Teonaht

Teonaht (pronounced /ˈteɪ.oʊnɑːθ/) is a constructed language that has been developed since 1962 by science fiction writer and University of Rochester English professor Sarah Higley, under the pseudonym of Sally Caves. It is spoken in the fantasy setting of the Teonim, a race of polydactyl humans who have a cultural history of worshipping catlike deities.

Teonaht uses the Object Subject Verb (OSV) word order, which is rare in natural languages. An interesting feature of Teonaht is that the end of the sentence is the place of greatest emphasis, as what is mentioned last is uppermost in the mind. The language has a "Law of Detachment" whereby suffixes can be moved to the beginnings of words for emphasis and even attach onto other words such as pronouns.

Teonaht, winner of the 2007 Smiley Award^[1], is a highly elaborated language, and many consider it one of the finest examples of an artistic language since the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. It is often cited as an example of the genre in articles on the world of Internet-hosted amateur conlanging.^[2][3][4][Encyclopedia of fictional and fantastic languages, Tim Conley and Stephen Cain (C) 2006, pg. xxv.]

History of creation

The seed for Teonaht was planted when Caves received her first kitten at the age of five. The gift soon inspired her to imagine a race of winged cats which she called "the Feleonim". She began to create the Teonaht language for these cats at the age of nine, while she was beginning to learn Spanish. She was delighted to learn that adjectives follow nouns in Spanish, unlike in English, and made this the first rule of grammar in her language. Caves was further inspired when she read about Tolkien and his "secret vice" in her teens. The language developed further as Caves grew to adulthood and learned more languages. In the late 1980s she subjected her language to much clinical grammatical analysis, and developed such features as the "Law of Detachment" and the use of the zero-copula. The Teonim developed into their present human form, but maintained their feline deities.

Caves continued to keep her language a secret as she grew up, even after she began writing science fiction and teaching. In the 1990s, however, with the advent of the Internet, she hosted a webpage on the language and joined the CONLANG message group. The language took off there and has year by year held the interest of online conlangers and conlang aficionados.

Aside from Spanish, Teonaht has been influenced by the other languages Caves has studied—French, German, Old English, Old Norse, Old French, Latin, Middle Welsh, and Old Irish.

References

• NPR interview with Sally Caves

1. ^ The 2007 Smiley Award Winner: Teonaht
2. ^ http://web.archive.org/web/20060626235245/http://www.rochester.edu/College/ENG/newsletter/conlang.html
3. ^ Sprechen sie ELVISH?: 3/ 6/ 2004
4. ^ Babel's modern architects - Los Angeles Times

External links

• Sally Caves's Teonaht page