Shirerothian language

Shirerothian Language (Præta Sxiröþes)
Pronunciation:	[ˈprætɑ ʃiˈrøθes]
Spoken in:	Shireroth
Region:	National
Total speakers:	0
Language family:	Shirerothian
Writing system:	Latin (Shirerothian variant)
Official status
Official language in:	Shireroth
Regulated by:	Department of Constructed Languages

The Shirerothian or Shirerithian language (Præta Sxiröþes in Shirerothian) is a constructed language from Shireroth.

History

Shirerothian has been spoken in Shireroth for thousands of years.

Orthography

The Shirerothian alphabet contains 30 individual letters and 5 digraphs. Each digraph is considered a separate letter in the alphabet, and thus, Shirerothian has a total of 35 letters. The letter x does not have a pronunciation of its own, and is used only in combinations with other letters.

The table below shows the correspondence between the Shirerothian alphabet and IPA. The English pronunciations are based on General American English.

Shirerothian	IPA	English pronunciation
a	[ɑ]	father
æ	[æ]	fat
b	[b]	bat
c	[tʃ]	church
ç	[dʒ]	bridge
d	[d]	dog
ð	[ð]	the
e	[e]	Approx. like hail
f	[f]	fat
g	[g]	gift
h	[h]	home
i	[i]	deed
j	[j]	yes
k	[k]	king
kx	[x]	(Scottish) loch
l	[l]	leave
m	[m]	man
n	[n]	no
ng	[ŋ]	sang
o	[o]	Approx. like coal
ö	[ø]	(German) schön
p	[p]	pie
r	[r]	(Spanish) burro
s	[s]	sock
sx	[ʃ]	shock
t	[t]	tame
þ	[θ]	thin
u	[u]	food
v	[v]	vein
w	[w]	want
wx	[ʍ]	(Old-fashioned) whale
y	[y]	(French) tu
z	[z]	zoo
zx	[ʒ]	mirage

Phonology

The Shirerothian language contains a rich inventory of 26 consonant and 6 vowel phonemes.

Phonemes

Consonants

The table below shows the Shirerothian consonant phonemes.

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m			n			ŋ
Plosive	p   b			t   d			k   g
Affricate					tʃ   dʒ
Fricative		f   v	θ   ð	s   z	ʃ   ʒ		x	h
Approximant				l		j	ʍ   w
Trill				r

Notes

[l] is a "clear" l (alveolar lateral approximant), and is thus pronounced like "leave" [liːv], not "tell" [tɛɫ] (which has a "dark" l, or velarized alveolar lateral approximant).

[ŋ] can occur at the syllable onset, unlike in English where it can never occur at the syllable onset.

[p], [t], and [k] are never aspirated.

Vowels

The table below shows the Shirerothian vowel phonemes.

	Front	Back
High	i   (y)	u
Mid	e   (ø)	o
Low	æ	ɑ

[y] and [ø] are allophones of /u/ and /o/, respectively, occurring in complementary distribution with [u] and [o].

There are five diphthongs: [æj], [æw], [iw], [oj], and [øj]. They are best analyzed phonemically as /Vj/ rather than /Vɪ̯/.

Stress

The vest majority of Shirerothian words have paroxytonic stress, i.e., they are almost always stressed on the second-to-last syllable. Exceptions are marked in the orthography with an acute accent:

• zxádurum [ˈʒɑdurum] "desk"

Metaphony

Shirerothian exhibits regressive metaphony (or less precisely, umlaut or vowel harmony), a long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels across boundaries.

	[-back] [-rounded]	[-back] [+rounded]	[+back] [+rounded]
[+high] [-low]	i	y	u
[-high] [-low]	e	ø	o

The rule for Shirerothian is fairly straightforward: [-low, +back] vowels (i.e., o and u) become [-back] when the next vowel in the word is [-low, -back] (i.e., i and e). This is represented in the orthography by the changes from o → ö and u → y. For instance,

• læjo [ˈlæjo] "road" → læjöne [læˈjøne] "roads"

Phonotactics

Shirerothian has the following syllable structure: (C)(C)V(C)(C)

Nucleus

All vowels, and only vowels, can appear in the nucleus.

Morphology

Shirerothian is a highly inflected language.

Nouns

Shirerothian has three noun declensions.

-C declension

This declension class is used with noun stems ending in a consonant, except for those ending in -t. All nouns in this class are masculine or neuter, with a few limited exceptions.

	Singular	Plural
Nominative		-e
Accusative	-a	-e
Genitive	-es	-ese
Prepositional	-i	-im

-V declension

This declension class is used with noun stems ending in a vowel. The vast majority of nouns in this class are feminine.

	Singular	Plural
Nominative		-ne
Accusative	-n	-ne
Genitive	-nes	-nese
Prepositional	-ni	-nim

-t declension

This declension class is used with noun stems ending in -t. All nouns in this class are masculine.

	Singular	Plural
Nominative		-ene
Accusative	-ana	-ene
Genitive	-es	-ese
Prepositional	-i	-im

Pronouns

Pronouns in Shirerothian, not unexpectedly, are often irregular. Unusually, Shirerothian declines all pronouns by gender, although in the plural, many forms have been merged.

Personal pronouns

	Masculine		Neuter		Feminine
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nominative	æj	æje	æjon	æje	æjo	æjöne
Accusative	æja	æje	æjon	æje	æjon	æjöne
Genitive	æjes	æjese	æjes	æjese	æjönes	æjönese
Prepositional	æji	æjim	æji	æjim	æji	æjim

Second person

Singular

	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine
Nominative	þu	þun	þuno
Accusative	þuna	þun	þuna
Genitive	þynes	þynes	þynes
Prepositional	þyni	þyni	þyni

Plural

	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine
Nominative	þyne	þyne	þyne
Accusative	þyne	þyne	þyne
Genitive	þynese	þynese	þynese
Prepositional	þynim	þynim	þynim

Third person

The "Human" form is used to describe a person without indicating his or her gender. This is very similar to the use of "they" as a singular third-person pronoun in English. This originally developed from the old third-person plural, which was reanalyzed as a singular. To distinguish between the former plural, which had become a singular, and the true plural, a plural marker was added to the pronoun.

Singular

	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine	Human
Nominative	el	e	elo	sen
Accusative	ela	en	elon	sen
Genitive	eles	enes	elönes	senes
Prepositional	eli	eli	elöni	senim

Plural

	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine
Nominative	sene	sene	sene
Accusative	sene	sene	sene
Genitive	senese	senese	senese
Prepositional	senim	senim	senim

Demonstrative pronouns

Singular

	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine
Nominative	ðe	ðena	ðo
Accusative	ðena	ðena	ðon
Genitive	ðenes	ðenes	ðönes
Prepositional	ðeni	ðeni	ðöni

Plural

	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine
Nominative	ðe	ðena	ðene
Accusative	ðe	ðena	ðene
Genitive	ðenese	ðenese	ðenese
Prepositional	ðenim	ðenim	ðenim

Interrogative and relative pronouns

Unlike English, Shirerothian does not make a distinction between human ("who") and non-human ("what") forms.

Singular

	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine
Nominative	vo	vod	vo
Accusative	voda	vod	von
Genitive	ves	ves	ves
Prepositional	vi	vi	vi

Plural

	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine
Nominative	vone	vode	vone
Accusative	voden	vode	vone
Genitive	vese	vese	vese
Prepositional	vim	vim	vim

Determiners

While most determiners follow the noun, certain determiners, such as articles and numbers, precede the noun.

Articles

Shireroth has a definite article, but no indefinite article. The definite article declines for gender and number, but not case.

	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine
Singular	se	se	sa
Plural	sene	sene	sane

Numbers

Numbers are formed rather similarly to English numbers. With the exception of uk "one", which declines according to case and gender, numbers are indeclinable.

	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine
Nominative	uk	uk	uko
Accusative	uka	uk	ukon
Genitive	ykes	ykes	ukönes
Prepositional	yki	yki	yni

Shirerothian	Numeral
uk	1
za	2
joj	3
naþ	4
sxu	5
ylhi	6
gnas	7
tantif	8
stefta	9
graks	10
graksuk	11
zæf	12
jöjne	13
naðak	14
misko	15
graksylhi	16
graksangas	17
grakstantif	18
grakstefta	19
zagraks	20
zagraksuk	21
jojgraks	30
ortu	100
za ortu	200
gozma	1000
graks gozma	10,000
ortu gozma	100,000
tagozma	1,000,000

Adjectives

Shirerothian has two adjective declensions, which are identical to their respective noun declensions. Adjectives are inflected for case, but not for gender. Adjectives generally follow the noun they modify.

-C declension

This declension class is used with adjective stems ending in a consonant.

	Singular	Plural
Nominative		-e
Accusative	-a	-e
Genitive	-es	-ese
Prepositional	-i	-im

-V declension

This declension class is used with adjective stems ending in a vowel.

	Singular	Plural
Nominative		-ne
Accusative	-n	-ne
Genitive	-nes	-nese
Prepositional	-ni	-nim

Prepositions

With exactly two exceptions, prepositions in Shirerothian take the prepositional case. The prepositions að ("of" or "from") and zxa ("in") take the genitive case.

Syntax

Shirerothian typically exhibits a VSO word order, although SVO or OVS can be used to emphasize the subject or object, respectively. Shirerothian also exhibits strong right-branching characteristics: Adjectives follow nouns, genitives and relative clauses follow nouns, pronouns follow verbs, and adpositions appear as prepositions. However, certain determiners such as articles and numbers precede nouns.

Lexicon

The following is a short list of certain words in Shirerothian:

Shirerothian	English	Class
að	of, from	prep.
æwdæk	sword	n. (m.)
dæjta	today	adv.
gönleta	mango	n. (f.)
hæks	arm, weapon	n. (m.)
hödet	hand	n. (n.)
hus	person	n. (n.)
ispæjzxa	after	prep.
jatu	sheep	n. (f.)
jor	yesterday	adv.
læjo	road, path	n. (f.)
mec	fire	n. (m.)
myrita	tomorrow	adv.
præta	speech, language	n. (f.)
ræd	house	n. (m.)
rund	hat	n. (m.)
sikx	city	n. (n.)
sult	ocean	n. (n.)
Sxiroþ	Shireroth	n. (m.)
sxun	spike, nail	n. (m.)
taku	to eat	v.
tast	to	prep.
træjzxa	before	prep.
trojm	journey	n. (n.)
vozx	to run	v.
wxen	male	n. (m.)
wxeno	female	n. (f.)
yrköli	island	n. (f.)
zxádurum	desk	n. (n.)
zxuk	leg	n. (n.)

External links

• The original description of Shirerothian

• The conlanger's description of Shirerothian

• The conlanger's preliminary sketch of Shirerothian