The Lufkan alphabet consists of twenty-one letters, with consonants bcdfgjklmnprstvz and vowels aeiou. The letters are pronounced similar to the Italian equivalents, but with c having the "sh" sound always and with j for the soft "g" sound. Usually only the lower case alphabet is used, but capital letters are sometimes used for emphasis (such as in titles, "Grana Lufku", or for poetic reasons, "apoVa").

Standard words are five letters long, made of a three-letter stem, giving the base meaning of the word, and a two-letter suffix, used to alter meaning and give grammatical intent. The stem is either VCV, CVC, or CCV, with the suffix always CV. Taking limitations on pronounciation into account, there are combinatorially at most 1850 possible stems in the Lufkan language.

Final Letter

The last letter of a word indicates its grammatical role. Nouns end with a, verbs with o, and qualitative words (adjectives, adverbs, etc.) with u.

Penultimate Letter

The penultimate letter of a standard word is used to refine the meaning of the word. One would use apova to discuss a fish in general, apola to talk about a male fish, apota to talk about a dead fish, apofa to talk about fish as food, apoga for fish-like activity, etc. It is rare for all possibilites to be used with a single stem, but an author is free to use any to capture an idea. The Platonic notion of aposa, an abstract "fishness", is particularly common, while apoma might be used to describe a state of mind that is somehow fish-like.

Five possible letters are used to describe living things:

Two are used to describe non-living, physical things:

The verb forms of these typically captures the idea of using the object, structure, or substance. For example, ritra (pen) and ritro (to write).

Four are humanocentric keys which usually have a stem with a separate meaning:

For example jolsa (happiness) and jolba (face); goffa (coffee); greta (grape) and greda (Greece); stumo (study) and stuca (school).

Words with d or c typically capture noun concepts; the verb form is taken to mean "go to that place", such as gredo fe ma (I will go to Greece) or stuco ma (I am going to school). Words with f name a food or drink; their verb forms indicate consumption of the food or drink. For example, greto vu ma (I am eating the grapes) and mizfo re ta (you were drinking the water).

One is used for events:

Two words for follow, flogo and flomo, have obviously different meanings.

The remaining penultimate letters are used to describe more abstract ideas:

For example, matna (mathematics), mirzo (hiding), bonsa (good), and desmo (desire). Note the difference between jolma and jolsa (happiness), or telma and telsa (intelligence).

As with places and foods, z words are typically nouns, with the verb form meaning "being in that state". For example, a standard Lufkan greeting is jolzo ja (Who is being happy?), with the (hopeful) reply jolzo ma.

Proper Names

Male and female names are formed with a stem and the suffix -la or -ka, respectively. Place names (cities, countries, etc.) have the suffix -da. As mentioned above, it is standard to use -do to mean travelling to that place, such as tokdo ma (I am travelling to Tokyo).

Compound Words

The Lufkan language is enriched by the formation of compound words, standard five letter words joined by a hyphen, with all but the first in adjective form. The compound word has a meaning as a whole, but that meaning can usually be understood from its parts. For example, kasra-galzu means "houseboat" whereas kasra galzu means "floating house" (perhaps because of a flood).

Small Words

In addition to the standard five-letter words, there are a number of smaller letter words, such as the pronouns

as well as modifiers for case and tense (see grammar).

The only smaller word is e, used for conjunctions such as jakla e jilka (Jack and Jill).