Eruvite

Eruvite is one of the primary spoken languages of Eluvatar.

Phonology

Consonants

	bilabial	labio- dental	dental	alveolar	velar	labio- velar
nasal	m			n
plosive	p  b			t d	k g
fricative		f  v	θ	s	x
trill				r
approximant						w
lateral approximant				l

Eruvite lacks any consonant clusters within the same syllable except for /nd/, which appears as a syllable coda. Syllables may begin with any of the language's consonant sounds with the exception of /θ/, which may only appear as a syllable coda. Syllable codas in addition to /θ/ are limited to /s/, /m/, /n/, /l/, /r/ and /nd/.

Vowels

	front	back
close	i	ɯ
mid	ɛ
open		ɑ  ɒ

Grammar

Eruvite is a heavily inflected language.

Roots and Stems

The language is based on root morphemes which are subsequently modified with stems to create nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Root morphemes fall into two distinct classes: noun-verb roots and adjective roots.

root	type	noun	verb	adjective	adverb
min city	noun-verb	minas city	minasuvo, minasivo be urban, urbanize	minaende urban
mend go	noun-verb	mendum departure	menduvo, mendivo go, send	mendende departing
annu new	adjective	annum originality	annuvo, annivo be new, restore	annu new	annende newly

This system often results in single words which translate poorly into English and other languages, where they are instead expressed with multiple words. For example, where an English speaker would say "I am tall" a speaker of Eruvite would add to the root for tall (bano) the stem necessary to create a verb and properly inflect it, resulting in simply "banuvo". Native speakers will often choose the combination of roots and stems when speaking which will result in the fewest words in everyday conversation (though these words will not necessarily always be short).

Orthography

Eruvite is written with the Eruwar, a featural abugida.