Iskel
| Iskel | |
|---|---|
| Language family | language isolate |
| Early form(s) | Lanesil |
| Writing system | Latin Iskelan script |
| 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 a syllable with a high tone. Low tones also occur, but are not obligatory. If they do appear, they can only occur on one syllable. High tone is marked with an acute accent in romanization, low tone marked by a grave accent in romanization. All other tones are phonetically mid tones. If a high tone 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/Uvular | Guttural | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Nareal | Plain | Nareal | Plain | Nareal | Plain | Nareal | Plain | Nareal | Plain | Nareal | Plain | Nareal | |
| Nasal | ɱ (m) | ɱ̃ (mm) | n | ñ (nn) | ɲ (ñ) | ɲ̃ (ññ) | ŋ (ń) | ŋ̃ (ńń) | ||||||
| Stop | p | p̃ (pp) | t | t̃ (tt) | t͡ʃ (c) | t͠ʃ (cc) | k~q | k̃~q̃ (kk) | ʔ | ʔ̃ (ʔʔ) | ||||
| b | b̃ (bb) | d | d̃ (dd) | d͡ʒ (j) | d͠ʒ (jj) | g | g̃ (gg) | |||||||
| Fricative | f | f̃ (ff) | θ (þ) | θ̰[1] (þþ) | s | s̃ (ss) | ʃ (ś) | ʃ̃ (śś) | ʎ̥˔ (ł) | ʎ̥̃˔ (łł) | x | x̃ (xx) | h | h̃ (hh) |
| v | ṽ (vv) | ð | ð̰[1] (ðð) | z | z̃ (zz) | ʒ (ź) | ʒ̃ (źź) | |||||||
| Approximant | w | w̃ (ww) | l | l̃ (ll) | j (y) | j̃ (yy) | ||||||||
| Vibrant | ɾ (r) | ɾ̃ (rr) | ʀ (ŕ) | ʀ̃ (ŕŕ) | ||||||||||
| Click | ᵏʇˀ (t!) | ᵏʇ̰ˀ (tt!) | ᵏ!¡ˀ (r!) | ᵏ!̰¡ˀ (rr!) | 𐞥ǂˀ[2] (q!) | 𐞥ǂ̃ˀ[2] (qq!) | ||||||||
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | ɪ (ĭ) | u |
| Mid | e | ə (ĕ) | o |
| Low | a | ɐ (ă) | ɑ (ą) |