This chapter will provide a cursory overview of Ithkuil’s phonology, orthography, and morphology.
A phonology is the system in which a language classifies its vocal sounds, or phonemes, that are then used to construct words.
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Ithkuil’s 31 consonants are pbkgtdfvh’ţdszšžçxlļcżčjmnňrřwy.
Ithkuil's 9 vowels are aäeëioöuü.
The valid diphthongs, or combinations of vowels considered as one smooth syllable, are ai, ei, ëi, oi, ui, au, eu, ëu, ou, and iu. All other vocalic combinations are considered disyllabic, or as two syllables. This is important to consider when marking stress.
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Because some typefaces and fonts do not recognize the character d, đ may be used instead.
Penultimate (second–to–last) stress is considered default and therefore unmarked. Otherwise, the stressed vowel is marked with an acute ´ accent; if the vowel has a diaeresis ¨, stress is instead marked with a circumflex accent ˆ.
Proper nouns are always capitalized. Periods are the only absolutely necessary form of punctuation.
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A language’s phonotactics are its rules regarding the permitted combinations of phonemes when building a syllable or word. These rules are why English permits hypothetical words like sprelch or phlarkle but not words like gvadp or nguhd.
The phonotactic rules of Ithkuil are described here.
A morphology, in respect to phonology, is the system in which languages use its phonemes to form morphemes, or minimal units with meaning, and how these morphemes grammatically synthesize into words.
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Ithkuil is an agglutinative language. This means that words are formed mainly by gluing ("agglutinating") morphemes with consistent meaning in the form of prefixes, suffixes, tone, and stress onto a main "root" word.
English has some agglutinative aspects; for example, the word "uncharacteristically" is a precise word that is derived from the attachment of affixes "un-", "-istic", and "-(al)ly" to a main root with a much broader meaning, "character". Ithkuil operates in this manner, but to a much more extreme extent, which will be demonstrated in the following chapters.
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Ithkuil has 3 parts of speech:
| 1) | Formatives, which are the main types of words in Ithkuil |
| 2) | Adjuncts, which provide supplemental information to the adjoining formative |
| 3) | Referentials, which operate similarly to pronouns but to a much more dynamic extent |
That being said, the majority of this document hereafter will focus on formatives, as they are the most ubiquitous aspect of Ithkuil.