Chalean (çaleanu)

[Iparxi_Zoi]

I have been working on a number of conlangs for a while now. My most developed conlang so far is Chalean. I'm very fond of romance languages, and two of my conlangs are romance, with Chalean being one of them.

Phonology & Alphabet:

Aa [ä]
Bb [v]; after a nasal
Cc [ʃ] before e and i; [k] elsewhere
ch [k] before e and i
Dd [ð]; [d] after a nasal
Ee [e]
Ff [f]
Gg [ʒ] before e and i; [ɣ] ([g] after a nasal) elsewhere
gh [ɣ] before e and i
Hh [always silent]
Ii
Jj [ʒ]
Ll [l]
Mm [m]
Nn [n]
Ññ [ɲ]
Oo [o]
Pp [p]
Rr [r] word-initially and before a consonant; [ɾ] intervocalically
rr [r] intervocalically
Ss
Tt [t]
th [θ]
Uu
Vv [v]; after a nasal
Xx [x]
Zz [z]

Kk, Ww, and Yy are found only in loanwords.

Chalean grammar is similar to that of Western Romance languages (i.e. Spanish, French, Catalan). One of the main differences is the preservation of the neuter gender, and its use being extended to include people, not just things. It has also inherited a declension system from Latin. Most of the verb conjugations from Latin have also been preserved.

Also, I gave it a number of Greek loanwords. Greek (medieval/modern, not ancient) has been to Chalean what Arabic was to Spanish, Slavic languages to Romanian, and Germanic tongues to French.

[Iparxi_Zoi]

Here is a sample text:

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Tode le serie humane nacen libre e aigualie in libertade e in júrata. Son dotade de rathoni e concenthai, e deben agirse le une co le altre in uno spírito de fraternidadi.

[Khemehekis]

What branch of Romance does Chalean belong to? Or is it in its own branch?

[hubris_incalculable]

What branch of Romance does Chalean belong to? Or is it in its own branch?

To my eyes it seems rather Hispanic.

[Iparxi_Zoi]

What branch of Romance does Chalean belong to? Or is it in its own branch?

It belongs to its own branch, along with 2 other conlangs .

[Iparxi_Zoi]

What branch of Romance does Chalean belong to? Or is it in its own branch?

To my eyes it seems rather Hispanic.

I did notice that as well, but its coincidental. I didn't use any modern Romance language as inspiration; I simply made Latin terms "evolve" and the end result looked Hispanic.

I did borrow a few loanwords from Spanish and Italian, since natural Romance languages also borrow from each other.

[kanejam]

Tode le serie humane nacen libre e aigualie in libertade e in júrata. Son dotade de rathoni e concenthai, e deben agirse le une co le altre in uno spírito de fraternidadi.

The change gʲ→dʒ→ʒ, kʲ→tʃ→ʃ is East Romance, although a lot of the vocab, word order and the spirantisation of voiced fricatives makes it seem very Iberian. Can you show us the vowel changes? Seeing as there are only five vowels it looks more and more like an East Romance, or possibly Central Romance. Also could you show us some noun paradigms?

[Iparxi_Zoi]

Tode le serie humane nacen libre e aigualie in libertade e in júrata. Son dotade de rathoni e concenthai, e deben agirse le une co le altre in uno spírito de fraternidadi.

The change gʲ→dʒ→ʒ, kʲ→tʃ→ʃ is East Romance, although a lot of the vocab, word order and the spirantisation of voiced fricatives makes it seem very Iberian. Can you show us the vowel changes? Seeing as there are only five vowels it looks more and more like an East Romance, or possibly Central Romance. Also could you show us some noun paradigms?

Like I mentioned earlier, Chalean does not belong to any existing branch of Romance. The lenition of voiced plosives was inspired by Greek, while the lenition of intervocalic voiceless plosives was a feature from Western Romance that I liked, so I included it.

To my knowledge, East Romance languages have 6 vowels (a, e, i, ɨ, o, u). The 5 vowel system in my conlang was also inspired by Greek. Most vowels remain unchanged, while certain /i/ and /u/ in stressed positions became /e/ and /o/ respectively. Final -u from Vulgar Latin -um became -o in masculine nouns and remained -u in neuter nouns. Also, final -a from the Latin neuter plural became -e (inspiration from Ancient Greek: in most Indo-European languages, h₂ became -a in feminine nouns, while in Ancient Greek it became -ē, so why not apply the same to neuter nouns?)
Also, I did change /e/ to /a/ in other environments as well:

Ex: sed became sa "but"

[kanejam]

...

Like I mentioned earlier, Chalean does not belong to any existing branch of Romance. The lenition of voiced plosives was inspired by Greek, while the lenition of intervocalic voiceless plosives was a feature from Western Romance that I liked, so I included it.

To my knowledge, East Romance languages have 6 vowels (a, e, i, ɨ, o, u). The 5 vowel system in my conlang was also inspired by Greek. Most vowels remain unchanged, while certain /i/ and /u/ in stressed positions became /e/ and /o/ respectively. Final -u from Vulgar Latin -um became -o in masculine nouns and remained -u in neuter nouns. Also, final -a from the Latin neuter plural became -e (inspiration from Ancient Greek: in most Indo-European languages, h₂ became -a in feminine nouns, while in Ancient Greek it became -ē, so why not apply the same to neuter nouns?)
Also, I did change /e/ to /a/ in other environments as well:

Ex: sed became sa "but"

What are some for the particulars of your Romance branch? The Eastern Branch consists mainly of Italian and Romanian and is characterised by the palatalisation with /kʲ/ → /tʃ/, rather than the /kʲ/ → /ts/ of the Western Romance languages. They also have a few other things in common.

The vowel inventory you posted is the Romanian vowel system. Italian has the 7 vowel system that developed in common with the Western Romance languages. The vowel changes you describe are AFAIK like Sardinian, i.e. /a aː/ → /a/, /ɛ eː/ → /e/.

You need to give more examples, this description is a bit incomplete to comment on. Conjugate some nouns and decline some verbs, s'il vous plaît.

[Iparxi_Zoi]

Oh, my bad; I'd always seen Italian classified as an Italo-Western or a Southern Romance language, never eastern.

The declension system is pretty basic: nominative/accusative and dative/genitive.

Ex: jura (n.) "right"

Nom./Acc.: jura (sing.); júrata (plu.)
Dat./Gen.: jurai (sing.); júratis (plu.)

cailo (m.) "sky; heaven"

Nom./Acc.: cailo (sing.); cailos (plu.)
Dat./Gen.: caili (sing.); cailis (plu.)

Verb conjugations are similar to other Romance languages, except with a synthetic pluperfect like in Portuguese, and with future and conditional tenses, and also a synthetic future perfect tense.

Ex: ezaréi (I will have eaten); ezaresti (you will have eaten), etc.
vs. Spanish: habré comido, habrás comido, etc.

ezara (I had eaten); ezaras (you had eaten) etc.
vs. French: j'avais mangé, tu avais mangé, etc.

Here's the full conjugation of ezare (to eat):

Present Indicative: ezo, ezas, eza, ezamos, ezates, ezan
Future Indicative: ezaró, ezarás, ezará, ezaremos, ezaretes, ezarán
Imperfect Indicative: ezaba, ezabas, ezaba, ezábamos, ezábates, ezaban
Preterite Indicative: ezái, ezasti, ezáu, ezamus, ezastes, ezaron
Pluperfect Indicative: ezara, ezaras, ezara, ezáramus, ezárates, ezaran
Future Perfect Indicative: ezaréi, ezaresti, ezaréu, ezaremus, ezarestes, ezareron

Present Subjunctive: eze, ezes, eze, ezemos, ezetes, ezen
Imperfect Subjunctive: ezari, ezaris, ezari, ezárimos, ezárites, ezarin
Pluperfect Subjunctive: ezase, ezases, ezase, ezásemus, ezásetes, ezasen

Present Conditional: ezareba, ezarebas, ezareba, ezarébamos, ezarébates, ezareban

Affirmative Imperative: eza, ezemo, ezate
Negative Imperative: ezes, ezemos, ezetes

Past Participle: ezadu
Gerund: ezando

[plathhs]

So what's with the <ç> in the thread subject? I don't see it in your orthography or phoneme inventory. Could it perhaps be an exonym of some sort?

[Avo]

Can we have a list of sound changes? Is this supposed to be spoken somewhere in Europe? How did all those Greek words enter the language? And why do all romlangs here look like Ibero-Romance and are super unique in preserving case and neuter gendr?

[Chagen]

Can we have a list of sound changes? Is this supposed to be spoken somewhere in Europe? How did all those Greek words enter the language? And why do all romlangs here look like Ibero-Romance and are super unique in preserving case and neuter gendr?

Because doing that is more interesting when EVERY SINGLE ROMANCE LANGUAGE THAT ACTUALLY EXISTS got rid of them? Seriously, that's one of my pet peeves about real-life romance. No case system. SO boring.

[Click]

Can we have a list of sound changes? Is this supposed to be spoken somewhere in Europe? How did all those Greek words enter the language? And why do all romlangs here look like Ibero-Romance and are super unique in preserving case and neuter gendr?

Because doing that is more interesting when EVERY SINGLE ROMANCE LANGUAGE THAT ACTUALLY EXISTS got rid of them? Seriously, that's one of my pet peeves about real-life romance. No case system. SO boring.

Because EVERY SINGLE ROMANCE CONLANG THAT ACTUALLY EXIST retains them. (all caps because Chagen) Also, languages without cases can be very interesting.

[cntrational]

Can we have a list of sound changes? Is this supposed to be spoken somewhere in Europe? How did all those Greek words enter the language? And why do all romlangs here look like Ibero-Romance and are super unique in preserving case and neuter gendr?

Because doing that is more interesting when EVERY SINGLE ROMANCE LANGUAGE THAT ACTUALLY EXISTS got rid of them? Seriously, that's one of my pet peeves about real-life romance. No case system. SO boring.

Romanian. <_<

[Iparxi_Zoi]

So what's with the <ç> in the thread subject? I don't see it in your orthography or phoneme inventory. Could it perhaps be an exonym of some sort?

Sorry! The Çç is part of my orthography, I just forgot to include it The cedilla is used for "soft" pronunciation /ʃ/ before a, o, and u.

So ça = /ʃa/ ço = /ʃo/, etc.

[Iparxi_Zoi]

Can we have a list of sound changes? Is this supposed to be spoken somewhere in Europe? How did all those Greek words enter the language? And why do all romlangs here look like Ibero-Romance and are super unique in preserving case and neuter gendr?

Here are a couple of sound changes:

Palatalization of Velars before front vowels:
/kʲ → ʧ →ʃ/ /gʲ → ʤ → ʒ/

Palatization of Ll and Nn:
/lj → ʎ → ʝ →ʒ/ /nj → ɲ/

Spirantization of voiced plosives:
/b → β → v/ /d → ð/ /g → ɣ/

Romanian has a neuter gender and case system, so a language preserving these features is not just mere fantasy; and it's more interesting as Chagen said. Originally, I had made the conlang without cases but I decided to include them later on.
I consider the resemblance to Ibero-Romance coincidental. It could be because I kept final vowels (unlike languages like French, Catalan, and Occitan) and I didn't give words extreme mutations, like those that occurred in French (AQVARIVM → évier).

It is spoken in Europe by a conculture in the Southern Mediterranean, an island to be precise. The island was also part of the Eastern Roman Empire, hence the influx of Greek words.

[kanejam]

Is there a reason you use ñ and ç in your orthography? It makes it look very western romance. If I were you I would follow Eastern romance and have gn for ñ and cia /Sa/ cio /So/ etc. excuse the cxs unless there's a good reason for it to be influenced by the Iberian languages. Also why is the reflex of caelum -> cailo rather than celu? You seem to be ignoring the change that ae, oe -> ē that seems to have happened if not during then right after classical times. And please give us some sound changes! Your verbal paradigm seems fine though. It looks like there's a d -> z change before front vowels? Where does /z/ come from?

Edit: Sorry I posted too soon.

[Iparxi_Zoi]

Is there a reason you use ñ and ç in your orthography? It makes it look very western romance. If I were you I would follow Eastern romance and have gn for ñ and cia /Sa/ cio /So/ etc. excuse the cxs unless there's a good reason for it to be influenced by the Iberian languages. Also why is the reflex of caelum -> cailo rather than celu? You seem to be ignoring the change that ae, oe -> ē that seems to have happened if not during then right after classical times. And please give us some sound changes! Your verbal paradigm seems fine though. It looks like there's a d -> z change before front vowels? Where does /z/ come from?

Edit: Sorry I posted too soon.

I read up on the diphthongs and you are right about the ae, oe → e change, so I'll work on that.
I prefer Western Romance orthography , and thanks! I worked for a while on the verb conjugations.

Ezare comes from esus, supine of edo "to eat" from Latin. Similar constructs are found in natural Romance languages:

ex. Spanish olvidar, French oublier, Romanian uita from oblitus, supine of obliviscor "to forget".

Other sound changes:

di became /ʒ/ in certain environments

DIEM → ge
DIGITVM → diedo → gedo

Intervocalic -s- became -z-

esare (Vulgar Latin, from ESVS) → ezare
MVSICA → múzica