Eruvite

Eruvite is one of the primary spoken languages of Eluvatar.

Phonology

Eruvite distinguishes 21 distinct phonemes, 16 consonants and 5 vowels to be specific.

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	u
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	minu, mini be urban, urbanize	minende urban	minendeth urbanely
mend go	noun-verb	mendum departure	mendu, mendi go, send	mendende departing	mendendeth dynamically
annu new	adjective	annum originality	annu, anni 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).

Verbs

Eruvite verbs are a complex construction of [?] different components:

root-transitivity/voice/subjunctive-affirmative/negative/dubiative-primary mood-aspect-tense/person-secondary mood

The very first component of any verb is the root, which carries the basic meaning.

The second component of a verb marks the transitivity and voice of a verb, and is used to indicate the subjunctive, conditional and hypothetical moods as well.

A verb may be either intransitive or transitive, and from the perspective of a English speaker a change in transitivity will change the meaning of a verb. For example, "mend" ("go") as verb can either be translated as "go" or "send" depending on whether it is intransitive or transitive respectively. From an Eruvite perspective however it is one verb, simply different inflections. There are three voices: active, passive and reflexive for situations in which the subject and object are the same.

The subjunctive mood denotes a condition, the conditional mood denotes something which is dependent on a condition and the hypothetical mood denotes a statement which is not true but potentially could be so.

	indicative	subjunctive	conditional	hypothetical
intransitive active	-u-: annuvo I am new	-ui-: annuivo if I am new	-iu-: anniuvo I would be new	-eo-: anneovo I could be new
transitive active	-i-: annivo I renew	-e-: annevo if I renew	-ei-: anneivo I would renew	-ie-: annievo I could renew
transitive passive	-o-: annovo I am renewed	-oe-: annoevo if I am renewed	-io-: anniovo I would be renewed	-uo-: annuovo I could be renewed
transitive reflexive	-a-: annavo I renew myself	-ae-: annaevo if I renew myself	-ia-: anniavo I would renew myself	-ua-: annuavo I could renew myself

The second component expresses the affirmative, negative or dubitative mood. The negative mood negates an action, while the dubitative mood expresses uncertainty.

mood	stem	example
affirmative	-	menduvo I go
negative	-ni-	mendunivo I do not go
dubitative	-sae-	mendusaevo I may go

These same stems, when added by themselves to a root, are also used to answer questions affirmatively, negatively or dubitatively, as Eruvite does not have words for "yes", "no" or "maybe" as English does.

Eruvite	English
Darlivim?	Do you read?
Darle	I do read/Yes
Darleni	I do not read/No
Darlesae	I may read/Maybe

The third component denotes the primary mood of the verb. There is no predetermined set of conjugations for the primary mood. Instead, any mood can be constructed by simply placing a root morpheme. The mood produced is then [root] to [verb]. This can result in moods which have equivalents in other languages, but not always.

root	English	verb	translation	equivalent mood
bodin	seem	mendubodinvo	I seem to go	inferential
angen	want	menduangenvo	I want to go	optative
casau	hate	menducasauvo	I hate going	-
galu	be able	mendugaluvo	I am able to go	modal

Adjectives

Adjectives constructed with noun-verb roots are placed after the word which they modify, while those constructed with adjective roots are placed before the word which they modify.

Orthography

Eruvite is written with the Eruwar, a featural abugida, and the Sindarin Cirth alphabet for Sindarin loanwords.

Transliteration

The most commonly used contemporary method of transliteration for the Eruvite language is the Romawar system.

	bilabial	labio- dental	dental	alveolar	velar	labio- velar
nasal	M m			N n
plosive	P p  B b			T t  D d	C c  G g
fricative		F f  V v	Th th	S s	Ch ch
trill				R r
approximant						W w
lateral approximant				L l

	front	back
close	I i	U u
mid	E e
open		A a  O o