Zhuori

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Zhuori is the language spoken by the upper class in a currently unnamed commission project by Elmer Johnsen.

Zho-ri.jpg

Orthography

Zhuori uses a regular abugida that uses diacritics for monophthongs, diphthongs, and gemination of consonants.

Zhuori.jpg

The nuclear vowel, or initial vowel in a diphthong of a syllable is located in the upper left. The off-glide or secondary vowel is in the bottom right.

In this chart, B is shown in its geminate form to show the diacritic for geminates.

Phonology

Consonants

Bilabial Dental Alveolar Post-alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Plosive Unvoiced p ‹P› t ‹T› k ‹K›
Voiced b ‹B› d ‹D› g ‹G›
Nasal m ‹M› n ‹N› ŋ ‹NG›
Fricative Unvoiced ɸ ‹F› θ ‹TH› s ‹S› ʃ ‹SH›
Voiced β ‹V› z ‹Z› ʒ ‹ZH›
Approximant r ‹R› j ‹J› h ‹H›
Lateral ɬ ‹L›

Vowels

Vowel length is phonemic.

Front Central Back
High i ‹I› · y ‹Y› ʉ ‹U› u ‹O›
Mid e ‹E› ə o ‹Ǫ›
Low a ‹A›

Diphthongs

Zhuori has many diphthongs, both rising and falling.

Rising:

IPA Orth.
AY
AU
EY
OU
UY

Falling:

IPA Orth.
ie YE
ia YA
YU
ʉɔ UO
ʉa UA

Phonotactics

Appropriate complex onsets (word-initial) include: ST, SR, SK, TR and KR.
Appropriate complex codas (word-final) include: ST, TS, RS, SK, KS, RT, and RK.

Grammar

Nouns

Nouns are inflected by possessive person, case, number, and obviation.

Possessive Person

1s ii~
1p ke~
2s ri~
3s ga~
3p/2p me~
4s u~
4p uu~

Case

Nominative
Accusative ~ka
Dative ~da
Ablative ~ba
Locative ~lo
Instrumental ~ni
Translative ~ra

Obviation/Number

Singular Plural
Proximal ~y ~ys
Obviative ~u ~um

Verbs

Verbs are inflected by subject, direct object, tense, and mood.

Subject

1s ii~
1p ke~
2s ri~
3s ga~
3p/2p me~
4s u~
4p uu~

Direct Object

1s ~y
1p ~ki
3s ~ge
3p ~my
4s ~u
4p ~thuu

Person Hierarchy

Zhuori has the following person hierarchy:

2nd > 1st > 3rd proximal > 3rd obviative

A lower-ranking subject cannot take a higher-ranking object. For this, an inverse suffix va exists that immediately precedes the direct object suffix.

Tense

Past nǫ~
Present ~is
Future ~isǫn

Mood

Lexicon

Numbers

ZhuoriNumbers.jpg

Open Class

Font and Keyboard Layout

http://www.geckat.conlang.org/conlang/index.php?title=Zhuori_(font_and_layout)