Teai

Teai is a constructed language developed for the Teai Archipelago in a fictional world. It is the native tongue of the Teai people and the focus of a language-creation project designed to illustrate Austronesian-inspired typology. In the setting, Teai has about 4,500 speakers and is considered endangered; it is taught in local schools alongside the national language and is the subject of revitalization efforts.

Classification and typology: Teai is described as part of an Oceanic-leaning branch of Austronesian in the project’s family tree. It exhibits subject–verb–object word order, analytic morphology with limited affixation, and pronoun systems with inclusive and exclusive forms for first person plural.

Phonology: The language has five vowels /i e a o u/ and a consonant inventory including p t k m n s l r w j. Syllables are typically CV or CVN with light consonant clusters disallowed. Stress is typically on the penultimate syllable.

Grammar: Nouns lack grammatical case; determiners and demonstratives indicate number and proximity. Verbs carry aspect markers rather than tense, with a perfective suffix -a and a progressive marker -e, while mood is expressed via auxiliary particles.

Writing system: Teai uses a Latin-based orthography with digraphs ng, ny, and sh, and optional diacritics to indicate vowel length. The orthography is taught in schools and used in local literature and signage.

See also: constructed language, language revitalization, fantasy linguistics.