Zdrole Language

Zdrole
Zdrêoll
Pronunciation	IPA: [zd̠ɹ̠ɤ̂.ləl]
Native to	Fortizendria
Region	Central Occeia
Native speakers	Unknown
Language family	Occe-Fortizian Zdrole
Writing system	Mézez
Official status
Official language in	Fortizendria
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ZDR

Zdrole (native: Zdrêoll, pronounced: [zd̠ɹ̠ɤ̂.ləl], lit. "tongue-like") is the official and most widely spoken language of Fortizendria, a nation of Krystar. Zdrole is regularly used by about 80% of Fortizendrians and is the first language of about 65%, although about 45% have notable dialectal differences, many of which differ substantially, in some cases being considered "unrecognized partially intelligible languages". It is by far the most widely spoken language, with the only officially recognized and local-official language of Fvonil and its dialects being close, being known by about 40% of the population and 20% learning it as a first language. Non-recognized varieties of Ovalul, Ziliel, and neighboring countries' languages being the first language of the remaining 15% and being understood by roughly 30% of the population. It is especially well-documented, although a couple online resources do exist.

Zdrole is not very centralized as a single language, with several dialects exhibiting mergers or splits in certain sounds, different cases being used for specific circumstances, differences in honorifics, and even a change in lexicon due to borrowing from other languages and coining new terms. This article covers a specific dialect of Zdrole, the Fortizendriana or Capital Dialect, which is most widely understood due to use in federal government. However, it should be noted that many provincial governments, as well as local governments, often different dialects, if not Fvonil (or in locales other minor languages). International diplomacy must be conducted in Zdrole, but dialects may vary wildly. Legal language and technical jargon is written or spoken with many technical loan words taken from more advanced economic neighbors, while the constitution was written in a now "archaic" version of a dialect that was not even the Capital dialect.

Phonology

Zdrole has at least 26 base consonants and 10 base vowels, along with three pitch accents. However, there is significant debate as to the true number of phonemes, as some of them only appear in complex clusters, some may be analyzed as clusters, and in some cases they have been simplified. Several of these clusters further have unique letters. To make matters more confusing, there is a significant degree of allophony with several consonants, as well as dialectal variations. Different analyses may be performed on even the same dialect to yield more or less phonemes. It is for this reason that there are estimated to be between 32 and 78 phonemes, although the lower estimate is generally given. This article provides the "standard" analysis of the Capital dialect.

Zdrole Vowels

	Front	Mid-lateral*	Back
Close	i /i/ ui /y/	lyl /lʉl/*	iu /ɯ/ u /u/
Mid	e /e/ oe /ø/	ll, lil /ləl/*	eo /ɤ/ o /o/
Open	a /a/		ao /ɒ/

* Mid-lateral vowels are denoted as "indefinite mid lateral" vowels, where /ə/ is any non-close vowel, and the entire sequence of /lʉl/ may be pronounced as [y], [lil], [juj], [l̩ʷ] or [ʝ].

Vowels may either be unstressed or stressed. Stressed vowels have one of three pitch accent: a high or rising tone /í/, a dropping tone /î/, or a low tone /ì/. Tone is exclusively marked on the first letter in romanization, except in the case of <ll> /ləl/, in which a single pitch accent is traditionally written over the first or both letters (l̂l ĺl ll ̀). Understandably, this does not render very well on most computers, which has left some to put an emphatic <i> between the two <l>s to receive the accent instead.

Vowels may also be nasalized before /ŋ/, which may disappear entirely before another consonant. Vowels may also become breathy voiced by some speakers after a voiced /h/, although this is generally considered "incorrect" in formal speech and many dialects.

Vowel harmony does exist, but it's weak. It primarily exists in suffixes, primarily grammatical suffixes, although collapsed consonant clusters and sound changes have made this inconsistent. Some small, old, and commonly used words also have undergone vowel harmony. Most long, uncommon, and newer words do not undergo harmony outside of their suffixes.

A hyphen (-) may be used between two vowels if there is a vowel hiatus (i.e. qma-on for /mˀa.on/)

Zdrole Consonants

	Labial	Dental-Alveolar	Palatal / Velar¹	Glottal
Nasal	m /m/ qm /mˀ/²	n /n/ qn /nˀ/²	ng /ŋ/³
Plosive	b /b/⁴	t /t/ d /d/⁵	k /k/ g /g/	q /ʔ/⁶
Affricate		c /t͡s/ cz /d͡z/	cx /t͡ɕ/ cj /d͡ʑ/
Fricative	f /f/⁷	s /s/ z /z/	x /ɕ/ j /ʑ/	h /h/⁸
Approximant	v /ʋ/⁹	l /l/¹⁰ r /ɹ/¹¹	y /j/ qy /jˀ/²

¹ Velar consonants (k g ŋ) may be palatal (c ɟ ɲ) before front vowels, and may remove /i/ entirely. Affricates and fricatives are actually alveolar-palatal, or postalveolar before /ɹ/

² Glottalized nasals may have originally been clusters, but it's hard to tell, as no other glottalization of consonants seems present. /jˀ/ is believed to have originally been [ŋˀ] or [ɲˀ], though may also be /ʔi/. Some dialects pronounce these as glottalized plosives or implosives (ɓ ɗ ʄ).

³ velar nasal as in sing. Nasalizes previous vowels. May be lost entirely before consonants.

⁴ May be voiced /b/ or voiceless /p/, even when aspirated. Usually voiceless utterance-initially/finally and after voiceless consonants, while voiced elsewhere.

⁵ Dental; /d/ may be lenited to [ð] intervocally for some speakers.

⁶ Glottal stop, as in "uh-oh". Only distinct before vowels at some morpheme boundaries. Cannot appear after consonants except in contractions (dze+ʔeba->dzʔeba). May be epenthetic between complex codas and onsets.

⁷ May be bilabial [ɸ]; varies by dialect.

⁸ [x] if not followed by a vowel, and occasionally any position not after a consonant; [ɦ] after voiced consonants, which may cause the following vowel to become breathy; [ç] before /i/ and /y/, which may delete /i/ entirely. /h/ after plosives and less often affricates (where it disappears in about half of all dialects) is often considered aspiration (i.e. /abhat/ -> [abʱatː]).

⁹ May be a bilabial or labio-dental approximant or fricative (v ʋ w β) interchangeably and by dialect, with fricatives more likely in clusters.

¹⁰ May be fricated or even affricated lateral consonant (ɮ ɬ t͡ɬ) in coda positions, and may even be velar [ɣ] in a few speakers, primarily in a northwestern dialect. May become [l], [ʎ], [ʝ], [j], or even drop entirely before /i/ and /y/, sometimes deleting or merging with /i/ to become [i] or [y], varying widely across dialects.

¹¹ Generally considered a "molar r", and is actually very similar to the American English /r/. Sometimes simply written as /r/ as in English.

Romanization and Phonotactics

Consonants may geminate in coda positions, primarily if they are utterance-final, after a short vowel, and not in a cluster. Consonants with different voicing may occur side-by-side with each other (i.e. [ed.sa] is a valid word). And also, NS table formatting kinda sucks how to I make its space work the way I want xd

In the Mézez script, some consonants (and /ləl/) are written with a distinct letter, sometimes modified to reflect different voicings. Except for str, zdr, hk and fb (considered "pre-fricated stops [plus r]"), these changes are also reflected in romanization for simplicity. For instance, /ɕd͡ʑ/ has a single letter, and is written as <xj>. In rare instances where a normal phonemic realization must be made, a hyphon (-) may be inserted. An apostrophe ' may also be used for contractions.

The differently-spelled clusters include: jj /ʑdʑ/; cc /ɕtɕ/; jx /ʑtɕ/; xj /ɕdʑ/; sc /sts/; zz /zdz/; zc /zts/; sz /sdz/; fm /fmˀ/; sn /snˀ/; zn /znˀ/; hng /hjˀ/*; ll /ləl/; and lyl /lyl/. Many of these clusters sound a bit different from their broad ipa transcription. For instance, the /d/ in /ɕdʑ/ and other mixed-voiced onset pre-fricated affricates could just as easily be a /t/, and is sometimes considered a /d̥/. /stɹ/ and /zdɹ/ are more accurately transcribed as /stɕɹ/ and /zdʑɹ/, as dental plosives are pronounced as dentals before /ɹ/, and would be more narrowly transcribed as [st̠ɹ̠] and [zd̠ɹ̠]. /hk/ and /fb/ (really [xk] and [fp] have comparatively brief fricatives, along with geminated, tense plosives, much like utterance-final plosives. Affricates and especially plosives, voiced and devoiced, followed by /h/ may be considered aspirated consonants.

Pre-fricated nasals are perhaps the most preposterous. Glottalized /m/ /n/ and /j/ are already controversial as they could be analyzed as simply coming after a glottal stop. However, for pre-fricated nasals, because the fricative at the beginning is also glottalized (except for /znˀ/), they are more narrowly transcribed as [fˀm] and [sˀn], while /hjˀ/ looks nothing like its phonetic realization, [xˀŋ] (or [çˀɲ]). It may be tempting to reanalyze these as /fm/ /sn/ /zn/ and /hŋ/, but it's also worth noting that [f.m], [s.n], [z.n] and [x.ŋ] exist between syllables ([sn] and [zn] also appear in onsets in loanwords), and while an epenthetic /ʔ/ can be inserted specifically in the case of [x.ŋ], the consonants are still pronounced clearly and take a full mora, with [x] not even palatalizing in the sequence [ɤx.ɲe] (as opposed to /hjˀ/, which has quicker pronunciation where both segments palatalize).

Orthography

This section is heavily WIP and has no data in it.

Script	Name	Romanization	IPA	Approximate English Equivalent		Script	Name	Romanization	Approximate English Equivalent		Script	Name	Romanization	Approximate English Equivalent

Grammar

Zdrole is primarily a Verb-Subject-Object (VSO) language, although it becomes a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) language when 1st and 2nd person pronouns are used. Things are more complicated for ditransitive verbs, where the order is Verb-Donor-Recipient-Theme (or Verb-Subject-IndirectObject-DirectObject) or Donor-Verb-Recipient-Theme, unless the donor is implied to have less volition than the recipient, in which the order is Verb-Recipient-Donor-Theme, or Verb-Theme-Recipient-Donor if the direct object is of significant importance.

Zdrole has split ergativity, where it is primarily an ergative-absolutive language, however it becomes nominative-accusative under several circumstances. It could be accurate to refer to Zdrole as having an active-stative alignment, where "I run" would be nominative but "I sit" would be absolutive, which only applies to pronouns and proper names; all other instances are usually ergative-accusative. There is also dative construction, where the dative case is used for the subject in sentences where the subject underwent an action, most likely involuntarily or even against their better wishes (as in "To me was hit be a tree"). In ditransitive sentences, the recipient receives the Causitive case if it has more agency than the donor. Subjects in dependent clauses also receive the Causitive case, sometimes also called the "Clausal Agent" case.

Head directionality is complicated in Zdrole. Setting aside the fact that the subject and verb swap positions depending on pronoun usage, it mostly functions as a head-final language: adjectives come after nouns, adverbs come after verbs, affixes and case marking are primarily suffixes, and possession, number, and relative clauses all come after their core arguments. Despite this, it has also largely become a prepositional language, where adpositions come before their clauses, instead of after. It's believed that Zdrole used to be postpositional at one point, as is the case with its sister language Fvonil and in some dialects in that area, but has largely changed over in central and northern dialects.

Like other Occe-Fortizian languages, Zdrole is predominantly an agglutinative language when it comes to grammar, but more analytic (or less-often fusional) when it comes to lexical compounding. There exist four number/noun classes, 7-10 grammatical cases, 10 verbal tenses/aspects with 5 moods, although one noun case may also be considered a 6th mood, while one mood can also function as a tense (namely the future).