Introduction

Sereal (/'siɹi.l/ SEER-ee-l, also spelled Serial and often stylised as $ereal or $erial) encodes meaning with tone, duration, and repetition.

Phonology

9 levels of pitch occur, either on their own or in combination with another, along 5 possible contours to form 28 total tonemes.

Pitches

The 9 levels of pitch are not absolutely defined; so long as they're each distinct for both the communicator and the audience, any 9 pitches may constitute a communication in Sereal. The 9 pitches selected for use on this page are the following:

lowest	lower	low	low-mid	middle	high-mid	high	higher	highest
⏵	⏵	⏵	⏵	⏵	⏵	⏵	⏵	⏵

Within a tone, each pitch has 5 possible ways of changing up or down, called contours: flat/no change, rising, falling, rising-falling, falling-rising.

Tonology

Romanisation	Sound	Pitch(es)	Meaning(s)
0	⏵	lower	content roots (non-initial)
1	⏵	middle	content roots (non-initial)
3	⏵	middle and high-mid	content roots
4	⏵	high-mid	content roots
5	⏵	high	content roots
Y	⏵	higher	content roots
Z	⏵	highest	content roots
7	⏵	low-mid rising and high	imperfect verb suffix
8	⏵	low-mid falling and high-mid falling	perfective verb suffix
9	⏵	low-mid falling and high	tenuative nonpast verb suffix
X	⏵	high and higher	progressive verb suffix, content roots
E	⏵	low and high	nonpast passive verb suffix
C	⏵	low-mid rising, high, and higher	progressive imperfective verb suffix
F	⏵	low, low-mid rising, and high	passive imperfective verb suffix
G	⏵	low, low-mid falling, and high	ineffective/defective/unsuccessful verb suffix
W	⏵	low-mid falling, high-mid falling, and high	pluperfect verb suffix
A	⏵	high rising	first-person verb subject infix content roots (inital only)
B	⏵	high-mid rising	first-person-inclusive (me and you) verb subject infix content roots (inital only)
H	⏵	middle rising	second-person verb subject infix
S	⏵	low-mid falling	stative verb-forming suffix
T	⏵	low	active verb-forming suffix
V	⏵	low-mid falling-rising	causative verb-forming suffix
D	⏵	low-mid rising and high-mid falling	dative verb-forming suffix
K	⏵	low-mid rising	(unproductive) animate-noun-forming infix
L	⏵	high-mid falling	(unproductive) inanimate-noun-forming infix
N	⏵	lowest	countable-noun-forming prefix
P	⏵	high-mid falling-rising	collective-noun-forming prefix
Q	⏵	low rising-falling	mass-noun-forming prefix
+		(short hold previous)	"and/with" conjunction
%		(repeat previous louder and longer)	"or" conjunction
#		(repeat previous quieter and longer)	"but/while" conjunction
-		(quintuple stacatto next)	negation prefix
.		(triple stacatto next)	between noun and alienable posessee
=		(single stacatto next)	"is/are" copula between two phrases

Morphology

Content Words

Always 2 or 3 tones in length, content root word always begin with "A", "B", "Y", "Z", "3", "4", or "5" and may contain "Y", "Z", "0", "1", "3", "4", or "5" as the second or optional third component tone. Roots frequently form compound roots by directly combining with one another wherein the former more narrowly describes the latter.

Nouns

Three prefixes "N", "P", and "Q" respectively indicate countable, collective, or mass nouns.

Now unproductive, two infixes "K" and "L" respectively indicate animate and inanimate nouns historically formed from verbs.

Verbs

Subject Person is indicated by infixing either "A", "B", or "H" between the first and second tones of the word stem. "A" indicates a first-person exclusive subject (I or we), "B" indicates first-person inclusive (you and I), and "H" second-person (you).

Aspect is optionally indicated by suffixing any of 9 tones after the word stem: "7" imperfective, "8" perfective, "9" tenuative, "X" progressive, "E" nonpast passive, "C" progressive imperfective, "F" passive imperfective, "G" ineffective/defective/unsuccessful, or "W" pluperfect.

Voice is indicated by suffixing any of 4 tones to the end of the word stem (after the aspectual suffix if present): "S" stative, "T" active, "V" causative, "D" dative/locative.

Orthography