keové

Keové is a fictional language family created for world-building and linguistic demonstration. It is described as spoken by communities on the archipelago of Keovia in a remote southern sea. While imaginary, Keové is designed to resemble natural language systems in phonology, grammar, and sociolinguistic context.

Geography and speakers: The Keovian archipelago has five main islands. Fluent speakers number about 50,000, with children learning it in primary schools on two islands. The language is endangered, with urban migration and media in other languages reducing intergenerational transmission.

Phonology and grammar: Keové has five vowels (a e i o u) and about eighteen consonants, including stops, fricatives, and nasals. Syllables are typically CV or CVC. The language uses vowel harmony and limited consonant clusters. It is agglutinative, marking case, number, tense, and aspect with suffixes. Basic word order is SOV; modifiers generally follow the nouns they modify. Noun phrases may include classifiers and demonstratives; pronouns distinguish inclusive and exclusive first-person plurals.

Writing and usage: Keové employs a Latin-based orthography with diacritics to indicate vowel quality and stress. Diacritics are regular and phonemic. Keové is used in family talk, local ceremonies, and oral storytelling; in education, it is taught alongside regional languages.

History and demographics: According to legend, Keové originated from a coastal migration centuries ago, with later contact shaping its vocabulary. Contemporary studies examine revival potential, with efforts to document vocabulary, chants, and place names, and with diaspora communities contributing multilingual media.

See also: constructed languages, world-building, language endangerment.