Document 1 - Grammatical and Orthographical guide to the Language of the sirens (Idome Shirenè)

The language of the sirens (la idome Shirenè, literally “language-[HEAD marker] (of) sirens”) is a natlang built by fugi88 for the fictional siren race of the wereworld to communicate in.

Among its defining features is a many-to-one grapheme-phoneme correspondance, articles that inflect to give information on the relatively inflection-free verbs and nouns,

Phonology and Writing system

The phonology for Shirenè features a handful of relatively unfamiliar sounds to english or spanish speakers, such as /?/, /q/, /?/, /?/, and /?/. It features 8 vowels. yet features several spellings for each.

The writing system is almost convoluted - vowels can be written in several polygraphic forms, plenty of consonants have different spellings, and the spelling system uses these without rhyme nor reason. However, everything is pronounced exactly as written, unlike French.

Below are the series of sound-grapheme correspondances. Where Shirenè graphemes are not provided, refer to the IPA spelling.

Vowels IPA i   i  êi  ie ?   û  ih  ûe u   u  oo  ugh ?   o  ae  ue ?   â  au  á a   a  agh ea ?   e  eau ?   ê  ei  eh  egh  Consonants IPA p   p  ph b t   t  th d   d  ýd k   k  qh g q ?   gh ?   h   hx m n ?   gn  ny ?   ng ?   nh f v s z ?   sh ?   zh x   jh ?   tl  lt ?~l r   l ?   ?   ll j   j   y  Multi-phoneme letters u?  w' au  w k?  x

Diacritics are of particular interest. In some cases they provide meaningful phonetic information on pronunciation of vowels, whilst in others they simply differentiate between homophones or nod to historic spelling.

The most significant accent, ^, is used to seperate between vowel phonemes.

Where a grave accent, `, is used, it indicates that a vowel is of its own phonemic value instead of read as part of the previous polygraph - “ei” is /?/, whilst “eì” is /?i/. Likewiese, “eaue” would be read /??/ whilst eaùe would be read /a?/.

A diersis, somewhat similarily, indicates that a vowel is to be pronounced in a seperate syllable from the phonemes before it, also breaking the polygraphs; “eì” is /?i/, whilst “eï” is /?.i/.

Accents are also used in places they serve no function - Shirenè, the name of the language, features a grave on the last e. It is conserved to remind of a former version of the word where the è came as part of a dipthong.

Wherever a ´ is used, it indicates that the particular vowel has fallen silent; this is useful for seperating homophones. Each word class prefers its own vowel for this.

Where adding an affix will result in an ambiguous dipthong condition, use diacritics to specify which. Affixes add to monopthongs and seperate from dipthongs.

Stress

Stress falls on the first root syllable (a syllable of a word which does not come from an affix) of any word and is thusly unmarked.

Grammar

Shirenè is dominated by an affliction for the object of the sentence. Sentence order is determined by the object, and the verb info is also communicated by the object’s article.

Word classes

Shirenè has several world classes for sorting into boxes the words. They are unmarked and often rely on etymological or subject knowledge, or, in a numbr of cases, plain memorisation.

Classes are not iron-clad boxes; words which should fit into one human/siren category may slip into transitive or neuter categories, and vice-versa.

They are listed below, alongside their shortcodes:

• S - Sirenical - relating to stuff from the siren’s world
• H - Human - relating to stuff from the human world
• T - Transitive - relating to shared stuff
• Ts - Technical-s - as below but for the siren world
• Th - Technical-h - relating to designed stuff from the human world; the line between designed and natural sits somewhere down the line from the design to the final thing - the further the more likely to be simply human
• Na - Neuter-a - anything not fitting in any of the boxes
• Nb - Neuter-b - as above

However, in many cases, word class is broken into three groups:

• Human - H, and Th
• Siren - S, and Ts
• Neuter - T, Na, and Nb

Word class is vital in selecting the correct affixes for words and inflection bases for articles.

Sentence Order

Sentence order in Shirenè relies on the object’s class; if human, the order is SVO, if Sirenical, then the order is SOV, and if neuter, the order is VSO.

Headnouns and their modifiers follow a particular order. First come the sirenical modifiers, then the neuter, then the headnoun, and then the human modifiers. The order of words within each class is of no grammatical significance.

If the noun has modifiers added, it must be inflected to show the fact; see the inflection table, column “header” for what affixs to add to the headnoun.

Verbs

Verbs are among the simplest type of word. One simply prepends an affix to them to reflect the sentence order and

• Human SVO - Prepend a qû-
• Sirenical SOV - Prepend a tû-
• Neuter VSO - Prepend a vû

Articles

Articles are one of the most complex parts of Shirenè. The distinction between definite, semidefinite, and indefinite is defined by wether the object can snoop in or be snooped on. If the object can understand to the transmission of language, then wether it can see the transmission in full, part, or not at all determines the type of article used. If it cannot, then wether the speaker can sense it in full, part, or not at all determines the article used.

Below is a list of articles and the steps needed to inflect them. The final list, the verb-specific ones, are only to be used on the article for the object headnoun or in descriping modifiers.

• Bases (definite, semidefinite, indefinite)
  • H - la, ka, nga
  • S - zha, qha, nha
  • T - lla, gha, na
  • Ht - lû, kû, nhû
  • St - zhû, qhû, nhû
  • Na - lê, kê, nê
  • Nb - zhê, qhê, nê
• Cases
  • Default - no change
  • Part of noun phrase - append a ll
  • Dative - append a w’
  • Genitive - append a w
  • Instrumental - append a jx
• Numbers
  • Singular - no change
  • Dual - a to â, û to u, ê to e
  • Trial - a to â, û to u, ê to e
  • +3 but the amount is handleable - append an n
  • +3 but the amount is not handleable - append an m
• Verb-specific inflections
  • Tense (only for objects which are neither non-transitive nor neuter nouns, which must instead use particles, or for specifying the time in which a modifier takes place, in which case such modifer may be used)
    • Past - add e to the centre, making a dipthong, ê if e already there
    • Present - no change
    • Future - as past, using â and u as its backup instead
    • Intemporal - as past, using i and û as its backup instead
  • Mood
    • Indicative - no change
    • Subjunctive - l to s, ll to sh, zh to l
    • Imperative - append a âjx, to which e may be appended to indicate a higher degree of urgency
  • Ediventiality
    • Knowing/default - no change
    • Sensing - append an sh, changing -n ender to an ï dipthong, and -m to an ïh
    • Conclusion - append a s, changing final consonant as in sensing
    • Hearsay - append a z, changing final consonant as in sensing

Articles may be used for any noun or describer; before headnoun’s noun phrases, one uses an article to define the headnoun and may use articles

Pronouns

Pronouns are built from a simpler system. They may be used in the place of a headnoun only.

• Base types
  • First - o
  • Second - e
  • Third - i
  • Fourth - u
• Plurality
  • Singular - prepend w-
  • Plural - prepend v-
• Inclusivity
  • Inclusive - append -jx
  • Exclusive - no change
• Case
  • Object - append e
  • Subject - no change
  • Genitive - directly after vowel, append s

Inclusivity applies to all pronouns. I becomes “i and you” and “i exclusively” respectively, “you” becomes “you, generally”, and “you, right now” respectively, and it’s the same deal with he/him.

Lexicon

Word registers

There exist four main word registers in Shirenè; the sirenical, the human-imported, the glue, and the unsplit.

The sirenical words are descendants of the original words of the laguage. They mainly fit into the siren and neuter word classes.

When the sirens whispered to ancient humans and began the big language families, such as PIE, Semitic, and Sinitic, they monitored as the humans stirred the soup of language development. Eventually, the Sirens imported words from the humans, creating the human-imported register. This register contains a lot of technical words pretaining to the human world.

The glue register are all the words which are needed for communication; particles and comparitives and all that.

The unsplit register is a bundle of words which are not cheifly human or sirenical and do not have synonyms from another register.

The name of the language itself, idome Shirenè, features one word from the human register and another from the sirenical register; “idome” is similar to Spanish “idioma” and “Shirenè”, whilst from an imported word, has become sirenical for “siren”.

Examples

Basic demonstration

A translation of “speak/learn the English language!” would be [AAp20]:

(We) qûesht la’âjx idome bretagne

(/(au?) q???t la??x id?m? br?ta??/)

There is no subject here; one can add a pronoun e, inflected to we (you singular exlusive subject) but we is implied with imperatives.

The verb is formed of the root, esht, meaning to speak/learn to speak, and qû, showing that the sentence is SVO due to a human object noun.

The article uses the default for human nouns la, followed by the imperative marker ’âjx (/??x/). The presence of this article indicates that there will be a noun or noun phrase next. Given that idome has the -e inflection for making human-class nouns headnouns, we know that the article is working on it.

bretagne is a noun for “British”, here meaning “the English language”. Given that it is modifying a noun, it does not need an artice, instead freeloading off the conjugation of the headnoun’s article.

So, literally, the sentence would be “learn the[imperative] language (of) English”.

Longer example

To do a slightly more complex “These are the most common things (phrases) in the Bretanye language”, let’s breakdown this sentence: [AAp20]

Lên tzhe qûzho lan rodeau fehgèrté stûe kaza la idome bretagne

(/l?n t?? q??o lan ?od? f?g??t st?? kaza la id?m? br?ta??/)

“Lên tzhe qûzho” is formed of several components. “tzhe” means these, “lên” comes from the Neuter-A article lê followed by n for plural, and qûzho is formed of aforementioned qù and zho, meaning “to be” with the nuance of the human class.

“lan rodeau fehgèrté stûe” is a noun phrase. Rodeau (/?od?/) means “most”, fehgèrté (/f?g??t/) means “common”, and stue /st??/ means “thing”. Together, it comes to mean "most common thing. Lan is an article formed of la and the plural marker n.

kaza simply means “within” and connects a noun phrase, this one being the one for English.

Figures

Inflection table

Specific inflectors      Verb-added      qù- - Added to a verb, shows SVO order     tû- - Added to a verb, shows SOV order     vû- - Added to a verb, shows VSO order      Article added     -n - more than three, handleable     -m - more than three, unhandleable      -sh - sensing     -z - conclusion     -zh -hearsay      -âjx - Article imperative indicator     -âjxe - Article imperaimperative indicator   General inflectors, class-dependent     Class  Headnoun  Verbifier Diminutive     h      -e        atl-      -fri      s      -ê        âtl-      -fri     t      -e        itl-      -fri     ht     -e        atl-      -fre     st     -ê        âtl-      -fre     na     -i        utl-      -fra     nb     -i        utl-      -frâ  General inflectors, class-depends Meaning                         Human    Sirenical - H   S   T   hT  sT  Na  Nb   Highest degree (sarcastic)      pûe-     bûe- Highest degree, -est            tih-     thih- High degree, -er                kû-      qhû- Upwards degree                  qih-     ghih- Downwarss degree, -ish          nyih-    nhih- Low degree                      nû-      ngû- Lowest degree                   hxih-    mih- Lowest degree (sarcastic)       fûe-     vûe- diminutive                      sû-      zû  - grossative                      shûeá-   zhûeá- noun verbifier                  jxûó-    tlûó - verb nounifier                  rih-     lih - conceptifier (gay -> gayness)   ?áih-    lláih- +negative connotation           jûú-     yûú - +positive connection            w'áû-    wáû - connotation neutraliser         dù-      xù-

Document 2 - Shirenè dictionary

Shirenè is a unique language both in the werewolf world and outside it.

This document makes no attempt to explain the grammar. Refer to the guide for detailed explanations.

All entires are as uninflected as possible. Refer to the offical inflection table at the bottom of the guide for more details on affixes to be able to remove them. No articles are listed here.

The dictionary is formatted like this:

• word /IPA/ class (origin)
  • Meaning
  • Specific affixes

The following IPA symbols are used to express pronunciation:

i ? u ? ? a ? ? and p b t d k g q ? ? m n ? ? ? f v s z ? ? x ? ? ? j

Word class acronyms are as follows:

• S - Sirenical
• H - Human
• T - Transitive
• Ts - Technical-s
• Th - Technical-h
• Na - Neuter-a
• Nb - Neuter-b

Words

• kaza /kaza/ Nb
  • within
• idome /idom?/ H (Spanish Idioma)
  • language
• bonne /bon.n?/ H (French bonne)
  • good
• zur /z?r/ S
  • horizon
• ge /g?/ S
  • sun
• zur-ge /z?r g?/ S (zur + ge)
  • sunrise
• ge-zur /g? z?r/ S (ge + zur)
  • sunset
• tzhe /t??/ S
  • this
• zho /?o/ H (Mandarin ?/shì)
  • is
• rodeau /?od?/ S
  • most
• fehgèrté /f?g??t/ Na
  • common
• stûe /st??/ H
  • thing
• tèzh /t??/ s
  • want (polite/respectful)