The working repository of the Nelôxi language (nelô kēļ): reference grammar, course, dictionary, worldbuilding, and the governance materials of the Kēļs Kolēgi (College of Language).

Current canon: v5.82 · 2,054 headwords · ruling log through §151.

The live figure always lives in data/version.json and the charter's §7 header; the website shows it in the sidebar and footer. If a number here ever lags, those are the source of truth.

Website #

Browse the whole repository as a site: https://quarterback.github.io/kels/

It reads the canonical files directly (never a stale copy) — the coursebook and verb reference as formatted pages, a live-searchable dictionary (Nelôxi → English) and the English → Nelôxi reverse index, the grammar modules, the reader texts, the world layer, the dialect overlays, and the College's charter, doctrine, and briefs. A version stamp (from data/version.json) and the repository's last-commit time show, on every page, that you are seeing the latest. Static, no build step: index.html plus assets/. To serve it, point GitHub Pages at the branch root (Settings → Pages). To preview locally, run python3 -m http.server in the repo root — opening index.html as a file:// path blocks the fetches the site relies on.

Repository structure #

coursebook/nelo-kel-coursebook.md   ← CANON. The single source of truth (grammar + master dictionary).
coursebook/VERB-REFERENCE.md        ← the verb system, digested
grammar/                            ← foundation teaching modules (01 partitive … 12 numbers; no 05)
college/kels-kolegi-charter.md      ← contributor protocol + full ruling log + collision list (§7)
college/CREOLE-PRINCIPLE.md         ← THE standing vocabulary doctrine (§79): borrow first, five co-primary quarries
college/FUNCTION-WORDS.md           ← high-frequency glue already in canon (anti-leak cheat-sheet)
college/*-BRIEF.md                  ← briefs for the delegate, corpus, and daily-life agents
bundles/                            ← self-contained agent kits (domain / corpus / grammar / translation)
saharannaise/                       ← the Atlantic co-standard (Kēļs Dīwān): Hassaniya/Zenaga reroot + COMMON-REGISTER spine
congolaise/                         ← the Riverine co-standard (Kēļs Penc): Pulaar/Soninke/Wolof fused creole (Confluence Principle)
mare/                               ← Meralian, the Carolinian-shaped Neloxian daughter language of the Meridian States
verdenese/                          ← the Austral co-standard of Valdória (Kēļs Ateneô): Romance-saturated settler creole + Guaraní land-layer (Crisol Principle)
sarmatian/                          ← the Sarmatian standard (Kēļs Xasā; the sixth standard, of Sarmatia): the same Nelôxi words under a Circassian-led grammar — the inverted fork
world/                              ← the settled world: geography, boundaries, gazetteer, toponymy, exonyms, governance, the twelve-region transoceanic state, the Yemeni Commonwealth, the African bloc, the Meridian States, Valdória, Esmeralda, Skaria
reader/                             ← finished corpus texts (recipe, dialogue, register showcase, the all-coasts phrasebook)
dialects/                           ← regional overlays on the standard (metrolect, inland, tristine)
data/dictionary.tsv                 ← machine-readable headword → gloss (generated)
data/headwords.txt                  ← flat headword list (generated)
data/reverse-index.md               ← English → Nelôxi index (generated)
data/version.json                   ← canon version, headword count, last ruling (generated)
tools/regen_data.py, regen_reverse.py, build_bundles.py   ← the regenerators
index.html, assets/                 ← the website (fetches the repo files live)
settlements.html                    ← the settlements gazetteer / city-search page (all regions, names, population, output)
archive/                            ← design archive (internal; not reference material)

The one rule that matters #

The coursebook is the single merge target. All canonized vocabulary and grammar lives there and only there. The charter's collision list (§7), the data/ files, the grammar-module and brief snapshots, and the bundles are generated from the coursebook after each merge — derived artifacts, never edited by hand. If any file disagrees with the coursebook, the coursebook wins and the other file gets regenerated (tools/regen_data.py && tools/regen_reverse.py && tools/build_bundles.py).

How the language grows #

Nelôxi is a multi-agent conlang. Grammar is Livonian-Karelian Baltic-Finnic; vocabulary is a five-way maritime creole — the governing doctrine is college/CREOLE-PRINCIPLE.md (§79): when a gap opens, borrow from whichever of the five co-primary quarries (Low German, Slavic, Scandinavian, Romance-Latin, Finnic-core) owns the domain, rather than defaulting to a Finnic derivation.

A delegate agent takes a domain batch, a corpus text, or a live translation, working from one self-contained bundle in bundles/.
The batch is submitted with collision notes in the charter's format.
The Rector reviews against canon, rules on gaps, reshapes collisions and source-language leaks, and merges accepted words into the coursebook.
The charter's ruling log records the decision; §7, data/, and the bundles are regenerated.

Nothing is canon until merged.

Reference grammar, in brief #

Finnic grammar under four-way loan contact: agglutinative cases, vowel harmony, no verb agreement, pre-verbal negation äb, a bare-stem imperative and hortative -m. Base-12 (dozenal) numbers with Slavic digits, a 24-hour clock, and a Low German merchant calendar. The productive derivational affixes are -ji, -õr/-ôr, -in, -mus/-mys, -ū, -stā, -ldā, -ām/-äm, -tū/-ty (plus causative -tā and the comparative -mi). Orthography uses ô [ɤ] (not õ, retired v4.0); x = [ʃ], or [ks] in proper nouns (§47). Three homeland dialects: the metroplex metrolect (standard), the conservative inland, and the Adriatic Tristine port register.

The language is also pluricentric, across six seats. Alongside the Metropolitan standard (the coursebook) stand the co-standards, each self-contained (own seat, own separately-counted lexicon) and linking back to core canon rather than editing it:

Saharannaise (saharannaise/) — the co-standard of Atlanta, Nelôxia's sovereign sister state on the Atlantic Saharan coast (see world/atlanta-lore.md), rerooted in Hassaniya Arabic and Zenaga Berber (Afro-Asiatic). Seat: the Kēļs Dīwān, headed by the Amīn. See saharannaise/saharannaise.md.
Congolaise (congolaise/) — the co-standard of Soninka & Toro, the Senegal-River / Sahel state of the African bloc (see world/african-bloc.md), rerooted in Pulaar, Soninke-Mande, and Wolof (Niger-Congo). Where Saharannaise reroots into one substrate, Congolaise is a three-tributary fused creole governed by its own doctrine, the Confluence Principle. Seat: the Kēļs Penc, headed by the Ardo. See congolaise/congolaise.md.
Meralian (mare/) — Merā kēļ, the federal daughter language of the Meridian States, the sovereign transoceanic nation backed by Nelôxia (see world/meridian-states.md). It preserves a predominantly Neloxian inherited lexicon but has Carolinian-shaped predicate-first grammar, preverbal TAM and directional particles, possessive classifiers, inclusive/exclusive and dual/paucal pronouns, reduplication, and open-syllable sound patterns. The old sailors’ register is Maré; the deepest territorial overlay is Spanish-fused Canarian Meralian. Seat: the itinerant Kēļs Vakt, headed by the Lōts. See mare/mare.md.
Verdenese (verdenese/) — the co-standard of Valdória (the Valdórian Citizens Republic of Edeland), the young South American settler-nation (country lore under world/, in progress; its Nelosphere neighbor on the continent is Esmeralda, world/esmeralda-lore.md). The youngest standard and the classic-creole case observed live: Nelôxi as the neutral tongue of an 1800s immigrant frontier, its domestic lexicon Romance-saturated (Portuguese/Italian/Spanish) with a thick Guaraní loan-layer for everything the land names, governed by the Crisol Principle. Grammar untouched — no Meralian-style daughter-language restructuring. Seat: proposed as the Kēļs Ateneô, headed by the Diretôr. See verdenese/verdenese.md.
Sarmatian (sarmatian/) — the sixth standard, of Sarmatia (the People's Republic of Sarmatia, formerly East Neloxia), the sovereign eastern span separated amicably from the mainland. The inverted fork: every other standard keeps the grammar and changes the words; the Sarmatian standard keeps the entire Nelôxi word-stock and hands the grammatical lead to Circassian (Adyghe) — SOV, ergative marking, a polysynthetic verb, negation folded into the verb — with Estonian demoted to secondary partner (the noun cases) and Turkic as the casual loan quarry in the Low German role (para/rā, bazar/turg). Same words, different structure; its grammar is namespaced and shared with no other seat. Seat: proposed as the Kēļs Xasā, headed by the Tamadā. See sarmatian/sarmatian.md.

The Nelôxian co-standards share one grammar and orthographic agreement (saharannaise/COMMON-REGISTER.md) while developing divergent dictionaries. Meralian is their oceanic relative: recognizably Neloxian in its inherited roots, but independently standardized with a Carolinian-shaped grammar. The Sarmatian standard likewise stands outside the shared-spine sentence: same dictionary, its own Circassian-led grammar, legal only in its own namespace — the complementary proof that inherited vocabulary can travel with a new structure.

Register #

Reference materials treat Nelôxi as a language, full stop. Design history and source discussion live only in archive/ and the charter's backstage sections, never in the coursebook.

Clone this repository

Nelô kēļ — the Nelôxi language #