# Ifadätels

**WARNING: Players in the _Great Labyrinth_ game should not read this
page.**

Ifadätels [if.'ɑd.æt.els] is a constructed language being developed by
[][@:Rinna] for use in one of faese role-playing games.
It is intended for use as a language used by some sort of mysterious
beings in the titular labyrinth of that, mostly evidenced in
inscriptions and other ancient texts.

It is very much a work-in-progress.

## Phonology

### Phonemic inventory

Ifadätels uses the following vowels (notated using the
[International Phonetic
Alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet){title="Wikipedia
on the International Phonetic Alphabet"}):

|        | front | central | back |
|--------|-------|---------|------|
| high   |   i   |         |  u   |
| middle |   e   |         |      |
| low    |   æ   |         |  ɑ   |

and these consonants :

|             | bilabial | labio-dental | dental | alveolar | post-alvelolar |
|-------------|----------|--------------|--------|----------|----------------|
| stop        | p      b |              | t    d |          |                |
| nasal       | m        |              |        |        n |                |
| fricative   |          |              |        | s      z | ʃ            ʒ |
| approximant |          | f          v |        |          |       ɹ        |
| lateral     |          |              |        |    l     |                |

### Phonotactics

Phonemes other than /l/ and /ɹ/ are categorized into one of two
classes: the I-class and the A-class.
The I-class includes /n/, voiceless consonants, and front vowels.
The A-class includes /m/, voiced consonants, and back vowels.
The vowel /e/ is special and may function as either class.
Liquid consonants have a special role and are not considered to belong
to either class.

A syllable consists of a vowel followed by a consonant of the same
class as the vowel.
The syllable is said to have the same class as its vowel and
consonant.
For example, /æp/ is an I-class syllable, while /ev/ is an A-class
syllable.
An I-class syllable _may_ include either /l/ between the vowel and
consonant or /ɹ/ after the consonant, but not both.
An A-class syllable _may_ include either /ɹ/ between the vowel and
consonant or /l/ after the consonant, but not both.

## Orthography

Ifadätels is romanized using the following rules:

* /æ/ is written ä,
* /ɑ/ is written a,
* /ɹ/ is written r,
* /ʃ/ is written š (with a caron) or sh (when technical limitations
  interfere),
* /ʒ/ is written ž or zh,
* and other phonemes are written with the same character as in IPA.

[][@:Rinna] hopes to eventually develop a native writing system for
Ifadätels, but has not yet done so.

## Morphology

### Class alternation and syllabic structure of words

In general, a word may begin with either class of syllable and
alternates classes.
Syllables containing liquids in either position are special, and must
instead be of the same class as the preceding syllable.
Loan words and certain other words may deviate from these rules, but
unsurprisingly they often undergo regularization (either through the
addition of a liquid or modification of a syllable to a similar
syllable of the alternate class).

A word may not begin with a syllable that contains a liquid and cannot
end with a syllable that ends with a liquid.

Root content words typically have an odd number of syllables (prior to
any inflection or other derivation), while function words typically
have either one syllable or an even number of syllables.

### Stress

The primary stress within a word falls on the last syllable of a
different class than the final syllable of a word. For words whose
syllables all share a class, the penultimate syllable is stressed.

### Inflection of nouns

At one point, Ifadätels heavily declined nouns, but by the time of the
texts surviving in the Labyrinth, all but pluralization and the
genitive case were lost.

Non-genitive nouns are pluralized by duplicating the initial syllable
at the end, adding the appropriate liquid between the vowel and
consonant if necessary for class alternation.

For example, «änitrum» (enclosed space, room, forest clearing, etc.)
has the plural «änitrumän», while «ezetum» (individual person) has the
plural «ezetumerz» (the "r" is necessary to allow a second consecutive
A-class syllable).

The genitive case is marked in the singular with the suffix «-iš» or
«-už» according to the final syllable of the noun.
Genitive plurals use the suffix «-emliš» or «-enriž», a borrowing from
another now-extinct language.

* _TODO(rinna)_: maybe add an archaic native genitive plural form that
can be found in some surviving texts

## A very partial lexicon

Each word is labelled with its part of speech, an English gloss, and
optionally additional notes.

The repository for the wiki also contains a record-jar-format lexicon
next to the source for this page.
That lexicon is currently approximately equally partial but will
probably get more things added to it than the one here.

* _änitrum_ • noun • enclosed space • a room in a building, a clearing
  in a forest, or an area marked out by lines drawn on the ground are
  all änitrumän
* _ezetum_ • noun • individual person • primarily refers to a legally
  independent person under an archaic legal system