
Verbs
Verbs inflect for mood, which indicates things like the speaker's confidence in the truth of the statement, whether an action was performed intentionally, whether the speaker directly witnessed an event or whether they're inferring it from indirect evidence, if the speaker is surprised by the event, and if the speaker wishes to emphasize the truth of the statement.
There are four moods defined so far.
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suffix meaning
-∅ Authoritative
-b Nonauthoritative
-sfsf Mirative
-K Dogmatic
The authoritative form means the speaker is confident the statement is true.
The nonauthoritative form indicates a bit of a hedge on the part of the speaker regarding the truth of the statement. Simple sentences with nonauthoritative verbs can be translated as "I think that..." or "I believe that..." or "it seems that..." and so forth.
The mirative indicates the speaker is surprised by the event.
The dogmatic form is probably the most unique. It is used when the speaker wishes to emphasize the truth of the statement. It can be used similarly to the emphatic do in English, as in I do wash my hands after using the restroom.. It can also be used when making promises or threats, when proclaiming laws, when making axiomatic statements like All human beings are born free and equal. It's also used when answering yes/no questions.
Syntax
Word order is SVO. If there is an indirect object, it follows the object. Adjectives follow their nouns. Modals appear at the beginning of the sentence, and adverbs are just adjectives shunted to the start of the clause.
Gloss
The English translation is on the first line, the "Romanization" on the second, and the gloss on the third.
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Greetings, Hearthkeeper. May the sun warm your back.
oIm oanL-njH-mk I obn-njH-l mEm-a Dnh-l mK
salutation custodian-hearth-2 may star-hearth-3.DIST warm-NONAUTH back-3.DIST your
I bring you joyful tidings.
Jmc-oc-i nEm oDm-e oBoB nCm-mk
rainbow-FEMALE_NAME-1 bring news-3.INDF joyful female_superior-2.
We have found other sapients at last!
emG f nFmL-i dBm-odod f ef-bcm-j-e
finally PL missionary-1 find-MIR PL why-ask-AGENTIVE-3.INDF
The Hearthkeeper is the leader of the Bright Way, the formerly dominant religion in Yinrih culture. Basically she's a pope/vestal virgin hybrid.
"May the sun warm your back" is a formulaic greeting used in letters. Equivalent to "I hope this letter finds you well." The Yinrih are quadrupedal and thus have backs that are parallel to the ground.
The Yinrih's name for their star translates to "Hearth" or "Hearth-star". Because it's impossible to borrow words from Commonthroat into English, Humans call the Yinrih's star Focus, the Latin word for hearth.
<Jmc-oc>, glossed as *Rainbow*, is the leader of the missionary expedition that arrives on Earth. She is a cleric of the Bright Way. Pious Yinrih names usually have something to do with light or phenomena that produce light.
One of the central goals of the Bright Way is to find other rational beings, but until they find us they've come up empty, so our First Contact is also their First Contact. The Bright Way has lost relevance thanks to the Yinrih confronting the Fermi Paradox, but finding humans triggers a great awakening of sorts. I'm up in the air as to why they're looking, though. I just think that a religion whose central dogma requires other sapients to exist is interesting.
The Yinrih refer to the concept of sapience as "asking why". The idea is that lower animals may ask all kinds of questions (Where can I safely sleep? How can I catch this prey? What made that noise? etc), but it takes a rational mind to ask why things are the way they are, so a sapient being is referred to as "one who asks why".
What do you think? I'm particularly hoping people can comment on the phonology, and suggest other verb forms.mmmmmm
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