xtä

Xtä is a constructed language (conlang) developed as a typological demonstrator by an online community of language enthusiasts. It is designed to illustrate how an agglutinative morphology interacts with vowel harmony and a relatively flexible word order. The name Xtä uses the Latin letter X and the umlauted a, a combination chosen to evoke distinct phonotactics.

Phonology and orthography: Xtä has a compact consonant and vowel inventory similar to many European languages, with five vowels that participate in a simple harmony pattern. Vowel harmony influences affix vowels to harmonize with the root vowels. The writing system is Latin-based, incorporating diacritics such as ä to mark vowel quality. Stress is typically on the penultimate syllable.

Morphology and syntax: The language is primarily agglutinative, attaching affixes to nouns and verbs to encode case, number, tense, aspect, mood, and evidentiality. Nouns inflect for nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive cases; verbs carry tense-aspect markers and evidential particles. The canonical word order is subject–verb–object, though case marking allows flexible sequencing of clause constituents. Adjectives generally precede nouns and agree in number.

History and usage: Xtä emerged as a teaching tool within conlang circles and has since appeared in articles, grammars, and dictionaries produced for study and practice. It is commonly used to illustrate typological contrasts and to demonstrate how morphological systems affect syntax and discourse.

See also: Constructed language; Language typology; Glossary of linguistics.