Introduction

Nui (/'nu.i/ NU-ee) is the basis of formal liturgy and literacy. Arising out of contact between Nanui and Esperanto-speaking Humans it is spoken as a lingua franca across Yui. A local substrate of $ereal is responsible for trace influence.

Romanisation

/ʃ/ may be romanised as <x>, /ɟ/ as <g> and /ʒ/ as <j>. Word-initially and before another vowel, /i/ and /u/ may be respectively romanised as <y> and <w>. If necessary, /ə/ may be romanised as <2>, though <ə> is preferred.

Morphology

Nouns decline into 2 cases, formed by suffixing to a given content word root -ui (ergative case) or -ən (absolutive case). Plurality is indicated by duplicating the whole noun.

Verbs are indicated as either finite (-ə indicative or -u subjunctive) or infinitive (-an active or -i passive). Infinitive verb suffixes also shift the otherwise regularly penultimate word-level stress to be word-final, onto the suffix itself.

Past and Present tense are commonly, respectively indicated using the irregular auxiliary verbs avə/avu/van/vi (to have) and e/esu/san/si (to be)

Personal pronouns decline into 4 cases: ergative and absolutive (like common nouns), an associative case, and a 3rd person reflexive pronoun.

	1st Person	2nd Person	3rd Person
Ergative	mi	vi	ʒi
Absolutive	mən	vən	ʒən
Reflexive			sən
Associative	mien	vien	ʒien

The associative case is used in formations such as "me and…", "you and…", "them and…"

Adjectives are uninflected. For poetry or emphasis, adjectives can occur within a noun phrase either before or after the head noun.

Adverbs are formed with the -i suffix.

Articles, which precede the nouns they classify, change form depending on whether the next vowel in the sentence is a back vowel (thus definite u and indefinite nu) or isn't a back vowel (thus definite a and indefinite na). Moreover, definite articles are able to form contractions with some common prepositions:

	u	a
i (to/at)	yu	ya
di (of/from)	du	da
bi (with/by)	bu	ba
in (in/on)	un	an

Correlatives are common nouns, adjectives, and adverbs that pattern with each other and not with other words:

Noun	Adjective	Adverb (quantity)	Adverb (method)
ʃu what	ʃə which/whose	ʃəm when/how much	ʃəl why/how
tsu this/that	tsə such a	tsəm then/this much	tsəl therefore/thus
ʒu something	ʒə some	ʒəm sometime/a few	ʒəl somehow

Orthography

On the left are letters representing individual phonemes alongside their names, and on the right are the modifying letters nu maikui and maikui maikui as well as the 7 letters that exclusively indicate morphological endings.

Example

Lexicon