Léna Language

Léna
Language family	Hakhpha
Writing system	Latin Alphabet Cyrillic Alphabet (sporadic)
Official status
Spoken in	Hárǝsi (national) Coldba (recognised)
Regulated by	Hárǝsi Xánǝc uwArássezú (Hárǝsi Ministry of Culture)
Speaker
Demonym	Léna, Énnga uLéna
Number of speakers	unknown
Technical information
Language code	LEN

Léna /lé.na/ is a Western Hakhpha language spoken primarily in Hárǝsi, where it is the majority national language. It is also a recognised minority language in the Empire of Coldba.

Classification

the dialects of Léna spoken in Hárǝsi

The Hakhpha language family comprises two main branches, Eastern and Western, the latter containing both Léna and the Kkeṛhaqom language spoken in central and eastern Coldba. Léna itself is a polydialectal language with four main dialect groups spoken throughout the urheimat (i.e. Hárǝsi and the small amount of overspill across the border into Coldba), with the standard variety being based on the dialect of the largest city Ƨxeylá.

Phonology

Consonants

Standard Léna has 30 phonemic consonants.

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	plain	m	n		ŋ
	labialised				ŋʷ
Plosive	plain	p b	t d		k g
	labialised				kʷ gʷ
Affricate			t͡s d͡z	c͡ɕ ɟ͡ʑ
Fricative		f	s z	ɕ ʑ	x ɣ	h
Liquid	plain	w	r	j	(w)
	labialised		rʷ
Lateral			l	ʎ

All consonants except /ʎ/ and /h/ can be geminated and are pronounced longer than their ungeminated counterparts. Geminated /w/ is very rare however.

Velar fricatives /x, ɣ/ are realised advanced [x̟, ɣ̟] around front vowels /e, i/.

Vowels

Standard Léna has 7 phonemic vowel qualities and distinguishes two phonemic tones.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e	ǝ	o
Low	a

Central vowels /ɨ, ǝ/ are often pronounced as [ɪ, ʌ] by younger speakers or in informal speech.

Léna also has some diphthongs, namely vowels followed by /u̯/ or /i̯/.

The tone levels are high /a˦/ and mid /a˧/, though the mid tone is often described as a low tone in literature. In Léna they are called xéggwo eili "narrow voice" and mox eili "wide voice" respectively.

Syllable Structure and Phonotactics

Léna has a fairly simple syllable structure of (C)V(C), where C is any consonant or affricate and V is any vowel or diphthong. However, fricatives and plosives/affricates (together "stops") may not cluster with themselves, so the only clusters permitted are Fricative-Stop and Stop-Fricative. Additionally, laterals do not cluster with other consonants, labialised consonants cannot occur in initial position of a cluster, and nasals cannot occur in final position.

Geminates can also only occur inbetween vowels.

There is a broad phonotactic rule that labials and palatals cannot interact, and whenever a labial consonant and a palatal consonant would occur in sequence, an epenthetic vowel (usually /e/) is inserted between them.

Typically, sequences of two vowels cannot occur in closed-syllable environments, i.e. CVVC. There are some limited exceptions to this, such as the word gauk "to search". In the same vein, like vowels are not usually permitted in sequence.

Orthography

As it was primarily an oral language prior to prolonged contact with other Ŋations, there is no native writing system for Léna, though some modern attempts have gained traction in recent years. Instead, a modified Latin alphabet is used, as below:

Léna Transcription	IPA	Léna Transcription	IPA
a	/a/	l	/l/
b	/b/	ly	/ʎ/
c	/c͡ɕ/	m	/m/
ch	/ɕ/	n	/n/
d	/d/	ng	/ŋ/
dz	/d͡z/	o	/o/
e	/e/	p	/p/
ǝ	/ǝ/	r	/r/
f	/f/	rw	/rʷ/
g	/g/	s	/s/
gh	/ɣ/	t	/t/
gw	/gʷ/	ts	/t͡s/
h	/h/	u	/u/
i	/i/	w	/w/
j	/ɟ͡ʑ/	x	/x/
jh	/ʑ/	y	/j/
k	/k/	z	/z/
kw	/kʷ/	ƨ	/ɨ/

High tone is represented by an acute accent over the vowel; ⟨á, é, ǝ́, í, ó, ú, ƨ́⟩

Gemination is represented by doubling the consonant.

In digraphs, only the first element is capitalised, and only the first element is doubled to represent gemination.