Sanspirite

Overview

Sanspirite is the official language of Sante Spirite and is primarily spoken by their citizens. It is related to the Romance branch of Earth's Indo-European language family with many of the language's features appearing in Spanish and French. Due to cultural exchange with Ka'aktu Tanunate, a small diaspora of Sanspirite speakers now exists that numbers around 10,000.

Phonology

The language consists of eighteen consonants and uses the five-vowel system. It is written using the Latin alphabet with the letter "w" being an outlier, as most other Romance languages use a combination of vowels to substitute the sound. The letter "x" is another outlier in that it is used to make the sound "ʃ", or "sh" in words such as "shirt".

In regards to "r", both a tapped and trilled pronunciation is acceptable in general speech, although cases where "rr" appears are generally a stronger trill.

Consonants

• Romanization is shown through a letter surrounded by parentheses where the romanization is different than the symbol in the IPA.

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar
Affricate				d͡ʒ (y)
Plosive	m		n			k (c), g
Nasal	p, b		t, d		ɲ (ñ)
Fricative		f,v	s, z	ʃ (x)
Approximant			l			w
Tap/Trill			r

Vowels

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Close-mid	e	o
Front	a

Grammar

The grammar of Sanspirite takes after Spanish with most of the differences being with its pronouns, verb tenses and moods. The language follows Subject-Verb-Object word order by default, although the accusative pronoun is generally placed before the action it is receiving, making a Subject-Object-Verb construction.

Nouns

Like most other languages in the Romance branch, nouns do not have cases, but do have three grammatical genders: Masculine, Feminine, Neuter. Instead, they only conjugate for plurality with exception to some Neuter nouns.

Neuter Nouns

Neuter nouns come in one of two categories: Person and non-person. Person nouns refer to professions, titles and the word 'Ome'. These nouns refer to either a person of unknown gender, unspecified gender, or a non-binary gender identity. These nouns will always end in -e, and a different gender can be specified by changing -e to -a for Female and -o for Male.

Non-person nouns generally relate to religious concepts and may end with -e or may end in a consonant.

Plurality

Plurality is shown by adding -s to the end of a noun that ends in a verb or most consonants, or -es if the noun ends in -z, -s or -x.