Calevan

Calevan or Kalevan language, sometimes referred to by its native name Kalevi, is a de facto dead language with near to no native speakers. Citizens of the State of Eläinrata and interested scholars or amateurs learn it as a second language, but its popularity has largely been declining in Current Era.

Status

Since the Phoenix Era, Calevan has been the official language in the Order and State of Eläinrata, and therefore anyone with a political position, namely the Council of Paladins, are required to have a mastery of the language. Diplomatic documents of the Order are written in Calevan as well.

Prior knowledge of Calevan language is not required to join the training program of the Order of Eläinrata. However, a basic level is required to become a Knight and an advanced level to become a Paladin. The official version of the Order's rule book is written in Calevan, through up to date translations are usually available in around thirty to fifty languages.

Phonology

Vowels

Monophthongs

	Front		Back
	Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
Close	i [i]	ü [y]		u [u]
Mid	e [e]	ö [ø]		o [o]
Open	ä [æ]		a [ɑ]

• All monophthongs exhibit vowel length distinction
• Mid and close short vowels lower after velars: [i, y, e, ø, o, u] become [ɪ, ʏ, ɛ, œ, ɔ, ʊ]

Calevan language has progressive vowel harmony:

• back vowels {u, o, a} don't occur alongside front vowels {ü, ö, ä}
• {i, e} are neutral vowels, which may occur alongside both back and front vowels
• vowel harmony applies to inflected forms
• vowel harmony does not cross morpheme boundaries in compound words

Diphthongs

	Unrounding (-i)	Rounding (-u/ü)
e-	ei [ei]
ä-	äi [æi]
a-	ai [ai]	au [au]
o-	oi [oi]	ou [ou]
ö-		öü [øy]

• Diphthongs are treated as one nucleic unit and do not disrupt (C)V(C) syllable structure
• Diphthongs are bimoraic
• /ei/, /oi/, /ou/, /øy/ lower to [ɛi], [ɔi], [ɔu] and [œy] after /k/ and /g/

Consonants

	Labial	Alveolo-dental	Palatal-velar	Glottal
Nasal	m [m]	n [n]	n [ŋ]
Stop (voiceless)	p [p]	t [t]	k [k]
Stop (voiced)	b [b]	d [d]	g [g]
Fricative (voiceless)	f [f]	s [s]		h [h]
Fricative (voiced)	v [v]	z [z]
Approximant		l [l]	j [j]
Trill		r [r]

• Intervocalic /h/ voices to [ɦ]
• /n/ fronts to [ɲ] before /j/
• Velar obstruents undergo lenition to [x] before /h/
• Geminated /h/ undergoes fortition to [xː] or [ɣː] intervocalically
• /l/ is velarized [ɫ] before /k/ and /g/
• /r/ can be [ɾ] ungeminated
• Regressive assimilation happens with all obstruents
• /j/ does not occur syllable-finally

Stress

Primary stress always falls on the first syllable of a native word. Secondary stress falls on every odd syllable after the first. Pitch is not phonemic.

Grammar

Noun cases

Basic cases

• nominative
• accusative
• genitive
• partitive

Locative cases

	In	To	From
Interior	Inessive	Illative	Elative
Exterior	Adessive	Allative	Ablative
Approximate	Approximative	Additive	Egressive

Other cases

• instrumental
• translative
• abessive
• comitative

Meta-information

Hisao had the idea to create Calevan language with Lorethium in February 2015, but due to inactivity this project was frozen. Hisao then started creating the first outlines nearly a year later on December 31.

Calevan is based on Veps, Karelian and Finnish, as well as to a lesser extent on Estonian and Voric. This classifies it in the Balto-Finnic language branch.