The Senduri language

Senduri is a contemporary language from the planet Tekuo with deep historical roots. Its speakers are a race of Ike, who call themselves and their language Senduri. They live in the remote Turi archipelago, an autonomous territory ruled from Mohai.

Senduri is a member of the Cismontane language family though it exhibits strong influences from Lemohai (a Maritime language). As with other Cismontane languages, it is not known how its speakers came to their present home.

In its turn, Senduri or languages like it had a sub-stratum influence on Lemohai. This may explain some of the differences between Lemohai and the mainland Maritime tongues.

Most Senduri are also fluent in Lemohai though a large minority are monoglot Senduri speakers A smaller minority are monoglot Lemohai speakers. There are some 2.1 million native speakers.

It is also a popular language to learn. Some tourists learn it before visiting the islands, linguists and conlangers learn it because of its unusual nature and Lemohai-speaking Senduri learn it to better connect with their heritage.

Senduri borrows words liberally from neighbouring languages, particularly Lemohai. It is heavily dialectalised and has only been standardised fairly recently.

The language exhibits trigger alignment. There are also two genitive case particles. Word order in the unmarked clause is Verb-Subject-Object though Verb-Object-Subject is frequently encountered. Phrases are mostly head-initial.

The language is mildly agglutinating. Grammar is expressed through a mixture of particles, word order and affixes. A rich system of derivational morphology is available. The language is particularly rich in derived verb forms, especially those concerned with valence adjustment.

Senduri phonology is characterised by a seven vowel system, syllabic and co-articulated consonants, and simple syllables. The language is written from left to right in a unicase alphabet.

By David Johnson

Conlanger, writer and activist.

One comment

  1. Senduri has developed slowly offline for a number of years. In essence it looks like a simplified Yoruba and works like a simplified Tagalog. Its sociolinguistic situation is based on that of Basque and Welsh.

    I plan to give it a sketch grammar someday. For now though it’s mostly a naming language and a source of loanwords for Lemohai.

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