sihtkeele

Sihtkeele is a constructed language (conlang) developed for linguistic experimentation and fictional storytelling. The name is a coined term used within its community to refer to the language, which has gained a small but dedicated following among conlang enthusiasts and writers.

Phonology: The phonemic inventory centers on five vowels and roughly twenty consonants, including plosives, fricatives, nasals, liquids, and glides. The language generally lacks phonemic tone. Stress is typically placed on the penultimate syllable. Syllable structure is CV, with occasional CV.CV possibilities and limited consonant clusters.

Morphology and syntax: Sihtkeele is designed as an agglutinative language. Nouns bear number and case markers, while verbs carry tense, aspect, mood, and voice affixes. The basic word order is subject–verb–object (SVO), though information structure can shift it in discourse. Adjectives usually precede nouns or follow them for emphasis, depending on focus. The language uses post-nominal particles to mark grammatical relations and spatial relations; articles are optional.

Writing system: Sihtkeele is commonly written in a Latin-based alphabet with diacritics to indicate vowel quality and stress. A consistent orthography is taught in learner materials, and an alternative phonetic transcription system is sometimes used in linguistic descriptions.

History and usage: Sihtkeele was created in the context of online conlang communities in the early 2020s. It has since been developed through collaborative documentation, short stories, and language-learning exercises, appealing to enthusiasts of systematic language design.