Update - May 12, 2011

Dear Visitor to the Ithkuil Website:

This is to let you know a newly revised version of Ithkuil will be introduced sometime in June or July, 2011. I consider this new forthcoming version of the language to be the definitive or “official” (and presumably final) version of the language. The current version of the language, originally posted to the Web in early 2004, will be withdrawn, as will the Ilaksh web pages.

The new version of the language is based on lessons learned while creating the previous revision, Ilaksh, during 2006 and 2007. After creating Ilaksh, I realized that many ideas from its morpho-phonological structure could be reverse-applied to Ithkuil but without the phonological contraints demanded by Ilaksh. A common complaint about Ithkuil has been its harsh and difficult-to-pronounce phonology (a complaint shared by the author!). The result of revising Ithkuil’s morpho-phonology using ideas from Ilaksh would be a version of Ithkuil that is less harsh-sounding and easier to pronounce, while preserving its intricate and expansive morphology and morpho-phonological conciseness.

Additionally, the forthcoming revision of Ithkuil allows the author to make a few minor changes and improvements to the morphology and syntax. The Ithkuil script is also being revised to conform to the radically different morpho-phonological structure of the language. (It will be similar in general appearance to the current script but operates in a completely different manner. It is not based on the experimental two-dimensional non-linear script of Ilaksh.)

The new version of the Ithkuil website will provide a more detailed description of the language than the current version and will contain a larger number of example phrases and sentences.

The following link provides a PREVIEW of the new version of Ithkuil. The Introduction, as well as Chapters 11 through 14 are still missing. The remaining chapters are more or less complete except that transliterations into Ithkuil script are incomplete and need correction. I also plan on adding more examples to each chapter. Additionally, I have yet to make sound recordings of the examples.

PREVIEW OF THE NEW VERSION OF ITHKUIL

And here is a comparison sentence between the three versions of the language: Original Ithkuil, Ilaksh, and Ithkuil-2011.

John Quijada
May 12, 2011

Addendum (May 15, 2011): Persons familiar with the current ithkuil site will find the majority of changes in the new site as follows:

• Chapter 1, Section 1.2: The phoneme inventory has been modified.

• Chapter 2, Sections 2.1.1 and 2.2: The structure of formatives has been redesigned.

• Chapter 4: A whole new section (Section 4.1.3) on Argument Structure has been added and Section 4.3.12 showing examples and usage of Transrelative cases has been greatly expanded. Also, the consolidation of the 81 noun cases to 72 in Ilaksh has now been reverse-applied to Ithkuil.

• Chapters 5 & 6: The order in which verbal morphological categories are presented has been changed to conform to the new morpho-phonological structure of formatives. Also, Section 6.2 on Level has been greatly expanded and the section on Derivation has been replaced by a new section on stem-incorporation (Section 6.4).

• Additional Planned Changes (not yet added to the preview site): Many new suffixes will be added to Chapter 7, and an index of all the 3-letter morphological abbreviations is planned.