Orr Language

The IPA equivalents given here are close approximations that can be articulated by humans. While the precise methods of producing the sounds are not accurately reflected, the sounds produced are fairly close.

Primary Voice Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i /i/ ï /y/	ü /ʉ/	u /u/
Close Mid	ö /ø/	e /ɘ/	ë /ɤ/ o /o/
Open Mid	ä /ɛ/		é /ʌ/
Open		a /ɐ/	á /ɒ/

Primary Voice Consonants

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Stop	p /p/ b /b/	t /t/ d /d/	k /c/ g /ɟ/
Nasal	m /m/	n /n/		N /ŋ/
Trill	B /ʙ/	R /r/
Fricative	v /ɸ/ w /β/	s /ɕ/ z /ʑ/	j /ʝ/	H /x/
Approximant		r /ɹ/	y /j/	Y /ɰ/
Lateral Approximant		l /l/		L /ʟ/

Secondary Voices

The secondary voices are capable of much less complex enunciation than the primary voice and are always at different pitches to it. Different pitch levels modify the meaning of the primary voice in various ways. The secondary voices are capable of closed vowels, and have the following phonemes:

Front	Central	Back
i /i/	ü /ʉ/	u /u/

Additionally, the secondary voices are capable of a stop comparable to a glottal stop, which is notated as '. This stop can be repeated rapidly and in precisely controlled numbers, resulting in a sound similar to a trill.   Secondary voices are notated in brackets after the primary voice vowel they correspond to, with a number signifying the pitch as explained below.

Phonotactics

vjé[1u3i]miö[3ü] allows fairly arbitrary sequences of characters, however there are some rules:

• Syllables begin with any number of consonants and end with any number of vowels. No coda consonants are allowed. In general, up to 4 consonants and up to 3 vowels form a syllable, but more may occur in some cases.
• If a syllable starts with a vowel and the preceding syllable does not contain secondary voices, the equivalent of a glottal stop is inserted to disambiguate.
• The first vowel may be replicated in shortened form to make pronounciation of consonant clusters easier, for example HHi may be pronounced /xĭxi/.

Words are constructed from Primary and Secondary Concepts, expressed by vowels and consonants of the primary voice respectively, and Modifiers expressed by the secondary voices.  

Primary Concepts

i	Object
ï	Action
ü	Good
u	Boundary
ö	Logic
e	Emotion
ë	Material
o	Life
ä	Location
é	Creation
a	Time
á	Completeness

Secondary Concepts

p	Inside	b	Outside
t	Beginning	d	End
k	Cause	g	Effect
m	Transfer
n	Purpose	N	Capability
B	Modification
r	Volatile	R	Constant
v	Sound	w	Sight
s	Increase	z	Decrease
j	Structure
H	Abstraction
y	Isolation	Y	Grouping
l	Round	L	Sharp

Modifiers

Modifiers, encoded in the secondary voices, add additional inflection to the concepts specified by the primary voice. This peculiarity of the Orr language is sometimes referred to as vertical agglutination.  

Pitch 1: Syntactic Function

-	Noun
i	Verb
ü	Adjective
u	Prefix	' added may specify secondary function

For prefixes, a secondary function can be specified after a stop.  

Pitch 2: Negation

-
i	Negation/Opposite
ü	Absence
u	Absence of Negation

Pitch 3 (Nouns/Adjectives): Number/Degree

-	Singular
i	Paucal (Few)	' may specify exact number
ü	Plural (Many)	' may specify power of 20
u	Unknown or Unspecified

Adjectives follow a similar system, with degree instead of number. In this case, i refers to a lesser extent than average or expected while ü refers to a greater extent. The rapid stop count indicates the relative difference from the average.  

Pitch 3 (Verbs): Aspect

-	Progressive
i	Perfective	' may specify number of times completed
ü	Habitual	' may specify frequency
u	Potential

Pitch 3 (Prefixes): Prefix Type

-	Combination
i	Instrumental
ü	Locative
u	Relational

For prefixes with a specified secondary function, the vowel must be changed at the same time as the vowel for the function marker changes. If either of these markers is the absence, it can be marked by a dash in the transliteration. For example, a combination prefix with a secondary function of a noun in the plural form specifying an amount of roughly 8000 would be [1u-3-ü'(3)].

Pitch 4: Value/Importance

-	Unspecified/Unknown
i	High Value	' may be added to specify "utmost importance"
ü	Average Value
u	Low Value	' may be added to specify "worthless"

These markers are also used to make speech more polite; marking oneself and concepts closer to oneself than to the other person with a low value and vice versa.

Pitch 5: Reference Frame

-	General
i	Self/This	' for disambiguating instances
ü	2nd Person	' for disambiguating instances
u	Outside Reference	' for disambiguating instances

With reference frame markers, the vowel may shift into a secondary reference frame, i.e. [5iu] meaning the self acting or directed towards some external reference. Additionally, up to 20 instances of the same type of reference may be disambiguated using rapid stop counts. This is mostly used for 2nd and 3rd person references, but may also be used for disambiguating between multiple groups the speaker is a part of. The reference numbers do not necessarily need to be made concrete at any time, and may be used merely to be explicit about actions being performed by separate entities in a concise way.

Pitch 6: Reliability

-	Unspecified or Personal Experience/Opinion
i	Assumption	' added may specify hypothetical
ü	Hearsay from one source	' added may specify source believed unreliable
u	Consensus of multiple sources	' added may specify significant dissent

Pitch 7: Direction

-	Unspecified
i	Forward/North/Normal
ü	Right/East/Prograde
u	Up/Radial out

With direction markers, the stop count modifies the frame of reference. No stops always indicate directions relative to the speaker, and added stops step out into a further removed reference frame typically alternating reference frames relative to the orientation of objects and reference frames relative to their motion. For example, when on a spaceship orbiting a moon, [7i'] would refer to the direction the ship is pointing, [7i''] to the normal of the ship's orbit around that moon, [7i'(3)] to the north direction of the moon, and so on.  

Examples

All words in the language are constructed from these concepts. There are many regularities in how concepts combine to form other concepts, but this section only shows some examples demonstrating the compactness of the language.  

• o[5i] - life-REF-SELF - I, me
• o[3i4i5ü] - life-PAUC-VAL.HI-REF.2ND - You (plural, polite)
• vjö[1i2ü3i4i5uü6ü] - sound-transfer-logic-VERB-ABS-CMPL-VAL.HI-REF.3RD.2ND-REL.HS - You allegedly were not told (something important)
• lvjeé[1i2ü3u5u6ü] - round-sound-transfer-emotion-creation-VERB-ABS-POT-REF.3RD-REL.HS - They allegedly are tone deaf
• NRoë - capability-constant-life-material - food
• zöo - decrease-logic-life - animal
• Yöo - grouping-logic-life - sentient species
• siöï[1u]o - increase-object-logic-action-PREF life - scientist
• nBäi - purpose-modify-location-object - vehicle

Common Prefix Constructions

Imperative

The imperative is constructed as ki[1u] (cause-structure-action-PREF). Other modifiers may be added for nuance.  

Interrogative

To turn any word into a question, it can be prefixed with siö[1u]. This often translates to a simple yes/no question. Additional concepts may be added to this counstruction, for example säiö[1u] for "where" or saiö[1u] for "when".  

Location and Tense Markings

Location in both time and space can be marked with prefixes such as za[1u3ü] (past) or sä[1u3ü] (front). By using reference marking, multiple timeframes can be distinguished without explicitly making their relationships clear.  

Possessive

Possessives are marked by the prefixes Hjpi[1u3u] for the possessed and Hjbo[1u3u] for the possessor. As usual, the core concepts may be changed, however possessives are not commonly used in that fashion. Reference markers may be added to specify the possessor when unclear otherwise.

Due to the power of modifiers, there is no required word order, however the convention is to use Verb-Object-Subject order if not implied otherwise by reference modifiers. The following sentences have almost the same meaning:

• pBä[1i3i] siö[1u]o nBäi
• nBäi siö[1u]o[5u] pBä[1i3i5u]

Word order further loses importance as due to the high degree of synthesis many sentences are constructed as a single word. In practice, it is common to establish references early in a conversation and later on focus on very compact sentences.

Names

To specify the name of a person, the prefixes vHo[1u] and wHo[1u] are used for spoken and written names respectively. Since in some cases the boundaries between names and other words may be unclear, if necessary the word dHo can be used to specify the end of a name.   For non-Orr names, b- is added to these helper words (resulting in bvHo[1u], bwHo[1u] and bdHo) to signify that the name given is transliterated from a different language.   For names of objects, locations, etc. rather than people the o in these helper words is replaced by a more appropriate concept, for example wHä[1u] for indicating written names of locations.   This also works for transliterated names, where sometimes a b is added to indicate the name is transliterated. Examples for transliterated human names:

• bwHä[1u]ëëve - Earth
• bwHYo[1u]Hyumäne - Human

However, the Orr often also create new terms instead of using loanwords due to names in other languages being considered excessively long.

Numerals

Numerals make heavy use of the Pitch 3 number marking. The basic word for an abstract cardinal number is Hi, however this may be replaced by the word for the actual object or unit being counted. Numbers up to 20 simply use the Pitch 3 paucal marking. For larger numbers, a base 20 system is used with Hi[1u] in the plural form specifying the power of 20. Negative numbers are expressed by adding the Pitch 2 negation to all the digits. Zero is expressed by Hi[2ü] (absence of number).

21	Hi[1u3ü'] Hi[3i'] Hi	20 × 1 + 1
727	Hi[1u3ü''] Hi[3i'] Hi[1u3ü'] Hi[3i'(16)] Hi[3i'(7)]	400 × 1 + 20 × 16 + 7
-160	Hi[1u3ü'] Hi[2i3i'(8)]	20 × -8

For non-integers, the powers of twenty are inverted using the Pitch 2 negation.   For ordinal numbers, jHi is used instead of Hi for the digits. Powers of 20 still use Hi[1u].