Ring C: 9/11: Dethric

[ Dethric phonology: ]

All historic plosives have been fricativised, and are so reflected in
the orthography (historic g has been lost except before front vowels).
Where the velar plosives (k, g) appear they have been reduced from
labialised velars (kw, gw); a "g" before an "n" generally assimilates
in nasality. The voiceless alveolar fricative phoneme (s) also varies
sporadically to its voiced counterpart intervocalically, and when
occurring as the last sound in a word, plosivises (de-fricativises)
the following fricative if there is one, e.g. "anas thumen" is
pronounced "anastumen"; the palatal fricative (sh) is uncommon but
occurrent. The lateral approximant (l) is what is known as a "clear
l", The nasal stops (m, n) may assimilate regressively to each other
or the following consonant (the velar nasal is an allophone of the
alveolar nasal). The above consonants may geminate (although
gemination of "v", "g" and "dh" are rare); the following may not: the
voiceless glottal fricative phoneme (h), which occurs only
word-initially and has been lost intervocalically. The trill
approximant (r) is akin to the Italian.

Vowels have been affected by reductionism, and this change is most
apparent in the orthography, where modern monophthongs are represented
by digraphs depicting historical diphthongs, and reduced vowels are
represented by glyphs historically denoting full-quality sounds.
Stressed vowels may lengthen slightly. The unrounded low vowel varies
between central and back position; the close-mid front vowel may vary
to open-mid position; all non-high vowels potentially reduce even
further to a schwa. Vowels may exert harmonising influence on one
another, although this process has generally become significantly less
productive in recent years.


[ Dethric orthography: ]

Dethric is spelt with french consonants and generally greek vowels,
i.e. like English it cannot be pronounced as spelt. Stress is marked
in the above text, although it is not crucial to the translation
thereof, and generally unmarked in Dethrian writing.

Consonants
- "ph" is the voiceless labio-dental fricative (f), always so written
- "v" is the voiced labio-dental fricative, always so written except
where devoiced finally, where it is written "ph"
- "th" is the voiceless dental fricative (_th_ as in English "thin"),
always so written
- "dh" is its voiced counterpart (_th_ as in English "this"), always so written
- "h" is the voiceless glottal fricative
- "r", "l", "m", "n" as in English

- "c" is the voiceless velar plosive (k); before front vowels it is
written "qu", and when geminate "cqu"
- "g" is the voiced velar plosive (g); before front vowels it is written "gu"
- "g" before front vowels it is the voiced palatal fricative (_zh_ as
in English "measure")

Vowels
- "a" is the unrounded low central vowel (as in French)
- "e" is the unrounded close-mid front vowel (as in French "é")
- "i" is the unrounded high front vowel
- "y" is the rounded one (as in French "u")
- "o" is the schwa, the mid central vowel
- "u" is the unrounded high back vowel
- "au" is the rounded close-mid back vowel (o)
- "ou" is the rounded high back vowel (u)
- "ei" is a long high front vowel (i:)
- "ai" is a diphthong of the low central vowel (a) and the high front one (i)


[ Dethric grammar: ]

General
- accusative language
- SOV, with intransitive verbs VSP (P = predicate) or PV for emphasis
- no articles, postpositional

Nouns
- marked for 6 cases, no distinguishing of number or gender; one
declension fits most (all in this text)
- final vowel usually elided from vowel-stem nouns
- nominative: no marker
- accusative: -o
   (predicative: -e)
- dative: -a
- genitive: -as
- locative: -inn
- temporal locative: -um

Pronouns
- only animates have pronouns; inanimates are referred to by repeating the noun
- not marked for gender

Adjectives
- placed before nouns, not marked
- comparative: -ys
- superlative: -ac
- nominalising: -agne
- adverbialising: -thi

Verbs
- not inflected for tense, mood, number or person
- marked for aspect
- regular: -en
- imperfective: -i
- perfective: -y
- infinitive: -eia
- regular aspect may serve as noun, which may be adjectivised with -is

Adverbs
- placed before verbs, invariable