Kintet
The Kintet or Kitlin language was first spoken on the Celestial Plane by the gods, and after the birth of sentient life, it formed the basis of what would become the languages of Kálit .
Writing System
While initially written with an abjad known as Kídodh "(written) characters", millenia of usage by mortals resulted in the development of a streamlined alphabet know as Molkídodh "small (written) characters".
Molkídodh had a number of benefits over Kintet's earlier writing system; glyphs were wider and easier to be read from a distance, they had fewer deep curves and were therefore easier to carve into stone monuments, and Kintet's vowel-heavy morphology lent itself better to a writing system with vowels equally as represented as consonants.
Both Kídodh and Molkídodh are written from right to left, and both consistently connect their letters to those adjacent to them with cursive lines called pásidh. Molkídodh has a larger "capital" form of every letter that is used Whenever Beginning A New Word, whereas in Kídodh all consonants are of an equal height with all vowels written as diacritics on their preceding consonants.
Phonology
The phonemic consonants seen in Standard Kintet are as follows:
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Post-Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal Stop | m | n | ñ | ||||
| Plosive | p | b | t | d | k | g | ||||
| Fricative | f | v | th | dh | s | z | ç | j | kh | h | |
| Affricate | ts | ch | gh | |||||
| Approximant | l | y | w | ||||
| Trill | r, -rr- | ||||||
| Tap | -r- |
The phonemic monophthong vowels seen in Standard Kintet are as follows:
| Front | Center | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | í, ī | i | ú, ū |
| Close-mid | é, ē | o, ō | |
| Open-mid | e | ā | u |
| Open | á | a |
Long vowels are marked with macrons (as seen above), and are slightly more closed in quality than their short counterparts. <ā> is more centered, closer to the typical positioning of a schwa.
Kintet also has two phonemic diphthongs: /ai/ and /au/.
Syllable stress is variable, and dependent upon part of speech.
For adjectives and adverbs, stress is on the penultimate syllable. For example: astelë /a'stele/, khúsoë /khú'soe/
For nouns, stress is upon the syllable that contains the article-marking vowel; the stress is on the final syllable for nouns in the nominative, accusative, dative, and vocative cases, whereas the stress is on the penultimate syllable for nouns in the lative, ablative, genitive, and instrumental cases.
For examples with syllable final stress: baçtelus /baçte'lus/ "the fortress", prámános /prámá'nos/ "a golden one", dafidevut /dafide'vut/ "the place of wealth/treasure".
For examples with penultimate syllable stress: "from the sand" vrāsuni /vrā'suni/, "to/into the trees" graçuná /gra'çuná/, belívé /be'lívé/ "my friend's".
For verbs, intransitive verbs are stressed on the final syllable, whereas transitive verbs are stressed on subject-marking vowel, which is typically the penultimate syllable.
Morphology
Nouns
Kintet is an agglutinative language, as shown by its extensive case system for nouns:
| Singular | Plural | Collective | Non-count/mass nouns | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | -t | -th | -dh | -k |
| Accusative | -s | -th | -dh | -m |
| Dative | -p | -pith | -pidh | -p |
| Locative | -b (often -v instead) | -bith | -bidh | -b (often -v instead) |
| Allative | -ná | -náth | -nádh | -ná |
| Ablative | -ni | -nith | -nidh | -ni |
| Instrumental | -di | -dith | -didh | -di |
| Comitative | -dá | -dádh | -dádh | -dá |
| Vocative | -kh | -th | -dh | -kh |
Prior to the case suffix, each noun stem has an article marker attached to it. -u- and -o- mark the definite and indefinite articles, respectively; -ai- and -au- mark the near and far demonstratives, respectively. Names formerly had a more extensive system for marking politeness and social norms, but by 5160 AW had boiled down to -e- for most names and -á- if you're old-fashioned or just an ass kisser.
Singular nouns use the endings of non-count nouns when their article marks a possessive pronoun.
The genitive is formed more similarly to the way adjectives are formed, and follows a different pattern of declension.
| Singular, mass nouns | Plural, collective | |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | -to | -tho |
| Accusative, vocative | -so | -tho |
| Dative, locative | -vo | -tho |
| Ablative, allative | -no | -tho |
| Instrumental, comitative | -do | -dho |
Adjectives
Adjectives match their noun in case and in number, however both are simplified from the previous chart.
| Singular, mass nouns | Plural, collective | |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative, vocative | -ë | -eth |
| Accusative | -es | -eth |
| Dative, locative | -ev | -eth |
| Ablative, allative | -en | -eth |
| Instrumental, comitative | -ed | -edh |
Syntax
VSO, accusative alignment
Adjective Order
Adjectives follow the noun being described
Structural Markers
Kintet as an interrogative particle, ci, that is used at the beginning of any interrogative phrase (question).
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