Ataši

Marèngil is a constructed language inspired by both Elvish and Dwarvish, languages spoken by the elves and dwarves respectively in the fictional world of Middle Earth, invented by J. R. R. Tolkien. Thus, the language is spoken by an elf-like people, but of a more hardy stock, akin to the dwarves. These elves are known as the Marên, and live in a mountainous, dry, jungle-like continent on the planet Tárìk. The continent is not much bigger than Greenland in square mileage, but is home to some 450 million people. It is very mountainous and has a large collection of waterways and cave systems. The planet could be likened to Caladan, from Frank Herbert's Dune, with very little deserts or arid, inhospitable biomes. The language itself is highly agglutinative in the most modern form. Older root languages are less so, with the main root language having no agglutination whatsoever.

Phonology

The phonetic inventory of Marêngil has grown dramatically since the evolution of the proto-language, resulting in a wide range of consonants and vowels.

Consonants
		Labial	Alveolar		Post-Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
			central	lateral
Plosive	Unaspirated	p /p/ b /b/	t /t/ d /d/				k /k/ g /g/	q /q/
	Aspirated	ph /pʰ/ bh /bʰ/	th /tʰ/ dh /dʰ/				kh /kʰ/ gh /gʰ/	qh /qʰ/
Fricative		f /f/ v /v/	s /s/ z /z/	lh /ɬ/	sh /ʃ/ zh /ʒ/	c /ɕ/	x /x/	rh /ʁ/	h /h/
Affricate			ts /t͡s/ dz /d͡z/	tl /tɬ/	ch /t͡ʃ/ jh /d͡ʒ/	tc /t͡ɕ/
Nasal		m /m/	n /n/		nn /ɲ/		ng /ŋ/
Tap/Flap			r /r/
Approximant				l /l/		j /j/

Vowels
	Front	Middle	Back
Close	i /i/ ï /i:/		u /u/ ü /u:/
Near-close	ì /ɪ/		ù /ʊ/
Close-mid	à /e/ ë /e:/	è /ə/	o /o/ ö /o:/
Open-Mid	e /ɛ/		ò /ʌ/
Open		a /a/ ä /a:/

Orthography

Alphabet

(In Progress)

Stress and Vowel Length

Stress in Marêngil is indicated by diacritics above the vowel of the stressed syllable. The stress is most often on the penultimate syllable, but can also occur elsewhere. Likewise, length is also denoted by diacritics. The letter "a" will be used as the placeholder letter for any of the vowels.

• a (no stress, short)
• ä (no stress, long)
• á (stressed, short)
• â (stressed, long)
• à (secondary vowel)

This last diacritic shows that the modified vowel takes on a different sound. It is never long, nor is it stressed, and appears infrequently.

Phonotactics

(In Progress)

There are many syllable structures in Marêngil, but with that comes a number of rules.

• V
• VC
• CV
• CVC
• CCV
• CCVC

Rules

• No more than two vowels can occur next to each other in a single world. (e.g.: CV+V+VCC)
• If two vowels occur next to each other, then a y sound will separate them.
• Under no circumstances should two sounds of the same manner of articulation appear adjacent to each other.
• No consonants of the same place of articulation should appear adjacent to each other, excepting central alveolar consonants.
• A fricative cannot be in the same consonant cluster an affricate or vise versa.

Morphology

Nouns

Note that there is no grammatical gender preassigned to a given noun. Certain things will take on a gender based on certain implications and information given, such as a dog known to be biologically female. But simply a dog in general will have no gender. Gender neutrality is denoted by noun ending in a consonant, most commonly a plosive, where a male noun will end in the vowel "-o" and a female noun will end in "-ì." Nouns with an inherently genderless nature, such as a rock, simply end in any voiced fricative. It is important to note that only Class I can be assigned a gender, and all others are gender neutral. Of course, gender is irrelevant with case markings, since they appear on opposite ends of a noun.

Class

Nouns are considered to fall under the seven classes below, which give additional information about what kind of noun it is.

• Class I Animate (Mammals, birds, reptiles, etc.)
• Class II Semianimate (Plants, microorganisms, bacteria, etc.)
• Class III Inanimate Natural (Rocks, wood, stuff of nature, etc.)
• Class IV Inanimate Unnatural (Tools, human-made things, etc.)
• Class V Products of the Psyche (Emotions, morals, etc.)
• Class VI Undeniable Concepts (Happiness, ideas, plans, etc.)
• Class VII Unknowns (Meaning of life, what's inside a black hole, etc.)

Case

There are five main noun cases in Marêngil; Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Genitive and Possessed. All the cases come from pronouns; I, you, it, mine and yours respectively. At one point there were separate prepositions, but since then they have lost their individuality. All cases are based around these prepositions.

Noun Class
Case	Class I			Class II			Class III			Class IV			Class V			Class VI			Class VII
	Singular	Paucal	Plural	Singular	Paucal	Plural	Singular	Paucal	Plural	Singular	Paucal	Plural	Singular	Paucal	Plural	Singular	Paucal	Plural	Singular	Paucal	Plural
Nominative	dha-	bödha-	adha-
Accusative	can-
Dative	ül-
Genitive	shav-
Possessed	iv-

Possession of Nouns

Possession of a thing is viewed in three ways. I thing can be entirely possessable, semi-possessable or unpossessable. An entirely possessable noun is something like a rock, or body part, anything non-sentient and with no potential of self-possession. A semi-possessable noun would be a person or other sentient being which has relation to the subject, like a family member or partner. An unpossessable noun would be something beyond possession, like a planet or force of nature. One would never say "our planet", but would instead say "the planet we live on".

Adjectives, Adverbs and Postpositions

• No distinction is made between adjectives and adverbs as they both are modifiers.
• Adjectives almost always end in a sonorant, but are not required to.
• Postpositions are always suffixed to the noun they modify via a hyphen (-).

Postpositions

	Suffix
	N.	M.	F.
Just inside	-qep	-qup	-qib
Far inside	-qëp	-qüp	-qïb
Just outside	-elet	-elut	-elid
Far outside	-älet	-älut	-älid
Just above	-orje	-oruj	-ori
Far above	-borä	-borü	-borï
Just below	-lhek	-lhuk	-lhig
Far below	-tlek	-tluk	-lhïg
Just in front of	-pùrya	-poryu	-parï
Far in ahead of	-priä	-proü	-priï
Just behind
Far behind
Just before
Far before
Soon after
Long after
Near
Far
Facing away
Facing towards
Near adjacent
Far adjacent

Verbs

Tense

• An infinitive verb will always end with vowel followed by a voiceless velar stop (k).
• Infinitive verbs generally do not have any long vowels in them because of the following reason.
• The past tense is shown by a lengthening the vowel of the final syllable.
• The future tense is shown by a suffixation of -lèsh, which comes directly from the word lesh, meaning "up (and out)" since the concept of time is an movement upwards.
• The hypothetical is shown by a suffixation of -ivrät, which is a contraction of iv and ukirät, meaning "of" and "possibility" respectively. Ivrät translates roughly to "maybe" in English and is commonly used in conversation.
• The necessitive is a altered form of the verb buâl, "to need".
• The Imperfective and perfective use a auxiliary which became suffixed and altered form. They use the verbs cáak, "to go" and yhalik, "to complete" respectively.

Tense System

	INF	IMPF	PRFV
Present	-k	-cak	-syak
Past	-k	-cäk	-syäk
Future	-lèsh	-cal	-syal
Hypothetical	-ivrät	-cavrä	-syavrà
Necessitive	-bälu	-cabul	-syabul

Conjugation

Conjugation appears on the beginning of a word, like Case, and is more or less simply pronouns, sometimes in an altered form, which have been suffixed on. Standalone pronouns no longer exist in Marêngil.

Conjugation System

		1st	2nd	3rd	4th
Singular	Pers.
	Poss.
Paucal	Pers.
	Poss.
Plural	Pers.
	Poss.

Syntax

Marêngil is a strictly head-initial language that acquired no changes to this structure. The word order strictly follows order of case; Nom., Acc., Dat., Loc., Gen.