Láadan

Láadan is a tonal language. It utilises two distinct tones:

• lo – /lō/ or /lò/, a short, medium or low tone, represented by a single unmarked vowel
• ló – /ló/, a short, high tone, represented by a single marked vowel

The word "Láadan" has three syllables: "lá-" with the short vowel /a/ plus high tone; "-a" with the short vowel /a/ and no tone; and "-dan".

Láadan does not allow any double [i.e. long] phonemes. Whenever two identical short vowels would occur side by side in a single morpheme, one of them has to be marked for high tone. When adding an affix would result in two identical vowels side by side, an epenthetic /h/ is inserted to prevent the forbidden sequence. The language will allow either "máa" or "maá," but not "maa". These combinations can be described as:

• loó – /lǒː/, a long, low-rising tone, represented by a double vowel, the second of which is marked
• lóo – /lôː/, a long, high-falling tone, represented by a double vowel, the first of which is marked

(Some people analyze these tone sequences as tonemic as well, for a total of four tones.)

Elgin preferred an analysis of the language as having no long vowels and a single tone, the high tone (distinguished from "neutral, baseline pitch"), but she acknowledged that linguists using other formalisms would be justified in saying that there are two tones, high and low (or unmarked or mid).[3]

Láadan has five vowels:

• a – /ɑ/, an open back unrounded vowel (as English calm),
• e – /ɛ/, an open-mid front unrounded vowel (as English bell),
• i – /ɪ/, a near-close near-front unrounded vowel (as English bit),
• o – /o/, a close-mid back rounded vowel (as English home),
• u – /u/, a close back rounded vowel (as English boon).

Láadan lacks the consonants /p, t, k, ɡ, s, z, f, v/. However, it uses b, d, sh (/ʃ/), m, n, l, r, w, y (/j/), h with the same phonetic value as English. In addition to these, three digraphs require further explanation:

• th – /θ/, a voiceless dental fricative (always as in English think, never as then),
• zh – /ʒ/, a voiced postalveolar fricative (as English pleasure),
• lh – /ɬ/, a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative (as Welsh llan).

Láadan has an agglutinative morphology, and uses a number of affixes to indicate various feelings and moods that many natural languages can only indicate by tone of voice, body language or circumlocution.

The speech-act particle, at the beginning of a sentence, can also carry several suffixes, which expand on the overall state of the sentence. For example, bíi begins a statement, but bíide begins a statement that is part of a narrative; bóoth begins a request made in pain; báada begins a question that is meant in jest.

Pronouns in Láadan are built up from a number of constituent parts. The consonant l marks the first person, n the second person and b the third person. Usually, these are followed by the vowel e. However, the vowel a is used to designate someone who is loved (lhe- is prefixed to describe someone who is despised). The suffix -zh is used to mark a plural pronoun for numbers up to four, and -n for numbers beyond that. Therefore, lazh means "we, several beloved", and lheben means "they, many despised".