Rutenikan
The Rutenikan language (rutēnikīj jezik) is a Glagolan language native to the Rutenkīj tribe living along the mouth of the Povolnreka River. It is widely used by the Rutenkij tribe and its subject tribes throughout the Povolnreka river valley. It shares a high degree of mutual intelligibility with the other members of the Glagolan language family, all of which descended from the Glagoliz̧an language spoken by the seafaring peoples that migrated to the region of Vižobrig in the dawning of the Modern Age.
The Rutenikan language is written in its own modified version of the Glagolan alphabet, making Rutenikan the only language in its family to use a modified version of the common alphabet. The characters themselves remain unchanged from the parent alphabet, only letters were added or removed to fit the alphabet to the Rutenikan language exactly.
Phonology
The Rutenikan language has nine distinct vowel sounds that are classified as either being long or short, a classification which may result in pronunciation shifts based on adjacent consonant clusters. Individual consonants, with the exception of the nasals (m and n), lateral (l), and approximates (v and j) are accompanied by a preceding short vowel. Longer consonant clusters and the consonants listed above are typically preceded by a long vowel.
Syllable structure in the Rutenikan typically follows, as is the case for the vast majority of syllables in the language, a fairly simple (C)V(C) structure, with most consonants available in either initial or final position. Longer consonant clusters of up to four consonants are possible, however rare, resulting in a (C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C) syllable structure.
Vowels
The table above presents the native Rutenikan, a Latin transliteration, and IPA transcription.Consonants
The table above presents the native Rutenikan, a Latin transliteration, and IPA transcription.Morphology
Despite significant morphological leveling from its parent language, Rutenikan still maintains a highly synthetic-inflectional structure. For example, the three grammatical genders present in Glagoliz̧an have been reduced to two, and the dual number has, in most places, been absorbed into the plural. Morphologically, Rutenikan, like its parent language, is classified as a fusional language, using a single inflectional morpheme to denote several grammatical or syntactic features.
Adjective Order
Non-numeric adjectives that would, in English, be in attributive position are joined to the nouns they describe in the form of compound nouns, with the adjective stem preceding the noun. For example "a green hill" would be rendered as "zelenkopeş" from the lexical entries "zelen-" (green) and "kopeş" (hill). While a compound noun with any number of adjectives could be formed this way, common practice limits the number of adjectives to two, with the more important of the two adjectives being placed first. As such "a big GREEN hill" would be rendered as "zelengolemkoreş" while "a BIG green hill" would be "golemzelenkoreş".
Numeric adjectives and those adjectives that would, in English, be placed in predicate position follow the noun they describe, with no intermediate words. For example, the English sentence "A town is small" would render as "Mjesta mala". In the case where both a numeric adjective and a predicate modify the same noun, the numeric adjective always precedes the predicate. As such, the sentence "Two towns are small" would translate to "Mjestāj kovēj malāj."
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