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LotM - Apr 15: High Elevjeti
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A hearty congratulations to khaleesi and High Elevjeti, April's LotM! High Elevjeti is one of those fun languages where you'd expect Low Elevjeti to exist and be some sort of dialect - well it ain't. Read more for details!
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 30 Apr 2016, 05:05.

[comments] [history] Menu 1. High Elevjeti 2. Phonology 3. Morphology 4. Philology 5. Compounding and Derivation 6. More on High Elevjeti 7. A Note on LotM
[top]High Elevjeti

Ah, April has arrived, and High Elevjeti has risen as our LotM. A big congratulations to khaleesi for building CWS's 9th LotM. Let's get started, shall we?

[top]Phonology

I'll just come right out and say it: High Elevjeti is pretty. It sounds pretty, generally looks pretty, and is full of phonemes that in my humble LotM-writing opinion, are perdy: fricatives! High Elevjeti has a hearty slew of those airflow-constrictors: /β f v θ ð ʃ ʒ ʂ x ɣ χ/

Interestingly, High Elevjeti has bilabial and velar stops, and bilabial, alveolar, and velar nasals, but lacks a series of alveolar stops and fricatives. Instead, it appears that the typical /t d s/ was shifted back and retroflexed, resulting in a retroflex series, /ʈ ɖ ʂ/. It's always fun to see evidence of sound changes right in a language's inventory!

The vowel inventory reminds me of a bit of Germanics, many due to the front rounded phonemes running around (/œ ʏ/), but otherwise it's a somewhat standard system - the asymmetry between /ɛ o/ (instead of possible /ɛ ɔ/ or /e o/). All vowels also have allophonic long variants, as well as some centralized ones [ɪ ə] (from /i ɑ/).

[top]Morphology

Verbs are highly inflected, as are nouns, though to a lesser extent. Verbs can be either in the indicative or subjunctive, three persons and three numbers (plus first person plural inclusive), and eleven tenses/aspects (subjunctive can only have six of them, though). There are two classes of noun (first and second declension).

Adjectives agree in class and number with the nouns they modify, meaning that there are 25 forms (though really 21 due to syncretism); masculine, feminine, neuter, plant, animal in combination with singular, paucal, collective, plural, and negative.

[top]Philology

High Elevjeti, as its name suggests, is a descendant of the  Evanese. Elevjeti has similar phonology (but none of those pesky retroflexes that popped up in HE), and is also the mother of High Elevjeti's sister language, Low Elevjeti. Unlike High and Low German, the names high and low do not reflect altitude - instead, they are indications of the speakers. High Elevjeti is the lingua franca and preferred speech of the upper class, while Low Elevjeti is that of the unwashed lower class.

[top]Compounding and Derivation

High Elevjeti likes to make use of compounding and truncation when deriving new words. Some are fun, such as ausjok, accident (derived from sjiga, mother - give that second to sink in) and jantsjeshr, palm (from jant and sjeshr, face and hand, respectively).

[top]More on High Elevjeti

High Elevjeti also has a highly developed religion that you should totally read, as well as further information on allophony. As usual, I also implore you to check out other articles tagged for High Elevjeti. There are also a whole bunch of translations to see, too. Get your fill!

[top]A Note on LotM

Got suggestions for how the next LotM should be written? See something in High Elevjeti that wasn't covered and you wish it had been? Hate my guts and want to tell me? Feel free to shoot me (argyle) a PM with your thoughts, suggestions, and hate mail. Also feel free to drop by the LotM clan if you have other feedback, want to join in the voting process, or nominate a language!
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on 30/04/16 05:05+1[Deactivated User]codefix
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