Introduction

Tuuliboli (/ˌtu:ˈli.bo.li/ too-LEE-bo-lee, also proximate case Tuuliboni and construct case Tuulibobi, and also stylised as Tu:liboli) is learned in formal education and is spoken as a lingua franca between speakers of many varied dialects, all descendent of Tochlipuli (Classical Tuuliboli), itself a later stage of Sonja Lang's Toki Pona (often stylised toki pona) and influenced by a number of other languages.

Phonology

Consonants are analysed as the following 17:

	Labial	Coronal	Dorsal
Nasal	m	n
Plosive	p b	t d	k g
Fricative	f (v)	s z	ʃ ʒ
Approximant	w	l	j

/v/ only occurs in reborrowings.

Vowels number upwards of 13 — 8 are short, 3 long, and 2 diphthongs:

	Front	Central	Back
High	i i:		u u:
Mid	e ɛ	ə	o ou
Low	a (a:) ai		(ɑ)

/a:/ and /ɑ/ are only retained in the most formal speech and/or by elderly speakers.

Romanisation

When possible, phonemes are romanised just as they are in the above charts. Alternatively, /ʃ/ may be romanised either <x> or <sh> and /ʒ/ can be romanised <zh>. Long vowels are usually romanised as a doubled vowel (as in Tuuliboli), but vowel length may alternatively be represented with a ':', mirroring the native orthography. If necessary, /ɛ/ may be romanised as <è> or <eh> and /ə/ may be romanised <à> or <2>. If necessary, <ò> may represent the marginal allohpone /ɑ/.

Morphology

Every word of Tuuliboli is categorically either a noun or a verb.

Nouns

Common Nouns are indicated as one of three grammatical cases:

Proximate means that the noun is the semantic agent of a direct-voice verb or the patient of an inverse-voice verb.
Obviate is the opposite of proximate, indicating either the patient of a direct-voice verb or the agent of an inverse-voice verb.
Construct nouns occur before other nouns to form a compound noun phrase wherein the latter more narrowly describes the former.

Animacy is determinative of the suffixation pattern of nouns:

	Animate	Inanimate
Proximate	-(u)	-li / -nCi
Obviate	-	-ni / -nCi
Construct	-(i)bi	-bi

Personal pronouns are mostly regular with a few exceptions:

First-person ʒə and second-person ʃinʒə are respectively rendered in speech as ʒ and ʃinʒ before any vowel-inital word.
Where there are two first-person forms listed, the first is second-person exclusive and the second is second-person inclusive.
ʃinʒ(ə) is used to refer to a physically present second-person, whereas ʃinmuʒ may include some non-present second-person antecedent.
Singular nouns are referred to in the genetive case with uul when animate and ni when inanimate.

Forms		1st Person		2nd Person	3rd Person
Oblique	Singular	ʒ(ə)		ʃinu	-
Oblique	Plural	miʃi	ʒau	ʃinʒ(ə) / ʃinmuʒ	-
Genitive	Singular	ʒ(ə)		ʃai	uul / ni
	Dual	-		ʃintu	-
	Plural	miʃi	ʒii	ʃino	bəno

Oblique-case third-person pronouns are unattested. Referring to a third-person noun is done with a number of pronoun-like words, depending on the speaker's dialect as well as their relationship to or perspective of the antecedent.

Verbs

Verbs are indicated to have one of three voices: direct (-ɛ), inverse (-wi by default or -bi after a consonant), and prepositional (-la).

Orthography

Ʃiliboli, the standard of Tuuliboli spelling, is a split alphabetic-logographic orthography. One set of characters is used to spell each consonant and vowel phoneme, and another set is used for common words or morphemes.

The alphabet contains 27 letters. Many standard spellings of words are inherited from Tochlipuli. As such, each letter can possibly represent more than one phoneme, but all have a common name:

ikəʃ	a	ʃibi dili	ʃibi otili	dəm	əm	fai
gaw	ɛjə	dolu	kaw	mi	naw	aw
pu	bu	bi	u	vai	jə	təm
sibi dili	sibi otili	zibi dili	zibi otili	ʒibi dili	ʒibi otili

The logography contains hundreds of characters. Many represent whole words (a searchable collection of these logograms can be viewed here); which although not necessary for day-to-day communication and thus not learned comprehensively by most speakers, are indeed used to facilitate communication between speakers of varied dialects.