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: v5.82 · 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, the African bloc, the Meridian States, Valdória, 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)
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). 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). 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.