Nebulonic language

The Nebulonic language (Nebulonic: ? //; Tözen Tan: Tozeñmosés; Sajem Tan: Tözenêc, Tözenmocêc) is the native language of the Nebulones. It is a language isolate, and it is made up of several dialects. The Central Highlands dialect is adopted as the standard, and that is the form of the language primarily presented here. Dialect differences may occasionally be noted, however. It is an endangered language, with its speakers having switched largely to Sajem Tan and Tözen Tan. Over 75% of its speakers are concentrated in the interior of the Highlands. Revitalization attempts are underway and are meeting with some success, partly thanks to the language's governing body, the Nebulonic Language Association (NLA), as well as other groups. Standard Nebulonic, Sajem Tan, and Tözen Tan are all equally official in Tözendin (Nebulonia) and all public officials must be proficient in all three languages.

History
The earliest stage of Nebulonic is Proto-Nebulonic, followed by Late Proto-Nebulonic and Old Nebulonic.

Phonology and Orthography
The Nebulonic language natively uses a version of the Chelyran alphabet, and is conventionally transcribed in the real world with the Roman alphabet.

Vowels
Nebulonian uses a seven-vowel system. There are three dimensions of height (close, mid, and open) and two dimensions of frontedness (front and back), except in close vowels, in which there is also a central vowel.

Standard Nebulonian has one diphthong: /ei̯/ ‹ei›.

Accent
Nebulonic has a stress accent. Stress is lexical and must be learned with each word. Stressed vowels are marked with an acute accent; in diphthongs, the second vowel receives the acute accent.

Morphosyntax
Nebulonic is lightly fusional.

Word order
Nebulonic sentences are typically SOV, though VSO can be used to emphasize the verbs. As a slightly topic-prominent language, in order to emphasize the subject or the object, it is put into a focus phrase: "salmon TOP you enjoy" : "Salmon you enjoy." : "You enjoy salmon."

Verb phrases
The verb in Nebulonic does not receive any agglutinative markers, but it is marked with particles that are not attached. Each verb in a sentence must be preceded by a marker that shows the tense and aspect (see chart below). Person and number are indicated by the subject pronoun.

These particles have their origin in Late Proto-Nebulonic, in which each verb was prefixed with a tense marker (*on: future, *e: present, *a: past) and preceded by a modal verb that indicated aspect (*te: perfective, *mo: imperfective). By the time of Old Nebulonic, these had merged into the particle system seen above, in slightly different form:

Noun phrases
Nouns themselves are marked for number only. There are two types of nouns: countable and uncountable. Countable nouns denote things that can be counted, such as boats, houses, and flags. Countable nouns have singular and plural number, and things that typically come in pairs of two (such as feet or eyes) also have a dual marker. Uncountable are things such as substances that cannot technically be counted, such as peanut butter and water. For instance, one does not speak of "a peanut butter" (unless he means something more like "a container of peanut butter" or "a peanut butter sandwich"). Uncountable nouns have collective and singulative number. The singulative may in turn be marked with a dual or plural marker. For example,
 * "Rice-SING" : "A grain of rice"
 * "Rice-SING-PLUR" : "Grains of rice"

Noun phrases may consist of particles or postpositions that serve to clarify the syntax of a noun (its use within the sentence) and express location (as prepositions do in English).

Decline and Revitalization
After the Nebulones migrated into the Fog Mountains, they quickly adopted the language and some cultural elements of the neighboring Sajem Tan tribe. Within a short span of time, Sajem Tan was the primary home language of 55% of Lowland families, 38% of Highland families, and 48% of Bogland families. Over the next few years this continued until today, when only 10-15% of families have Nebulonic as the home language.

The situation in Tözenšömak is that the few Nebulonic immigrants who settle there typically do not speak the language to begin with, but, if they do, they quickly drop it in favor of Sajem Tan. However, the Jikin University of Cicâ has played a large role in the revival of the Nebulonic language: it offers classes in the language, and its publishing house puts out books in Nebuloncic as well as the periodical Name, written entirely in Nebulonic. It has a club for those interested in the Nebulonic language and culture.

Samples

 * hlǽver /ˈl̥æver/: "people, nation, tribe"
 * rúben /ˈruben/: "triangle"
 * sdeíli /ˈstei̯li/: "wind"
 * úcu /ˈut͡su/: "fog"