Teonaht is a constructed language that has been developed since 1962 by science fiction writer and University of Rochester English professor Sarah Higley, under the pseudonym of Sally Caves. It is spoken in the fantasy setting of the Teonim, a race of polydactyl humans who have a cultural history of worshipping catlike deities. Sally Caves is the pen name of Sarah Higley, a science fiction writer and professor of English at the University of Rochester. ... 1962 (MCMLXII) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar). ... For other meanings see Fantasy (disambiguation) Fantasy is a genre of art that uses magic and other supernatural forms as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. ... An artificial or constructed language (known colloquially as a conlang among aficionados), is a language whose phonology, grammar and vocabulary are specifically devised by an individual or small group, rather than having naturally evolved as part of a culture the way natural languages do. ... An artistic language (artlang) is a constructed language designed for aesthetic pleasure. ... Some authors use fictional languages as a device to underline differences in culture, by having their characters communicate in a fashion which is both alien and dislocated. ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. ... The Romance languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, comprise all languages that descended from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. ... The Celtic languages are the languages descended from Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, spoken by ancient and modern Celts alike. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code Twenty-two of the languages have two three-letter codes: a code for bibliographic use (ISO 639-2/B) a code for terminological use (ISO 639-2/T). ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of sounds and the human voice. ... Because of technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... This is a concise version of the International Phonetic Alphabet for English sounds. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... An artificial or constructed language (known colloquially as a conlang among aficionados), is a language whose phonology, grammar and vocabulary are specifically devised by an individual or small group, rather than having naturally evolved as part of a culture the way natural languages do. ... 1962 (MCMLXII) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar). ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... The University of Rochester is a private, coeducational and nonsectarian research institution located in Rochester, New York. ... Sally Caves is the pen name of Sarah Higley, a science fiction writer and professor of English at the University of Rochester. ...

Teonaht uses the Object Subject Verb (OSV) word order, which is rare in natural languages. An interesting feature of Teonaht is that the end of the sentence is the place of greatest emphasis, as what is mentioned last is uppermost in the mind. The language has a "Law of Detachment" whereby suffixes can be moved to the beginnings of words for emphasis and even attach onto other words such as pronouns. Object Subject Verb (OSV) is one of the permutations of expression used in Linguistic typology. ...

Teonaht is a highly elaborated language, and many consider it one of the finest examples of an artistic language since the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. It is often cited, like Verdurian, as an example of the genre in articles on the world of Internet-hosted amateur conlanging.^{[citation needed]} An artistic language (artlang) is a constructed language designed for aesthetic pleasure. ... J. R. R. Tolkien in 1916. ... This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedias deletion policy. ... A conlanger is person who invents conlangs (constructed languages). ...

History of creation

The seed for Teonaht was planted when Caves was 5 and received her first kitten, as her childlike imagination made up the Feleonim, a race of winged cats. She started making the Teonaht language for these cats when she was 9 and beginning to learn Spanish. She was delighted to learn that adjectives followed nouns in Spanish unlike in English, and made this the first rule of grammar in her language. Caves was further inspired when she read about Tolkien and his "secret vice" in her teens. The language developed further as Caves grew up and learned more languages. In the late 1980s she put her language under much clinical grammatical analysis and developed the Law of Detachment and the zero-copula in her language. The Teonim developed into their present human form, but maintained their feline deities. A Secret Vice is the title of a lecture held by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1930 at an Esperanto congress. ...

Caves continued to keep her language a secret as she grew up, even after she began writing science fiction and teaching. In the 1990s, however, with the advent of the Internet, she hosted a webpage on the language and joined the CONLANG message group. The language took off there and has year by year held the interest of online conlangers and conlang aficionados. An artificial or constructed language (known colloquially as a conlang among aficionados), is a language whose vocabulary and grammar were specifically devised by an individual or small group, rather than having naturally evolved as part of a culture as with natural languages. ... A conlanger is person who invents conlangs (constructed languages). ...

Aside from Spanish, Teonaht has been influenced by the other languages Caves has studied -- French, German, Old English, Old Norse, Old French, Latin, Middle Welsh, and Old Irish. Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... Old Norse or Danish tongue is the Germanic language once spoken by the inhabitants of the Nordic countries (for instance during the Viking Age). ... Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories corresponding roughly to the northern half of modern France and parts of Belgium and Switzerland from around 1000 to 1300 A.D. It was known at the time as the langue doïl to distinguish it from the langue... Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... Middle Welsh (Cymraeg Canol) is the label attached to the Welsh language of the 12th to 14th centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. ... Old Irish is the name given to the oldest form of the Irish language which can be, more or less, fully reconstructed from extant sources. ...

External links

• Sally Caves's Teonaht page.