Suunavs

Suunavs is a fictional language family and its associated writing system, created for a world-building setting centered on the Suunav Islands in the central sea. The term is used by scholars within that setting to describe both the spoken language of the ancient Suunavi people and the script used to record it.

Classification and scope: Linguists in the setting hypothesize two primary branches, Northern Suunav and Southern Suunav, with limited mutual intelligibility. The corpus consists mainly of inscriptions on stone and ceramic artifacts, as well as glosses in neighboring languages.

Writing system: The Suunav script is a syllabary of roughly 80 signs, with signs representing consonant-vowel syllables and a separate set for nasals and final consonants. Signs are primarily carved, with rare instances on metalwork and pottery. Inscriptions date from the 3rd century BCE to the late 9th century CE.

Phonology and grammar: The language is described as analytic with a preference for subject–object–verb order (SOV) and postnominal modifiers. The phoneme inventory includes a series of stops, fricatives, nasals, and a contrastive tone in some dialects. Stress is typically penultimate.

History and sources: The surviving material originates mainly from coastal settlements on the northern island chain. The script was deciphered progressively in the late 19th and 20th centuries, aided by bilingual finds with the neighboring Talin language.

Modern status: Suunavs is regarded as extinct, with no native speakers. Research continues in academic and hobbyist communities, including digital paleography and phonology reconstructions.