🗣️Kotava

1. What Kotava is

Kotava is a constructed international auxiliary language created by Staren Fetcey, first made public in 1978 (the project began in 1975). Its guiding principle is cultural neutrality: the name means ‘the language of one and all’.¹² Confidence: High.

Kotava is an a priori language — its roots are entirely invented and independent of any existing language, natural or constructed, which distinguishes it from a posteriori auxiliary languages (like Esperanto or Interlingua) that draw their words from European sources. Fetcey regarded that European basis as a disadvantage, and designed Kotava's lexicon to favour no language.² Confidence: High.

The language holds ISO 639-3 code avk and Glottolog code kota1280, and is overseen by a linguistic committee, the Kotava Avaneda, established in 2005. It underwent revisions in 1988 and 1993 and now has a lexicon of more than 17,000 basic roots. It is best known in French-speaking countries, and much of its learning material is in French.²³ Confidence: High.

2. Writing system and orthography

Kotava is written in the Latin alphabet but does not use the letters H or Q. Spelling is fully phonemic — the sound is always predictable from the spelling and vice versa — and the only diacritic is an acute accent marking stress on the final vowel of the first-person singular of verbs.² Confidence: High.

A few consonant values differ from English expectations: c is [ʃ] (‘sh’), j is [ʒ] (the ‘s’ in measure), and y is [j] (‘y’ as in yes).² Confidence: High.

3. Pronunciation

Kotava has five vowels — a e i o u — pronounced as in Spanish or Swahili, with no length distinctions and no nasalisation, plus five diphthongs (ay, ey, iy, oy, uy; iy and uy are rare).² Confidence: High.

Stress is fully regular: on the last syllable if the word ends in a consonant, and on the second-to-last if it ends in a vowel — except the first-person singular of verbs, which is stressed on the final vowel and marked with an acute accent.² Confidence: High.

4. Core grammar

Word order in Kotava is very free, though usage leans toward object–subject–verb, and every object or complement is introduced by a preposition. Morphology is strict and unambiguous: every part of speech is overtly marked, and each morpheme has one exclusive function. Nouns and pronouns are invariable — there is no case declension, and neither gender nor plurality is marked by affixes (particles are used when needed). A distinctive ‘euphonic’ principle matches the endings of adjectives and other modifiers to their noun.² Confidence: High.

The personal pronouns are jin (I), rin (you, singular), in (he/she/it), min (we, inclusive), win (you, plural), sin (they) and cin (we, exclusive). The reflexive is int and the reciprocal sint; possessives add -af. Sex, when it must be marked, is shown with -ya (female) and -ye (male): ayik ‘human’ → ayikya ‘woman’, ayikye ‘man’.² Confidence: High.

Verbs conjugate for three tenses (present, past, future) and four moods, across seven persons including inclusive and exclusive ‘we’. The first-person singular is the dictionary form; person is shown by suffixes, past by a -y- interfix and future by a -t- interfix.² Confidence: High.

5. A small set of attested words

This is an orientation, not a dictionary; Kotava has 17,000+ roots documented in the official grammar and dictionaries.² The items below are attested in the sources reviewed. Confidence: High.

6. Culture and reading material

Literature holds an important place in the Kotava community, with hundreds of translations available for reading practice — including works by Tolstoy, Zola, Maupassant, Camus, Victor Hugo and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (The Little Prince), along with fairy tales by La Fontaine, Perrault, the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen.² Confidence: High.

7. Resources and where to learn

• Kotava — official portalAll levels — The official site of the Kotava Avaneda (linguistic committee): grammar, dictionaries and community resources (mainly in French, with English pages).
• Kotava: Official Complete Grammar (English, PDF)Reference — The authoritative grammar (version IV.03) from the Kotava linguistic committee.
• Kotava — reasons and introduction (English)Beginner — The project's own English-language introduction to its goals and design.
• Glottolog: Kotava (kota1280)Reference — Catalogue record for the language.
• Kotava — encyclopedic overviewReference — A sourced English overview of Kotava's history, phonology and grammar.

Honest limitations

This is an orientation, not a course. Vocabulary and example sentences are limited to items attested in the sources cited; the official Complete Grammar and dictionaries are the canonical authorities for anything beyond them. Much of the deeper learning material is in French. No downloadable flashcard deck is provided in this version. Any Kotava community emblem was not available as a verified file for this build, so the page shows the neutral marker rather than an unverified image. Facts here are restated in original wording; no source prose, tables or dictionary lists are reproduced.