Eliov

Eliov (pronounced /el-wav/) is the language of the Elovisian people. Related to Vozandi due to its speakers' connection to the Old Voxelian people, Eliov shares many of the phonological features of that language, though Eliov has a sharper, more guttural intonation. Many of the voiced consonants of Vozandi become unvoiced (i.e. 'z' becomes short 's') or can be either voiced or unvoiced in Eliov (i.e. 'v' and 'f' coexist). Eliov features many open vowels; this is a legacy of the Elovisian exile out of Medial A cube, as, now beyond the earshot of Old Voxelian headhunters, the Elovisians were free to use their booming voices to communicate over longer distances. In Eliov, consonants are spoken more forcefully when one is dealing with an unpleasant topic. An 'Elovisian accent' is often caricatured by foreign speakers by putting more forceful breaths into otherwise normal statements.

Writing System

Spellings in Eliov are not strictly phonetic due to a combination of sound shifts and a later adoption of writing in comparison to the related Vozendi language. For example, any vowel digraph in the orthography beginning with the "i-" glyph indicates a dipthong beginning with the /j/ sound rather than the /i/ sound; "io" is the exception because it actually makes a /wa/ sound instead, such as in the name of the language "Eliov" (pronounced /el-wav/). Similarly, digraphs ending in "-u" may also be pronounced with a /w/ or /jw/ rather than a /u/ sound, as in the Eliov pronunciation of the name of the Rostran language Iuxat (pronounced /wk-ʒat/).

Morphology

Syllables in Eliov are loosely constructed (C)(C)V(C)(R/N/S).

Vocabulary

Dictionary (click to expand)

Phonetics

Consonants: /p~p^h/, /t/, /k~k^h/, /b/, /d/, /g/, /h/, /f/, /v/, /s/, /ʃ/ (sh), /z/, /ʒ/ (zh), /θ/ (th), /l/, /ʁ/ (r), /h/, /w/, /j/
Vowels: /a/, /e̞/ (e), /i/, /ɔ/ (o), /u/

Tenses

Eliov grammar features past perfect, past imperfect, present perfect, present imperfect, and simple future tenses. Future tense is a relatively recent evolution; it is often said that previous iterations of the Elovisian native tongue did not include a clear future tense because the broader culture faced uncertainties that made speculation about the future difficult and, from the perspective of some speakers, overly ambitious.

Sentence Structure

Eliov has a loose word order supported by structural markers. Eliov sentences follow an subject-object-verb (SOV) word order (i.e. "I corn eat") in tbe majority of cases, but can shift to subject-verb-object (SVO) word order (i.e. "I talk to you") to emphasize the verb or to turn the the statement into a command (i.e. "You! Get out there!") or OSV to talk about a subject in a case-sensitive manner (i.e. "As for the dog, I released (it)").
Eliov also features an ergative-absolutive alignment. Both the patient of a transitive verb and the object of the sentence using an intransitive verb take an ergative case marker. For example, in the sentences "I saw my friend" and "He spoke," the words for "friend" and "he" would receive an absolutive case marker, while the word for "I" would receive an ergative case marker

Dictionary

5 Words.

Coalition Insignia by BCGR_wurth

Root Languages

• Proto-Elvoz

Successor Languages

• Guild Pidgin
• Niuthraivos

Spoken by

• Elovisian
• Freelander