Shiāni
Word order: OVS
Letter orthography:
Aa Āā Ee Ii Uu Ss Şş Śś Vv Dd Ff Gg Hh Kk Ll Nn Rr Tt Xx
What sounds do those letters represent? Is this language a human language? Is it for a fantasy world, or an alternate Earth? Does it belong to a real life language family?
It is a human language, and it's not quite an alternate Earth. It's a New Earth, a planet that humans have settled on thousands of years ago, after Earth became uninhabitable for some reason. I posted the map in the Map Thread.
Also, the language would actually be VOS, but OVS for names. For example, the surname Kāvākulāni would be read literally as "mountain from member of tribe." Kāvāk-ul-āni.
Did you base the language on any OTL languages? (A language in this situation would be-its not like people are going to suddenly forget their Earth languages and make up a new one)
I'm not the only one working on a constructed language, am I?
Shiāni
Word order: OVS
Letter orthography:
Aa Āā Ee Ii Uu Ss Şş Śś Vv Dd Ff Gg Hh Kk Ll Nn Rr Tt Xx
Example sentence: Hā urekel hān. Translates as "I hunt moose."
I would use C and Z instead of Ş and Ś. Diacritic marks are nice when they're necessary, but when you have letters to spare, you should use them. It's easier to teach the language to children and illiterate adults if the letters of the alphabet are easier to tell apart.
I'm not the only one working on a constructed language, am I?
Shiāni
Word order: OVS
Letter orthography:
Aa Āā Ee Ii Uu Ss Şş Śś Vv Dd Ff Gg Hh Kk Ll Nn Rr Tt Xx
Example sentence: Hā urekel hān. Translates as "I hunt moose."
Ā is like the a in "all," while A is like the a in "and."
Ş is "sh." While the other s-variant is "sl."
E is like an ae sound, while I is a long e sound, and U is a long o sound.
It is a human language, and it's not quite an alternate Earth. It's a New Earth, a planet that humans have settled on thousands of years ago, after Earth became uninhabitable for some reason. I posted the map in the Map Thread.
Also, the language would actually be VOS, but OVS for names. For example, the surname Kāvākulāni would be read literally as "mountain from member of tribe." Kāvāk-ul-āni.
Just as an observation - is any of this borrowed from Maori? It's very similar, especially your vowel sounds (but Maori has a heck of a lot less letters in it).
Early on I noticed that it sounded very Polynesian, but it wasn't intentional.
Also, really? The Armenian Genocide says that the modern Maori alphabet has twenty letters, one more than Shiani currently.
A, E, I, O, U, H, K, M, N, P, R, T, U, W, Ng and Wh.
Some people consider the vowels with the little line above it (I forget what that's called) separate letters, but others don't. I don't know of anyone that even speaks Maori as a first language, so it doesn't really matter. Your conlang does sound Polynesian, though .
Perhaps Polynesian-descentant colonists settled Kāl (what I'm calling the Shiani homeland for now) along with the Ukrainians, ten thousand years before "modern day." Though, I'm not sure why they'd settle in a frozen wasteland that's geographically similar to Norway.
You pronounce the 'a' in 'hay' like the 'a' in 'cat'instead of like the 'e' in 'meh'?