Tumachee

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Tumachee
yûkka tûmaḩ
Pronunciation[ʝúkʲɑ dúmɑɧ]
Created byJukethatbox
Date2024
Native speakers600 (2024)
Tumachic
  • Tumachee
Early form
Proto-Tumachic
Dialects
  • He-who-uses-the-loom
  • He-who-irrigates
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Tumachee(yûkka tûmaḩ; Tumachee: [ʝúkʲɑ dúmɑɧ]) is a Tumachic language spoken by the Tumachee people in the fictional He-who-uses-the-loom River Basin(Tumachee: Kumâḩâ Ḩôskebânki) and the coast of the He-who-irrigates Lake(Kumâziḩâ Gzînkebânki) of the North-western United States. It is the sole member of the Tumachic language family alongside Gzuwê.

It is a highly agglutinative language with a very rare verb-object-subject basic word order and a (not so rare)noun-adjective order.

Etymology

Endonym

The Tumachee endonym, tûmaḩ, is probably derived from the Proto-Tumachic word *dúmas, which means "wide prairie, lowland". As the ancient(and modern) Tumachee lived in relatively low-lying areas like river basins, this may explain the reason for it becoming an endonym. The Tumachee and Gzuwê words for "lowland" are also derived from *dúmas: Tumachee tumîḩi and Gzuwê ttumiz.

Exonym

The English exonym Tumachee has an origin in the language of the now extinct Jikiha(Tumachee: Gzîkka) tribe, who were the first members of the Sleeping Bull Confederacy to interact with British colonisers. The Jikiha exchanged information on the other tribes and peoples in Sleeping Bull, and probably referred to the Tumachee people as *tú(ð)máki, which is a plural form of *tú(ð)mág, which was then loaned into English as initially Toumacke or Tumacki and then finally into Tumachee.

Phonology

Orthography

Tumachee uses the Latin alphabet, with some unique letters, notably circumflex vowels(âêîôû) and the cedilla h(ḩ), with the new letters phonetically representing high tone and vowels and the voiceless palato-velar fricative respectively.

Consonants

Labial Alveolar Palatal Palatal-velar Velar Glottal
Plosive pulmonic b t d (c)[1] k g
palatalised tʲ dʲ kʲ gʲ
Nasal m n (ŋ)
Fricative s z ʝ ɧ ɦ
Affricate t͡ɕ
Approximant normal w (j)[2]
lateral l (ʎ)[3] (ɫ)[3]

Vowels

Front Back
Close i u
Open-mid e ɔ
Open ɑ

Prosody

Tone

Tumachee has one tone that only appears on vowels, the high tone([˦]). Orthographically, it is marked by a circumflex(e.g. â).

Phonotactics

Tumachee mostly follows the syllable structure of (C)V(C), where C is any consonant and V is any vowel.

Syntax

Constituent order

Tumachee uses a VOS(verb-object-subject) constituent word order.

Noun phrase

Verb phrase

Sentence phrase

Dependent clauses

Example texts

Other resources

  1. ^ Dialectic variation of /tʲ/.
  2. ^ Dialectic variation of /ʝ/.
  3. ^ a b Dialectic variation of /l/.