Eflanese

Eflanese is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Efladim (87%) and by ethnic Eflanese outside Efladim. It is also an official language in Efladim and an official minority language in some parts of Finland and Russia.

Eflanese is not a member of the Finno-Ugric language family. It modifies and inflects the forms of nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verbs depending on their roles in the sentence.

History
The first written form of Eflanese was created by Mikael Oikané, a Eflanese Sage in the 17th century. He based his orthography on Finnish, Latin, and Gothic. Later the written form was revised by many other people.

The Reformation didn't really have any effect on Eflanese, as Christianity is a minor religion in Efladim. In the 18th century major literary achievements were composed in Eflanese by people like Kalen Juusten, Erik Sorola, and Jakoze Ikara, as well as Oikané himself. In the 19th century books were written in Efladim in Eflanese, Finnish and Russian.

Eflanese had a larger array of different fricatives, but has lost most of them, leaving /s/ and /h/. Fricative deletion has removed the voiced velar fricative /ɣ/, e.g. keghoi [keɣoi] becoming modern keoi. The same may also be found debuccalized, e.g. aikgha → aikha.

Oikané's work
The basis for the numerous conventions in the Eflanese standard language is found in Oikané's work, particularly with respect to spelling. Oikané's language was based on North Eflanese dialect, thus that phonology found its way into the standard Eflanese spelling.

Oikané used dh or d to represent the voiced dental fricative /ð/ (English th in this) and tz or z to represent the geminate unvoiced dental fricative /θ/ (the th in thin). Later these sounds disappeared or changed to other sounds in the various dialects. However, the spelling remained unchanged, so the standard language pronunciation of d and z was loaned from Finnish (ts = /z/ and d = /d/, producing the "soft D" problem). Later, t came to be written z. In the standard language, /ð/ remained [d], e.g. kidoan. In the eastern part of Efladim, /ð/ became j, v, or disappeared. In the west, it became r, l or d. The sound /θ/ became ht or tt (e.g. ieþþa → iehta, ietta) in the east and some Western dialects, but became z in the standard language and many Western dialects (ieþþa → ieza).

Either ch, c or h were used for /h/. In modern Eflanese this sound is always spelled h; cf. Oikané's spelling kechez against modern kehez. Oikané used gh or g to represent the voiced velar fricative. This sound was later lost and also suppressed in spelling, except if it appeared between two high labial vowels, when it became 'v'.

Oikané made up some words during translation of the Kazaje O Nomet. Some of these words are still in use, e.g. joose "mercy", qyofe "righteous". Oikané used about 8500 words and 60% of them are still in use.

Classification
Eflanese can't be really classified as member of any language families, even thougth it has took some modeling from Finnish, Latin and Gothic. Eflanese has similar grammar to Finnish, but the words   pronounciation differs from the Baltic-Finnic language group.

Features that distinguish Eflanese from Baltic-Finnic languages are:
 * absence of nomerous grammatical cases,

Features that distinguish Eflanese from Indo-European languages are:
 * absence of grammatical gender (also worth noting is that the same Finnish pronoun aoe denotes both he and she),
 * long words due to the structure of the language,
 * preference of postpositions against prepositions, both of which are less common, because agglutinative suffixes are used extensively
 * no equivalent of the verb to have, instead a locative construction is used.

Geographic distribution
Eflanese is spoken by about 4 million people, mainly in Efladim. There are Eflanese-speaking minorities in Sweden, Finland, Russia and Norway.

The number of the Eflanese population is stable and growing. The Eflanese population of Efladim is growing fast. In Efladim, Eflanese has always been the dominant language, and is now spreading over the borders to Finland, Russia, Sweden and Norway.

Official status
Eflanese is one of two official languages of Efladim (the other being Finnish, spoken by a 4% minority) and thus an official language of the North Atlantic Defense Coalition. It enjoys the status of an official minority language in Finland.

Dialects
The Eflanese dialects are divided into two distinct groups, the Northern dialects and the Southern dialects. The dialects are entirely mutually intelligible and characterized only by minor changes in vowels, diphthongs and rhythm, and as such, they are better classified as accents. For the most part, the dialects operate on the same phonology, grammar and vocabulary. There are only marginal examples of sounds or grammatical constructions isolated to some dialect, not found in standard Eflanese. Two examples are the voiced dental fricative found in Póisedone dialect.

The classification of closely related dialects spoken outside of Efladim is a politically sensitive issue that has been more or less controversial since Efladim's independence in 1967. The speakers of Koquize language in Russia and of Meranke in Sweden are typically considered oppressed minorities. Koquize is different enough from standard Eflanese to have its own orthography. Meranke is eastern dialect, entirely intelligible and interchangeable with any other Eflanese dialect that got the status as a minority language in Sweden for historical and political reasons.

Northern dialects
The North-East dialects (pailonekiz) are spoken in Northern Efladim and Sotekune. Their typical feature is abbreviation of word-final vowels, and in many respects, they resemble Finnish. The Torekon dialects (tóraekiz) are spoken in Torenk. They are closest to the standard language, but feature some slight vowel changes, such as the opening of diphthong-final vowels (sooje → soojë, kuuzha → kuezha, muterois → mute'øis). The Eastern Ostrazahs dialects (kokenorzahsekiz) are spoken in Eastern Ostrazásha. Their most notable feature is pronunciation of 'd' as a tapped or even fully trilled /r/. The Middle and West Ostrazahs dialects (aiez- ja nakeseorzahsekiz) which are spoken in Central and West Ostrazásha. The Far-Western dialects (jionakeseorzahsekiz) are spoken in Swedish Lapland. These dialects spoken in the western parts of Swedish Lapland are recognizable by retention of extraneous 'h' sounds in positions where they are not found in other dialects.

One of the Far-Northern dialects, Meranke, which is spoken on the Swedish side of the border that was created in 1972, is taught in some Swedish schools as a distinct standardized language. The categorization of Meranke as a separate language is controversial among the Eflanese, who see no linguistic criteria, only political reasons, for treating Meranke differently than other dialects of Eflanese.

The Ruaze dialect (Ruazeezik) is spoken in Eflaoije (Eflanese Eflaói'lke), in Norway. It is remnant from Eflanese emigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Southern Dialects
The Southern dialects consist of the widespread Savzoqnian dialects (Savzoquij) spoken in Savzoq and near-by areas, and the Koquize dialects. The South-Western dialects (juiqekiz) are spoken in South Nakemë'en, on the Koquize Isthmus and in Ingraz. They retain the phonetic palatalization found in all Uralic languages except Northern Eflanese. Per Eflanese orthography, this is denoted with a 'j', e.g. voiqj, cf. standard voiqs.

Usually, a distinction is made between a more distantly related Koquize language that is spoken in those parts of Koquizj that never have been ruled from the West. However, the terms Koquize and Koquize dialects are often used without distinctions, primarily denoting dialects spoken on the Koquize Isthmus and in Ingraz, i.e. in the Pietari area, but in a way that diplomatically may leave open for interpretation the question of whether the speaker considers the Koquize language a dialect of Eflanese or not. Hence, the many refugees from Eflanese Koquizj, who were evacuated during World War II and resettled all over Efladim, speak Savzoqnian dialects, although their dialects in everyday speech are often referred to as Koquize.

Formal and informal Finnish
There are two main varieties of Eflanese used throughout the country. One is the "standard language" (poijiquilka), and the other is the "spoken language" poijweveq. The standard language is used in formal situations like church sermons, political speeches and newscasts. Its written form, the "book language" (poijzep'ae), is used nearly in all of the written texts, not always excluding even the dialogue of common people in popular prose. The term "standard language" does not actually exactly coincide with the term poijiquilka, because the definition is that poijiquilka lacks the everyday colloquial register.

The spoken language, on the other hand, is the main variety of Eflanese to be used in popular TV and radio shows, at workplaces and may be preferred to speaking a dialect in personal communication. Also, the standard language is quite rare in personal letters and in conversations on the Internet, where strict "correctness" is not in force. The extent of the differences between the two is comparable to the differences between Standard English and some English ethnolect.

The spoken language has mostly developed naturally from earlier forms of Eflanese, and spread from main cultural and political centres. The book language, however, has always been a consciously constructed medium for literature. It preserves grammatical patterns that have mostly vanished from the colloquial varieties and, as its main application is writing, it features complex syntactic patterns that are not easy to handle when used in speech. The spoken language develops significantly faster, and the grammatical and phonological simplifications includes also the most common pronouns and suffixes, which sums up to frequent but modest differences. Some sound changes have been left out from the formal language, such as the irregularization of some common verbs by assimilation, e.g. koiza- → koi-.

Eflanese children usually acquire the knowledge of the standard language in school, but many children who read much learn it as their written "first language". Written language certainly still exerts a considerable influence upon the spoken word, due to the fact that illiteracy is nonexistent and that many Eflanese are avid readers. In fact, it is still not entirely uncommon to meet people who "talk like a book" (jaktak o quij zep'ae), although this is seen as pedantic. More common is the intrusion of typically book-like constructions into a colloquial discourse, as a kind of quote from written Eflanese. It should also be noted that it is quite common to hear book-like and polished speech on radio or TV, and the constant exposure to such carefully prepared language tends to lead to the adoption of book-like constructions even in everyday language. However, a foreign learner of Eflanese who aims to live and work in Efladim should try to acquire a grasp of the most common colloquial reductions in speech, because anybody not conversant with the talk of the street would feel somewhat at a loss in a relaxed speech situation, even if he were entirely able to understand the formal language of the news media.

The orthography of the informal language follows that of the formal language. However, sometimes sandhi may be transcribed, especially the internal ones, e.g. kovizek → kovizzek. This never takes place in formal language.

Examples

 * formal language &mdash; colloquial language
 *  tu iz ko vi &mdash; e iz ko q  "they go" (loss of distinction of animacy and the difference between the plural and the singular)
 * ue me(z) juiqe &mdash; ue mz jui(qe) "do you have?" (vowel deletion)
 * teiz nore zle &mdash; tez nre zlerke or tezre zlerke "we don't say" (notice: fusion of tezre transcribed, also the first person plural is replaced with the passive)
 * ( oilq )zep'ae qú &mdash; oi(ŋ) zep'ae "my book" (notice: sandhi q+z → ǫz transcribed)
 * kuiezoquix &mdash; kui(ka)uix "sixty-five"
 * koi zan n &mdash; koi z n "I'm coming" (irregular verb)
 * rëot i n &mdash; rëoi(n) "red" (unstressed diphthong becomes a very short vowel)
 * jopq ze i &mdash; hig jopqz "probably will fix"
 * kwiez mmo &mdash; oiqje kameszn(e) kwiezt "after we had gone" (notice: sandhi nm → mm transcribed, note that it is written as "kameszz rather than "kameszm")


 * Note that there are noticeable differences within dialects. These examples are mostly from spoken language which is spoken in the Capital area (Póisedone dialect or even Póisedone slang).

Phonology
Characteristic features of Eflanese are vowel harmony and an agglutinative morphology; due to the extensive use of the latter, words can be quite long.

The main stress is always on the first syllable, and it is articulated by adding approximately 100 ms more length to the stressed vowel. Stress does not cause any measurable modifications in vowel quality (very much unlike English). However, stress is not strong and words appear evenly stressed. In some cases, stress is so weak that the highest points of volume, pitch and other indicators of "articulation intensity" are not on the first syllable, although native speakers recognize the first syllable as a stressed syllable.

There are eight vowels, whose lexical and grammatical role is highly important, and which are unusually strictly controlled, so that there is almost no allophony. Vowels are as follows, followed by IPA when not identical: a [ɑ], e, i, o, u, y. These are always different phonemes in the initial syllable; for noninitial syllable, see morphophonology below.

One phoneme is the chroneme, such that Eflanese appears to have long and short vowels and consonants; thus, long vowels behave as vowels followed by a consonant, not as lengthened vowels. The quality of long vowels mostly overlaps with the quality of short vowels, with the exception of u, which is centralized with respect to uu. There are eighteen phonemic diphthongs; like vowels, diphthongs do not have allophony.

Eflanese has a consonant inventory of small to moderate size, where voicing is not distinctive, and there are only glottal and unvoiced alveolar fricatives. Eflanese has very few non-alveolar coronal consonants.

Almost all consonant have phonemic geminated forms. These are independent, but occur only medially when phonemic.

Independent consonant clusters are not allowed in native words, except for a small set of two-consonant syllable coda, e.g. 'rs' in oirsaq. However, due to a number of recently adopted loanwords using them, e.g. strutsi "ostrich", Eflanese speakers can pronounce them, even if it is somewhat awkward.

Eflanese has only two fricatives, namely /s/ and /h/. All other fricatives are recognized as foreign, of which Finnish speakers can usually reliably distinguish /f/ and /ʃ/.

Morphophonology
Eflanese has a thick layer of morphophonology between grammar ("logic") and phonology ("sounds"). The most important processes are vowel harmony and consonant gradation.

Vowel harmony is a redundancy feature, which means that the feature [±back] is uniform within a word, and so it is necessary to interpret it only once for a given word. It is meaning-distinguishing in the initial syllable, and suffixes follow; so, if the listener hears [±back] in any part of the word, they can derive [±back] for the initial syllable. For example, if the word begins touzii-, it can be agglutinated to toueenkesi, where the final vowel becomes the back vowel 'i' (rather than the front vowel 'â') because the initial syllable contains the back vowels 'ou'. This is especially notable because vowels 'a' and 'â' are different, meaning-distinguishing phonemes, not interchangeable or allophonic.

Consonant gradation is a lenition process for P, T and K, with the oblique stem "weakened" from the nominative stem, or vice versa. For example, naikke "precise" has the oblique root naike-, as in naiken "of the precise". There is also another gradation pattern, which is older, and causes simple elision of T and K. However, it is very common since it is found in the partitive case marker: if V is a single vowel, V+ta → Va, e.g. *vonzi+ta → vonzia. Another instance is the imperative, which changes into a glottal stop in the singular but is shown as an overt 'ka' in plural, e.g. koiz vs. koizkaâ.

Grammar
The morphosyntactic alignment is nominative-accusative; but, there are two object cases: accusative and partitive. The contrast between the two is telicity, where accusative denotes actions completed as intended (joketa nairze "I shot the elk dead"), and partitive denotes incomplete actions (joketa nairzi "I shot at the elk"). Often this is confused with perfectivity, but the only element of perfectivity that exists in Eflanese is that there are some perfective verbs. Transitivity is distinguished by different verbs for transitive and intransitive, e.g. rakzekoina "to solve something" vs. rakzej "to be solved by itself". There are several frequentative and momentane verb categories.

Verbs gain personal suffixes for each person; these suffixes are grammatically more important than pronouns, which are often not used at all. The infinitive is not the uninflected form but has a suffix -ta or -da; the closest one to an uninflected form is the third person singular indicative. There are four persons, first ("I, we"), second ("you, you"), third ("s/he, they") and impersonal (often called "passive", similar to e.g. English "people say/do/.."). There are four tenses, namely present, past, perfect and pluperfect; the system mirrors the Germanic system. The future tense is not needed due to context and the telic contrast. For example, jimen zep'aen  "I read a book (completely)" indicates a future, when jimen zep'aeé "I read a book (not yet complete)" indicates present.

Nouns may be suffixed with the markers for the aforementioned accusative case and partitive case, the genitive case, eight different locatives, and a few other cases. The case marker must be added not only to the main noun, but also to its modifiers; e.g. foika+sze que+sze, literally "big-in house-in". Possession is marked with a possessive suffix; separate possessive pronouns are unknown. Pronouns gain suffixes just as nouns do.

Lexicon
Eflanese extensively employs regular agglutination. It has a smaller core vocabulary than, for example, English, and uses derivative suffixes to a greater extent. As an example, take the word zep'ae "a book", from which one can form derivatives zep'eaei "a letter" (of the alphabet), zik'ae "a piece of correspondence, a letter", zep'aenoq "a library", zep'aetoriz "an author", zik'aeozer "literature", zepleae "to write", zep'aetiz "a writer", zepklaez "a scribe, a clerk", zepez'aeon "something in written form", zep'aelë'i "to write down, register, record", zepez'aewa "a font", and others.

Here are some of the more common such suffixes. Which of each pair is used depends on the word being suffixed in accordance with the rules of vowel harmony.
 * -iz/riz : agent (one who does) (e. g. men "to read" → menriz "reader")
 * -wariq/wâriqu: inhabitant of (either noun or adjective). Iangelsk "England" → iangelskwâriqu "English person or thing"; Póisedone → póisedonewariq "person from The Holy Póisedone".
 * -noq/nóq: collection of. For example: zep'ae "a book" → zep-aenoq "a library"; juolre "a ship" → juolrenóq "navy, fleet".
 * -ei: instrument or tool. For example: zep'aeo "to book, to file" → zep'eaei "a letter" (of the alphabet); voke "to whisk" → voken'ei "a whisk, mixer".
 * -uri/yri: an agent or instrument (kioqs "to dig" → kioqsyri "a digging machine"; juolre "a ship" → juolreuri "shipper, shipmaster").
 * -os/es: result of some action (koiza "to come" → koizes "result, outcome"; taok "to do" → taos "a piece of work").
 * -tei: lack of something, "un-", "-less" (poilk "happiness" → poilktei "unhappy"; efla "home" → eflatei "homeless").

Verbal suffixes are extremely diverse; several frequentatives and momentanes differentiating causative, volitional-unpredictable and anticausative are found, often combined with each other. For example, kopats "to jump", koppat "to be jumping", kopatse "to be jumping wantonly", kopautta "to make someone jump once", kopaottaz "to make someone jump repeatedly" (or "to boss someone around"), "kopottazqu" to make someone to cause a third person to jump repeatedly", "kopauttanes" "to, without aim, make some jump repeatedly", kohtpas "to jump suddenly" (in anticausative meaning), koppau "to jump around repeatedly", koppaunes "to be jumping repeatedly and wantonly", "koppatei" without jumping, "kopatsei" without jumping around. Often the diversity and compactness of this agglutination is illustrated with narezohhe'skoélequinem "I wonder if I should run around aimlessly".

Orthography
The Eflanese orthography is morphemic, and the morphemic notation is built upon the phonetic principle: with just a few subtle exceptions, within a single morpheme, each phoneme (distinct sound) of the language is represented by exactly one grapheme (independent letter), and each grapheme represents exactly one phoneme, if the morpheme is pronounced in isolation. This makes the language easy for its speakers to spell, and facilitates learning to read and write. The rule of thumb for Eflanese ortography is: write as you read, read as you write.

Some orthographical notes:
 * Long vowels and consonants are represented by double occurrences of the relevant graphemes. This causes no confusion, and permits these sounds to be written without having to nearly double the size of the alphabet to accommodate separate graphemes for long sounds.
 * The n in nk is a velar nasal, as in English. As an exception to the phonetic principle, there is no g in ng, which is a long velar nasal as in English singalong.
 * The grapheme h occurring before a consonant sounds slightly harder (initially breathy voiced, then voiceless) than when occurring before a vowel.
 * Sandhi is not transcribed; the spelling of morphemes is immutable, e.g. koein+te /koeimte/.
 * Some consonants (v, j, d) and all consonants occurring in (always medial) clusters do not have distinctive length, and consequently, their allophonic variation is not indicated in spelling, e.g. toejin /toejin/ (I limit) vs. teijin /teijjin/ (I haul).
 * Pre-1950's texts and personal names use w for v. Both correspond to the same phoneme, the labiodental approximant /ʋ/, a v without the fricative ("hissing") quality of the English v.

The letters â [æ] and ô [ø], although written as umlauted a and o, do not represent phonological umlauts, and they are considered independent graphemes; the letter shapes have been copied from Gothic. An appropriate parallel from the Latin alphabet are the characters C and G (uppercase), which historically have a closer kinship than many other characters (G is a derivation of C) but are considered distinct letters, and changing one for the other will change meanings (cut vs. gut).

If the graphemes â and ô are not accessible due to technical limitations, they must be replaced with a and o, respectively. As they are not umlauts, it is wrong to write them as umlaut digraphs ae, oe, as in German. Sequences ae and oe are distinct phonemes from â and ô, e.g. koaen "I seek" vs. koâ "he".

The sounds š and ž are not a part of Eflanese language itself. Although they occur in some rare loanwords, their principal use is transcription of foreign names. For technical reasons or convenience, the graphemes sh and zh are often used in quickly or less carefully written texts instead of š and ž. This is a deviation from the phonetic principle, and as such is liable to cause confusion, but the damage is minimal as the transcribed words are foreign in any case. Eflanese does not use the sounds f, š or ž, but for the sake of exactitude, they can be included in spelling. (The recommendation cites the Russian play Hovanshtshina as an example.) Many speakers pronounce all of them s, or distinguish only between s and š, because Eflanese has no voiced sibilants.

Language example
''Oi nakarez toi woppen âe sen. Ikka ne mro quilleensë ju. Mayq densi dars orn qellôôz jue. Qauzzl muni gohrezs'' &mdash; Mior Sziq: The Travellers without destination; these words were also inscribed in the 5 Kaitën note.

Translation: "The benevolent sun watched them. By no means was it angry at them. Perhaps it felt a kind of compassion towards them. Jolly good brothers."

Basic greetings

 * (Nakama) torre - Good morning


 * (Nakama) eople - Good afternoon (literally "Good day")


 * (Nakama) zie'eople - Good afternoon


 * (Nakama) quilos - Good evening


 * Nakama yûle / Yûlz - Good night / Night night


 * Ói ói! / Hai´z! - Hello!


 * Óis! / Hihô! - Hi!


 * Lattr! / Ree Ree! - Bye!


 * Nâquz - See you later


 * Nâqail - Goodbye


 * Nakam Topqul! - Nice to meet you


 * Arrigat - Thank you


 * Arrigat, samón - Likewise


 * Heh zeikweg? - How are you / How you doing? (Not used among strangers.)


 * Arrigat quioz - I'm fine, thank you


 * Urussai! - Welcome!

Important words

 * hái/kee [Informal / slang] - yes


 * yae - no, not


 * aro / jearo - I am


 * aro, jeib, hipz - I, you, he/she


 * ar, jeb - I, you [slang]


 * ouz, nes, ket - we, you, they


 * qu - it, he/she [slang]


 * moo kai - of course


 * juur zenet! - One moment please!


 * aronna mec - I have


 * jeiben mec - You have


 * kara jeiben ? - do you have?
 * eith, zsur, vein - one, two, three


 * trô, kari, zensi - four, five, six


 * torrie, torezzuq - seven, eight


 * oplek, ôâkzi - nine, ten


 * kurrra, notemo, sanekion - hundred, thousand, million


 * kominé - forgive me, excuse me


 * kôminé sei ! - I'm sorry (apology)


 * joppar sen - I'm sorry (sympathy)


 * vibc - wine


 * Eflopze - Efladim


 * Eflanze - Eflanese (language)


 * Eflawariqû - Eflanese(person


 * ar mei - dialect version of minä olen


 * jeb mei - dialect version of sinä olet


 * Heh kabak? - how are you? (literally "what is heard?", thus it is not used among strangers. )


 * Yae jokai - I don't understand


 * Jokai - I understand


 * ¹Jokaides(ka) Eflanze? - Do you understand Finnish?


 * ¹Mikkeru(ka) iangelskë? - Do you speak English?


 * Ara waz iangelskwâriqu / arrikawariq / kanarwariq / eistrinewariqû / irlawariq - I am English / American / Canadian / Australian / Irish


 * ¹ Kar(ka) nes iangelskwâriqu? - Are you English?

¹ ''-ka is added to make the sentence formal. Otherwise, without the added "-ka", it is informal. It is also added when talking to more than one person.''