Gryphon Avocatio/Sxiróþes

Introduction

This page is a bit of a public scratch pad for the proposed Shirerothian Language. Sxiróþes is the genitive form of the word for Shireroth in the language, and in this case is short for Præta Sxiróþes, meaning, roughly, Shireroth's Speech.

Alphabet

The proposed alphabet for the language is as follows:

Aa Bb Cc Çç Dd Ðð Ee Ff Gg Hh Ƕƕ Ii Jj Ll Mm Nn Oo Óó Pp Rr Ss Tt Þþ Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

Morphology

Nominal Morphology

Nouns in Shirerothian decline for number and case, based on gender. There are two numbers, singular and plural; two genders, "masculine" and "feminine"; and four cases.

Masculine Nouns

Masculine nouns end in consonants. In the fictional history of this language, there were distinguishing vowels at the ends of masculine nouns, but they were subsequently lost and now only the feminine forms have vowels word-finally.

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

Feminine Nouns

Feminine Nouns are those generally ending in either the letters 'a' or 'o', although other nouns and pronouns ending in vowels uses the following suffixes to display case as well. Some irregular nouns, like jor, "yesterday", take feminine suffixes, despite their ending in consonants

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

Phonology

The following is a simplified vowel chart. All of the sounds here match their orthographic equivalent except for [ø], which is written 'ó' in the alphabet. The segments in () are not phonemes, but the result of vowel harmony.

	[-back]	[+back]
[+high][-low]	i (y)	u
[-high][-low]	e (ø)	o
[-high][+low]	æ	ɑ

The vowel harmony rule for the language is very straightforward. [-low, -back] vowels (that is, o and u) become [+front] when the next vowel in the word is [-low, +front] (i.e. i and e). This is represented in the orthography by the changes from o→ó and u→y. For instance

• læjo "road" → læjóne "roads"

Personal Pronouns

The personal pronouns essentially follow the same declension rules of the normal nouns. The female forms also have shorter versions typically used in speech and less formal contexts. The longer versions are to be found in higher prose and poetry.

Singular	1	2	3M	3F
Nominative	æj	þu	el	elo
Accusative	æja	þuna	ela	elona / elna
Genitive	æjes	þynes	eles	elónes / elnes
Prepositional	æji	þyni	eli	elóni / elni

Plural	1	2	3M	3F
Nominative	æje	þyne	ele	elóne / elne
Accusative	æje	þyne	ele	elóne / elne
Genitive	æjese	þynese	elese	elónese / elnese
Prepositional	æji	þynim	elim	elónim / elnim