Lé

From Almeopedia

Lé
Native name	Létɔ̌ŋ
Verdurian	belesaořon
Characteristics
Location	Belesao
Family	Beic
Subfamily	Core Beic
Standard	Jansɛ̀
Writing system	syllabary
Info available	grammar (~1100 words)
Sample wordlist
one	jû
two	rò
three	jùr
river	pùŋ
town	sɛ̀
people	tú
big	bɔ̀
little	ŋi

Lé [le24] has three related meanings:

An ethnonym for the people of Belesao; compare Bé, the name of the Beic language family and cultural zone of northern Arcél. The Lé are only one of the Bé peoples.
The standard language of Belesao; in this sense it may also be called Létɔ̌ŋ ‘Lé speech’.
The ancient dynasty which first unified Belesao, and ruled for about three centuries starting in the late 1600s. This is the original meaning of the word, and the source of the previous two senses.

The Lé language, part of the Beic family, is isolating, SVO, and largely head-final. (E.g. the word nɔŋǎ ‘spirit world’ is a compound of nɔ ‘in, inner’ + ŋǎ ‘world’.) It has postpositions and an octal numbering system.

There are five tones. In the capital, Jansɛ̀, the base contours are a = 22, á = 24, à = 52, â = 453, ǎ = 213; these vary widely dialectally. There is fairly extensive tone sandhi, e.g. áá = 24 34; áa = 24 44. There are seven vowels, i e ɛ a ɔ o u. There are 15 consonants, p t č k b d j m n ŋ s ł h r l. The stop system is notable for having no g; ł is pronounced as a lateral fricative, similar to Welsh ll. The syllable structure of Lé is (C)(C)V(C). Initial consonant clusters include stop + liquid, and final consonants can be r s n or ŋ.

Lé has ten case markers, which act as clitics on the NP. It can be said to have the simplest possibly verb system— the verb can be analyzed as having no modifiers at all, with the exception of a single preceding adjective (which however may include a set of modals). Tense is applied not to the verb but to the sentence: sentences can have optional ending place and time slots, and one way of filling the time slot is with a tense clitic.

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