Rlvaky (/'rl.va.ky/ ['ʀl.vɑ.ky]) is the majority language of Greater Rlvako, a political and cultural region which, as of the 1030s, includes the countries Varada (north) and Rljada (south). These were previously one country, Rlvako. The language has a speaker base of around 80 million.
Rljada is traditionally split into several clan polities, which function as alliances between tens or hundreds of clan groups, or as small ethnic groups. State lines are ostensibly organised around those polities’ historical and modern territories, and regional dialects tend to be classified according to their usage within those states regardless of internal variation or specific regional features. Varada is much more linguistically homogenous, and is generally analysed as having one dialect. This is, however, also partially for political reasons, as Varada was once a single state of Rlvako.
This grammar documents the standard Vallu dialect of Rlvaky, a prestige southern/central dialect, as of the 1030s. Examples are written in the Vallu dialect unless otherwise specified.
Phonology
Vowels
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| High | i(ː) y(ː) | u(ː) |
| Low-mid | e(ː) | ɔ(ː) |
| Low | ɑ(ː) |
All diphthongs are possible, but /uo/ and /au/ are the most common. All long vowels are possible. Length is phonemic.
In broad transcription, [ɑ] will be transcribed as /a/ and [ɔ] as /o/.
In Vallu dialect, /y/ > [ʉ] directly before or after /r/
Consonants
| Bilabial | Labiodental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | |||||
| Plosive | p b | t d | k | ||||
| Fricative | f v | s | h | ||||
| Affricate | t͡s | ||||||
| Approximant | j | ||||||
| Lateral approximant | l | ||||||
| Trill | ʀ |
Voicing is phonemic, but the distinction is usually not that important; voicing pairs carry a low functional load. /p/ and /t/ are more common than their voiced counterparts. /b/ and /d/ are usually only weakly voiced, especially in southern dialects.
Gemination is phonemic, and most common for [n t k s l]. Geminated consonants are held for about three times longer than short consonants.
Here, [ʀ] will be transcribed in broad transcription as /r/. The pronunciation of this phoneme varies greatly between dialects. In dialects where /r/ is uvular, it cannot occur syllable-finally. If a word or syllable historically ends with /r/, it will be elided and the preceding vowel (if there is one) lengthened.
Consonant interactions
In rapid speech, non-initial clusters of /t-n/ become [nt], while /tn/ is always [tn] at the start of words. This feature is unique to Vallu dialect.
Allophony
[b] may be considered an allophone of [p], as there are no minimal pairs with these phones, but its distribution is unpredictable. [b] and [p] are not in complementary or contrastive distribution, so they are generally analysed as separate phonemes. Some speakers always use [p].
Note: voiceless consonants are never aspirated. To English speakers, [pnin] (bird) might sound more like [bnin].
Intervocalically:
Phonotactics
(C3)V(C3)
Long consonants cannot follow long vowels. When I made this rule I was young and stupid and thought this was ugly. Long vowels can, however, follow geminated consonants, as in myttaan /'mytːaːn/ (‘don’t want’).
Suprasegmentals
Primary stress always falls on the first syllable, and is realised as a slight increase in volume. In compound words, secondary stress may fall on the first syllable of each root word after the first, or maybe omitted entirely in short words.
Orthography
Rlvaky uses the Kerav script, an alphabet that is written from left to right and up to down, like the Latin alphabet. The orthography doesn’t distinguish voicing. This causes some words to be ambiguous, but it’s usually clear through context.
The Kerav script was invented in Kerav, a country to the west of Greater Rlvako. The Kerav language happens to be part of another branch of the same language family as Rlvaky.
In places where /r/ was historically pronunced word-finally and the preceding vowel was lengthened (in southern accents), it is acceptable to transcribe as a short vowel followed by /r/, or a long vowel only.
Writing in Greater Rlvako
The Rlvaky language, especially in Rljada, doesn’t have a particularly long tradition of writing. It dragged its feet on it for the past few hundred years, but it’s ubiquitous post-industrialisation and the majority of the population is literate. Because of this short history, most Rlvaky speakers consider writing purely to be a (valuable) utilitarian tool to document spoken language, not the definitive form of a language or something with much cultural importance or artistic value by itself.
Before the 7th century, most literate nomads were clan leaders, or members of clans who had a lot of contact with settled clans and the centralised government. Literate settled people were mostly scholars, traders, and diplomats. In both groups, writing was used mostly for administration and recordkeeping purposes, but it did see some use in academic contexts.
Even now, in Rljada, literature and written poetry are not considered to be especially culturally important, and they are considered a somewhat foreign art form. The most respected native ‘written’ works tend to be documentations of spoken poetry and epics, oral histories, and songs, but even for these works, this form of documentation is considered artificial and utilitarian. Written Rlvaky art is associated with Varada, which adopted literature much earlier in its history and gives the art form more cultural power. Whether it’s because Varadans respect and promote the art form more, because they consider it to be more important to their culture, or because Greater Rlvako as a whole favours their authors’ voices, most famous Rlvaky-language authors are Varadan. The Rljadan modernist movement tends to push back against this trend, seeking to adopt literature into Rljadan culture.
Incidentally, Rlvakke, especially Rljadans, tend to put a lot of value on the spoken word. Important details of negotiations often aren’t recorded on paper, people are expected to remember complicated verbal instructions, messages are considered to have more weight when delivered verbally than on paper, and radio plays and narrated stories are more successful art forms than literature. Many argue that the ephemerality of speech is what gives it its weight.
798 spelling reform
The Rlvako government set the current system in 798 but, due to a lack of a lack of a (respected) literary authority, a general lack of centralisation in the country, and the relative cultural unimportance of writing, especially to a unified national identity, it took several decades to implement. By 830, though, it was the most common system, and by the late 9th century the reformed system was the only spelling system in use in modern-day Rljada.
Post-reform spelling took an especially long time to be implemented in Varada. This was partially because the new system did not resemble the accent that was common there, and partially because the canton had a separate, fairly powerful legislative body that didn’t bother with it in official documentation. It switched much later to facilitate international compatibility. It became ubiquitous around 950 or so, but even by 1030 pre-reform spelling is still occasionally used in Varada, as a marked form. It’s not always accurate to how it was actually used before the reform. Pre-reform spelling is generally used to suggest old-timeyness (think: ye olde chippe shoppe), but in some contexts it is used as a Varadan nationalist symbol.
Syntax
Questions
Polar questions
Polar questions are formed by adding the suffix -va to the verb being questioned.
Len suora.
2.SG.FAM eat
'You are eating.'
Len suora-va?
2.SG.FAM eat-Q
'Are you eating?'
The echo response is favoured over a yes/no response. Overusing the latter sounds unusually emphatic.
Len suora-je-va? –Se suora-je.
2.SG.FAM eat-REC.P-Q –1.SG eat-REC.P
'Did you (familiar) eat (recently)?' –'I ate.'
Most speakers would drop the first-person pronoun (and often the second-person pronoun and tense affix), but more on that later.
Suora-va? –Suora.
eat-Q –eat
Question-word questions
| who | koin |
|---|---|
| what, which | vain |
| where | sain |
| when | selain |
| why | seka |
| how | kasa |
Question words are slapped onto the beginning of a statement, as in Finnish. There is no wh-movement.
Den sa > Koin den sa?
2.SG.FOR be > who 2.SG.FOR be
'You are' > 'Who are you?'
Echo questions
Echo questions, questions asking for clarification on what the previous speaker has said, are fairly common. They are spoken with the same prosody as other questions.
Question-word echo questions are permitted. Polar question echo questions are present in all dialects, but they are particularly common in the north.
Imperatives
The imperative mood is formed through the imperative (-ts) suffix and, more rarely, the prescriptive (-ssa) suffix.
Se-sat ridja-ts.
1.SG-COM talk-IMP
‘Talk to me.’
If the root verb ends in a consonant, the final vowel of the verb is pronounced at the beginning of the imperative suffix.
hatsek > hatsek-ets
Negative imperative phrases are formed by attaching the imperative suffix to the verb, and then the negative suffix -aan. If the both the negative and imperative suffixes are attached to the verb, and the root verb ends in a long vowel, that final vowel is shortened. Politeness and strength are encoded in the same way as positive imperatives.
Femtaa-ts!
run-IMP
‘Run!’
Femta-ts-aan!
run-NEG-IMP
‘Don’t run!’
Strength and politeness
An imperative phrase on its own is usually not perceived as rude, or may not even be interpreted as as a mandatory command. There are, however, several means of softerning requests or indicating politeness.
The prescriptive -ssa suffix is ‘softer,’ functioning more as a mild request or suggestion. In many cases, the prescriptive mood can seem inappropriately familiar or intimate, even among close friends, and is quite marked.
Second-person imperatives usually omit the pronoun, but not always. Using the 2nd person formal pronoun is the most common way of forming a polite request, as long as the interlocutor is not familiar enough with the speaker to warrant the informal pronoun.
Priihats.
come-IMP
‘Come.’
Den priihats.
2.SG.FOR come-IMP
‘Please come.’ (lit. you come)
prorra (please, thank you) is used in imperative phrases somewhat infrequently. It is used mostly when the speaker believes that a request is encroaching on the interlocutor. It’s used much more commonly to mean ‘thank you,’ among other use cases. A friendly ‘please sit!’ sounds bizzare to a Rlvaky speaker. A flat ‘Sit.’ is much more common.
An exception to this is the common, slightly informal phrase vua/vui prorra (literally ‘yes please,’ or perhaps ‘what please’), which is used to request that a speaker repeat themselves or clarify information. Another common phrase for this purpose, though, is syftjats or syftridjats (an imperative ‘repeat’). It’s slightly more formal but acceptable in most social situations.
Other cultures tend to interpret Rlvakke as being incredibly terse at best…
Verbal sentences
All verbs obligatorily have subjects, but it’s very common to omit the subject when it’s clear through context. Dummy subjects/pronouns do not exist.
Obligatory:
Sau kattos.
rain fall
‘It’s raining.’
Verbs need not have direct objects. Theoretically, any verb may be used with or without a direct object.
Morphology
Rlvaky is chiefly dependent-marking. It is a synthetic, agglutinative language.
Case marking
Rlvaky has an exclusively nominative-accusative morphosyntactic alignment. It has 11 cases, which are marked as noun suffixes. Case endings generally cannot ‘stack’; postpositions are used if necessary.
Case endings are sometimes used as derivational affixes for verbs.
Some verbs trigger a specific case regardless of context. This is usually due to a past semantic shift, in which the expected case was preserved.
Formality and register
Rlvaky speakers tend to be very formal with strangers. Linguistic markers of formality and respect tend to reflect personal distance more than power dynamics. Do not try to be chummy with strangers, especially southerners. Informality will be interpreted as disrespect, not familiarity or friendliness.
In spoken language, it is acceptable to address strangers in the informal register, but the formal second-person pronoun den must be used. It is preferable to address everybody in this manner, including friends (but not family members or clanmates), in professional contexts.
In both formal and informal speech, people tend to use their interlocutors’ names very frequently, as a marker of respect. In formal situations, if their name is unknown, they will use a formal epithet or a job title.
The formal register is used in most literature. It is characterised by: