Iskel
| Iskel | |
|---|---|
| Language family | language isolate |
| Early form(s) | Lanesil |
| Writing system | Latin |
| Official status | |
| Spoken in | Juya Gwaña |
| Speaker | |
| Demonym | Iskelan |
| Endonym | Ískelam |
| Number of speakers | 0 |
| Technical information | |
| Usage | native language |
| Language code | ISK |
Iskel (ɪsᴋ: [ískel~ísqel], ᴇɴɢ: /ˈɪskəl/) is Suqi's first conlang (begun in 2018). It has influence from Italian, Spanish, Korean, English, and Latin, hence the name. It's a non-naturalistic analytic and agglutinative language. It was intended to be a more efficient way of conveying information where English struggles to in terms of nuance, ambiguity, and regularity. In Nguhcraft, it is an official language of Suqi's primary base Juya Gwaña (which means "ocean cluster" in Iskel).
Phonology
Iskel's phonology was initially a combination of English and Spanish. That is still reflected, but it was expanded as Suqi learned more about linguistics.
Iskel is a pitch-accent language. Every polysyllabic word has either 1 or 2 stresses which may be interpreted as primary and secondary stress, or high and low pitch. The high pitch must exist for every polysyllabic word, but words can exist without a low pitch. Unstressed/unpitched words have a pitch below the low pitch.
High pitch is romanized with the acute accent ⟨á⟩ and low pitch with the grave accent ⟨à⟩. But, if high pitch is on the penultimate syllable, it doesn't get written.
One unique feature Iskel has is "narealization", which is essentially the scrunching of the nostrils during a consonant's pronunciation. If emphasized, it may result in nareal frication. This feature, which can occur on every consonant, is primarily for visual communication, but it can be done strongly enough to be heard if needed. Narealization will be transcribed in IPA with the nasalization diacritic (the tilde) since Iskel does not have nasalization.
Iskel has no gemination, no allophony, and no phonotactical limits. The latter two features were to increase vocal flexibility for those who regularly speak the language (and it works).
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Guttural | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Nareal | Plain | Nareal | Plain | Nareal | Plain | Nareal | Plain | Nareal | Plain | Nareal | Plain | Nareal | |
| Nasal | ɱ (m) | ɱ̃ (mv)[1] | n | ñ (nv) | ɲ (ñ) | ɲ̃ (ñv) | ŋ (ń) | ŋ̃ (ńv) | ||||||
| Stop | p | p̃ (pv) | t | t̃ (tv) | t͡ʃ (c) | t͠ʃ (cv) | k~q | k̃~q̃ (kv) | ʔ (’) | ʔ̃ (’v) | ||||
| b | b̃ (bv) | d | d̃ (dv) | d͡ʒ (j) | d͠ʒ (jv) | g | g̃ (gv) | |||||||
| Fricative | f | f̃ (fv) | θ (þ) | θ̰[2] (þv) | s | s̃ (sv) | ʃ (ś) | ʃ̃ (śv) | ʎ̥˔ (ł) | ʎ̥̃˔ (łv) | x | x̃ (xv) | h | h̃ (v) |
| v | ṽ (vv) | ð | ð̰[2] (ðv) | z | z̃ (zv) | ʒ (ź) | ʒ̃ (źv) | |||||||
| Approximant | w | w̃ (wv) | l | l̃ (lv) | j (y) | j̃ (yv) | ||||||||
| Vibrant | ɾ (r) | ɾ̃ (rv) | ʀ (rr) | ʀ̃ (rrv) | ||||||||||
| Click | ᵏʇˀ (t!) | ᵏʇ̰ˀ[2] (t!v) | ᵏ!¡ˀ (r!) | ᵏ!̰¡ˀ[2] (r!v) | 𐞥ǂˀ (q!) | 𐞥ǂ̃ˀ (q!v) | ||||||||
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Near Close | ɪ (ie)[3] | ||
| Close-Mid | e | o | |
| Mid | ə (eo)[3] | ||
| Open-Mid | ʌ | ||
| Open | a | ɑ (ao)[3] | |
- ↑ Narealized consonants are distinguished from consonants preceding /v/ by putting a period before the /v/ in the latter case.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 The tilde diacritic is placed below symbols where it is difficult to see above. This does not indicate creaky voice.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 /ie/, /eo/, and /ao/ are ⟨i.e⟩, ⟨e.o⟩, ⟨a.o⟩.