Lili

Lili is the official language of Pangea. Within Pangea, it's their natural language, that evolved with a grammar that is entirely based on logical relationships. Note that in Pangea they use their own script: a left to right alphasillabary where consonants are the main characters, and vowels are just diacritics placed over the consonant. In this script, the bottom side of a character is one or more consonants (consonant clusters are packed into one character), and the top side of a character is one or more vowels (except for omega separators, of which their "w-" and "y-" semivowels are their own distinct characters and are treated graphically as distinct consonants). So, a sentence like "cei vobye sote" (I eat an apple) is five characters long in the native Pangean script. However, I obviously can't use that script, so I'll just use the official Latin transcription system (which Pangeans can also read fluently, since they learn that at school in addition to the native Pangean script).

Table of contents

1: Phonology

Phonology (standard ortography on the left... IPA on the right). Obviously, lol.

Vowels (12):

a: /a

ä: /æ

â: /ɒ

e: /ɛ

ë: /e

i: /i (can be used as the semivowel /j)

o: /ɔ

ö: /o

ø: /ø

u: /u (can be used as the semivowel /w)

ü: /y

ə: /ə

Consonants (22):

b: /b

c: /ʃ

d: /d

ð: /ð

f: /f

g: /g

h: /x

j: /ʒ

k: /k

l: /l

m: /m

n: /n (ŋ as an allophone before "g" and "k")

p: /p

r: /r

s: /s

t: /t

θ: /θ

v: /v

x: /ɣ

z: /z

ɬ: /ɬ

ɮ: /ɮ

Semivowels (2):

y: /j

w: /w

Ortography note: before another vowel, "i" and "u" can be written as "y" and "w", respectively, but doing so is optional, unless it's an omega separator, in that case you must write the initial letter as "y" or "w". It's a matter of stylistic choice.

There is no gemination at all in Lili, except with borrowed words inside the tricolon. The stress always goes to the last vowel, like in French.

Affricates like /t̠ʃ, /d̠ʒ, /tɬ, /dɮ, /ts, and /dz are written as "tc", "dj", "tɬ", "dɮ", "ts" and "dz" respectively.

When it comes to listing words alphabetically, this is the order:

a, ä, â, b, c, d, ð, e, ë, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, ö, ø, p, r, s, t, θ, u, ü, v, x, z, ə, ɬ, ɮ

2: Explanations (Part I: The Basics)

Lili is the official language of Pangea. Its grammar is entirely relational and there are no parts of speech (or rather, there is just one): there is no distinction between nouns, adjectives, prepositions, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, articles, pronouns, etc. Every word is an operator that is made up by a root and a vowel suffix, and the definition of an operator consists in its relationship with six operands (indicated by a letter from A to F). Each operator is separated by a separator, which is a vowel or a semivowel + a vowel and defines syntactic relationships. There are two classes of suffixes, Class I and Class II. Class I suffixes do not require separators, whereas Class II suffixes do. There are two classes of separators (alpha and omega), each one divided into two directions (left and right). Separators will be explained later.

2.1: Phonotactics

Roots (e.g. "vob-") must always start and end with a consonant. A mandatory vowel after a root must be added, which is the suffix. Roots cannot have two or more consecutive vowels (semivowels are counted as vowels grammatically).