Nical

Nical is a language spoken widely in south-east Pontragolia by Pontret's most common sentient species, the Pitlipuli. It has strong affiliations with the now-extinct language of Ponutugiki, with many words evolving from Ponutugiki counterparts, alongside most of Nical's grammatical features.

As Nical is the most common language in the most populous region of Pontragolia and is therefore likely the most widely-spoken of Pitlipuli languages. It is for this reason that Nical is used as a 'standard' language for the purposes of this project and is used for a variety of purposes, such as scientific taxon names, geographic locations and names for various other practices or objects.

Etymology
The etymology of the term 'Nical' is not fully understood. It could be connected to the Ne'ac, a group which was ultimately responsible for initiating the fall of the Tu'ipol Empire, having been invaded by the Tu'ipol several centuries before and forced to adopt their language.

Links to other languages
Nical is a descendent language of Ponutugiki which in turn arose from the ancient language of Usboen, with smaller influences from other languages.

Nical also carries many elements of Yüsu'ar, the language spoken by the Ne'ac before occupation. 'Yüsu'arisations' of Ponutugiki were common prior to independence and is responsible for the odd blend of the two languages in modern Nical.

These language blends became gradually more common as the Tu'ipol Empire struggled to keep its firm group over all of its wide territory. As the uprising became imminent, there were significant movements to restore Yüsu'ar. Though this was not widely adopted, the trend of dropping or replacing many sounds common in Ponutugiki but not in Yüsu'ar was popularised. The combined languages came together as Proto-Nical and it is because of this combination that many words in Nical do not initially seem similar to the corresponding word in either Ponutugiki or Yüsu'ar.

Included sounds
Nical has a reasonable range of sounds but not as great an extent as, for example, Ponutugiki or English, being more similar to that of Yüsu'ar.

Vowels
Nical does not feature dipthongs, with individual vowel sounds pronounced distinctly or separated with glottal stops, depending on the dialect. Sometimes, a vowel is pronounced for longer than usual. When this is the case, the lengthened pronunciation can be represented by writing the lengthened letter twice. For example, the "a" sound in ümaac, meaning 'pest', is pronounced for around 50% longer than usual.