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Written Neloxian Rules
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Nelô kēļ — the Nelôxi language #

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: v5.77 · 2,003 headwords · ruling log through §146.

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)
world/                              ← the settled world: geography, boundaries, gazetteer, toponymy, exonyms, the African bloc
reader/                             ← finished corpus texts (recipe, dialogue, register showcase)
dialects/                           ← regional overlays on the standard (metrolect, inland)
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)
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.

  1. A delegate agent takes a domain batch, a corpus text, or a live translation, working from one self-contained bundle in bundles/.
  2. The batch is submitted with collision notes in the charter's format.
  3. The Rector reviews against canon, rules on gaps, reshapes collisions and source-language leaks, and merges accepted words into the coursebook.
  4. 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). Two dialects: the metroplex metrolect (standard) and the conservative inland.

The language is also pluricentric, across three seats. Alongside the Metropolitan standard (the coursebook) stand two co-standards, each keeping the identical Nelôxi grammar and rerooting only its domestic lexicon, 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.

One grammar, one orthographic agreement (saharannaise/COMMON-REGISTER.md), three divergent dictionaries — the Lisbon / Brasília / Luanda settlement of this language.

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.