Novoslovnica. Guide for a Slavic constructed language. George Carpow

      These cases were created in attempt to unify the accents in different Slavic languages. Surely the Slavic languages have greatly changed since then, as they were one language. Therefore, accents in different Slavic languages often differ. Nevertheless, Novoslovnica tries to obliterate differences between them, producing accent patterns that could be comfortable to pronounce and to hear for all Slavs.

      Below you can see the list of all these cases, that you should remember while speaking Novoslovnica.

      Accent shifting cases:

      – Accented endings (Nouns)

      • -a (Dual, Nominative)

      • -y (Singular, Genitive/Partitive)

      • -ami (Plural, Instrumentative)

      • -ama (Dual, Dative)

      • -am (Plural, Dative)

      – Accented endings (Verbs)

      • -i Imperative (see paragraph about verb moods)

      – Accented suffixes

      • -ova- (Verb)

      • -ôva- (Verb)

      • -ava- (Verb)

      • -óv- (Adjective)

      • -ak- (Noun)

      • -ok- (Noun)

      – verb suffixes in Present Concrete Tense (see paragraph about verb tenses)

      – Accent shift in the root

      • If the word is a borrowed one, then the accent is put on the place it is in the original word.

      • If the root loses its vowel, the accents moves one vowel to the left (if it is possible)

      • Words that have more than one root (complex words) have their accent on the first syllable of the main word’s root. (see paragraph about complex words for what root is main)

      • Adverbs or other parts of speech, formed with the prepositional construction, have their accents on the first syllable of the main word (see paragraph about collocations)

      These rules are enough for you to speak Novoslovnica properly with a few efforts for it.

      Accent integrity

      There is also one term, that you should to know when you use Novoslovnica or any other Slavic language in your speech. This term is called accent integrity. Firstly I will introduce a term of a dependency structure:

      Dependency structure is a prepositional construction or a collocation.

      That means, that this abstract term expands the term of collocation by involving prepositional into itself.

      Accent integrity is a property of a dependency structure to unify elements of this structure with only one accent on the main word.

      What does this definition say? If we have a collocation\index {collocation} or a prepositional construction and we want to pronounce it, we should pronounce dependent words without any accent and put an accent on the first word of the structure. Look at the examples.

      Examples:

      Pod něbom [`pod nebom] – Under the sky

      Surely, you should remember that this might be applied only for brief structures, most often with one dependent word (or a preposition) of one or two syllables. If we have a long dependent word or there are too many dependent words in the construction, we pronounce them with a proper accent on each of the structure elements.

      Examples:

      Pod sïnïm něbom [pəd `sinim `nebom] – Under the blue sky

      Orthography

      Alphabet of Novoslovnica

      Alphabet

      Let’s summarize what we have known about Novoslovnica phonology. Afterwards we will get the list of phonemes and allophones and their connections with Novoslovnica letters in the alphabet.

      We have learned that Novoslovnica has 51 consonant sounds and 22 vowels. 13 consonants and 4 vowels are allophones among them. Hence, the amount of phonemes is (51—13) + (22 – 4) = 56 phonemes.

      You should know that in Novoslovnica, soft and hard consonants do not differ in writing. That is because of the fact that by the combination of «consonant + vowel» we can always determinedly get what the consonant is like – hard or soft. With this information, the amount of letters needed is reduced to 49.10

      Nevertheless, let’s now look at the table with the alphabet list and see how Novoslovnica is written.

      Alphabet of Novoslovnica

      Note, that the Cyrillic letters Щ, Ψ, Ќ, Ї in earlier versions of Novoslovnica have been replaced by Шт (Št), Пс (Ps), Кс (Ks) and Ји (Jі).11

      Pronunciation

      Novoslovnica is a phonetic language, that’s why Novoslovnica has an important rule, which you have to apply to speaking in Novoslovnica.

      Rule n. 3: All words are pronounced as they are written.

      This rule means that you cannot reduce sounds when speak in Novoslovnica. It is a very important thing because you can make mistakes if you speak improperly. There are some exceptions but they all will be mentioned in this guidebook.

      When you pronounce a word you are not restricted to use only main sounds – if it’s more comfortable, you can pronounce allophones with the same level of softness and sonority with the main sound of the letter. Let’s look at the examples below to understand what we can choose in speaking and what we cannot.

      Examples:

      – okolo [o`kolo] – around

      – čujstvo [`t̠ʃujstvo] – feeling

      However, you are restricted in what consonant sounds to use from the allophone list. You can see the next rule which will help you to speak.

      Rule n. 4: You cannot mess soft and hard consonants when you pronounce a word.

      This

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