Irchan

Irchan
Irča Lmera
Pronunciation	[irt͡ʃa lməra]
Native to	Ircha
Native speakers	~50 million (2400 PL)
Language family	Irchanic (isolate)
Early forms	Old Irchan Middle Irchan
Standard forms	Standard Irchan
Dialects	Abkez (Trinswon, Cukki) Hwiyhesan (Yhochard) Lolu (Hakmebe)
Writing system	Kuzoyzwo, (historically) Myorzwo
Official status
Official language in	Ircha
Regulated by	Irčané Dekrayé Aoryejikum (Irchan National Academy)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–

Irchan (Irchan: Irča Lmera [irt͡ʃʰa lməra]) is the native and official language of Ircha. It is spoken by about 50 million people, most of which are ethnic Irchans. It is highly influenced by the culture and religion of the Irchan people, who even went as far as creating a specific declension for felines (cats are seen as the holiest of animals in Imleynism).

Irchan is generally split into three varieties: Hwiyhesan, Abkez, and Lolu. Their grammars are very similar, though the Hwiyhesan dialect tends to use simpler and more isolating grammar. All of the dialects ultimately descends from Middle Irchan, spoken during the time of approximately 1500 to 1800 PL. Irchans have had a literary tradition starting all the way from when writing was first invented in the 12th century PL to the use of Myorzwo from 1578 to 2304 when Kuzoyzwo became more popular. The standard dialect used in most public media and educational material is based around the Abkez dialect, more specifically the Trinswon dialect.

The Irchan language is mostly agglutinative and syllable-timed. Its phonology includes relatively complex phonotactics on top of a sound inventory that is mostly simple save for a couple of unusual consonants. The word order is normally SOV or OVS, typically using the latter for questions. It is split-ergative, using the accusative alignment in nonpast tenses while using the ergative alignemnt in past tense sentences. It has four declensions, but they only matter to the two cases which act as proper suffixes.

Phonology

Inventory

The consonants of Standard Irchan are as follows:

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal		m	n		ɲ
Plosive	Voiceless	p	t	ts	tʃ	k
	Slack	b̥	d̥	d̥z̥	d̥ʒ̊	ɡ̊
Fricative	Voiceless			s	ʃ	x
	Voiced	β	ɮ		ʒ
Liquid			l	r	j

The vowels of Standard Irchan are as follows:

	Front	Centre	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e	ə	o
Low		a
-j	ei	ai	oi
-w	eu	au	ou
-ə	ie	aa	uo

Phonotactics

The maximum syllable shape in Irchan is CCjVVCC.

Stress is not contrastive in Standard Irchan, though the stress typically falls on the last syllable of the word.