Kirtumur

Kirtumur language
Kirtumur
Pronunciation	[/ˈkir.tu.mur/]
Created by	Raistas
Setting	Umu, planet Earth
Ethnicity	Umunnaki
Language family	Kyrdan languages East Kyrdan languages Kirtumur language
Early form	Proto-Kyrdan

Kirtumur is an Eastern language spoken for more than a thousand years in an eastern part of the continent, called Umu. It has been documented as a living language for at least 1500 years, according to the date of the earliest Kērsal documents. Though no longer spoken natively, Kērsalur continues to be used as a language of scholarship and cult, influencing Kirtumur, which is now the official language of Umu.

Along with Cirdamur and Kērsalur, Kirtumur belongs to the Kyrdan language family. Its position in a remote corner of the former interstellar empire shows it to be a last remnant of the ancient languages that preceded the arrival of Klīru and its sister languages, to which the Kyrdan languages are distantly related. The name "Kirtumur" comes from the Old Ķyrdum ķiur "proper (speech)" and the suffixes -tum of unknown etymology, related to "-dam" in Cirdamur. The Kirtumur speakers themselves used to call their language umunesal "the speech of Umu", but they changed its name to make it different from unstandardised varieties, spoken in that part of the continent. The southern alluvial plain where the Umunnak people lived is by itself hardly a hospitable region, but the climate is warmer and less windy, and together with plain terrain it made the are the centre of Umu with many relatively densely populated cities, which helped establishing Kirtumur as the new official language after the decline of Kērsalur.

Kirtumur belongs to the eastern branch along with Kērsalur and a few spoken varieties (also called Kirtumur dialects). The most important neighbour outside its close genetic relatives is Cirdamur, which has been in contact with Kirtumur for almost all of its history and both languages influenced each other, this is the most noticeable in their lexical similarity, for example supōlum "ship", which is a loanword from Cirdamur and has the same root as Kirtumur paulim "gliding"; or cilin "healthy" (another Cirdamur loanword) which is a cognate to Kirtumur kilin "whole, unbroken".

Dialects

The two distinct varieties (Ilusal and Ruosal), usually called Kirtumur dialects, can be considered separate languages, since both are quite different from Kirtumur and are more similar to each other and extinct Kērsal dialects than to Kirtumur. There is yet another dialect, called kirtumur erepurnu, which has more old loanwords from Kērsal and is more conservative, preserving a distinct [y(ː)] sound which became [i] in other dialects. In the north and northeast of Umu Kirtumur dialects merge [s] and [ʃ], leaving only the latter and also tend to pronounce [x] as [h]. They also use zela or hela instead of ŋala "to live" and mi instead of ma "not", which is also common in the west and is shared with Ruosal.

There are also various sociolects, that vary in levels of prestige with the high nobility speaking almost completely in Kērsalur with Kirtumur grammar and using longer words, while people of a low social class using less complex grammatical structures and more dialectal words in their speech. The Erepur dialect is the only exception as it is associated with religion, viewed as a link between Kērsalur and common Kirtumur, through which people can understand ancient texts and inscriptions.

Phonology

The analysis of Kirtumur phonology is based only on the standard language, though some additional data from dialects may also be included. The most important sound changes are discussed too.

All Kirtumur syllables have the structure V, CV, VC or CVC, the vowel being either long or short. The vowel-initial syllable are not as often as the consonant-initial ones, but vowel-initial words are quite common. The consonant clusters can only appear between vowels and vowel sequences are possible, after a consonant between them elided due to various sound changes.

Consonants

		Bilabial	Dental		Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n			ŋ
Stop	tenuis	p	t			k
	aspirated	ph /pʰ/	th /tʰ/			kh /kʰ/
Affricate	tenuis		c /t͡s/
	aspirated		ch /t͡sʰ/
Fricative			z /θ/	s	š /ʃ/	x	h
Approximant		w	r		y /j/
Lateral Approximant			l

Kirtumur distinguishes between aspirated and unaspirated plosives and affricates. It is unknown whether this was the original distinction or it was originally based on voicing like in Cirdamur, or a different contrast. Consonant length is phonemic in Kirtumur but only in word-medial position, that is to say, between vowels only, but it can also be interpreted as a consonant cluster, considering the origin of gemination, which is assimilation of certain consonants that would otherwise create a prohibited cluster (an example of which is the word kukkapir "column", itself a borrowing from Kērsalur, originally *gubgabir from the root *gub "to support". Here *bg became *gg which gave "kk" in Kirtumur). Certain consonants, like /r/, /w/, /j/, /h/ or any aspirated consonants can not be geminate.

Many speakers do not distinguish /x/ in their speach word-initially and medially, merging it with /h/. Mountain dialects typically pronounce "l" as [ɫ] when geminate or syllable-final and this is viewed as standard, though a denti-alveolar [l] is preferred. /r/ is usually a trill, though a tapped pronunciation (as [ɾ]) is possible too, mostly in fast speech of a common class, this is, however, considered inappropriate among the nobility. Just like Kērsal, the old Kirtumur writing system used signs for a specialized sound, romanised "ř", the exact pronunciation of which is unknown. Through a number of sound changes, /ř/ disappeared as an independent phoneme from all Kyrdan languages, but it likely sounded similar to /r/, since it merged with this phoneme in Kirtumur with several marginal exceptions, where it instead became pronounced [t], for example: eicat "it sold" (from *eiʒař), utun "meanwhile" (from *uřu "between").

The voiceless aspirated stops were generally lost in syllable-final position, merging with their plain voiceless counterparts or assimilating to the following consonant. In southwestern dialects the /tʰ/ irregularly became /r/ between vowels. This is also true for the standard, but limited to a few verbal prefixes before person markers. The consonants /h/, /w/ and /j/ are rare and can only be found word-initially or between vowels, they disappear when preceded by any consonant.

Vowels

Vowels

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Mid	ē [eː]	ō [oː]
Open-mid	e [ɛ]
Open		a [ɑ]

Vowel length was phonemic in East Kyrdan, but in Kirtumur the only vowel that has both a short and a long versions is /e/, which is still differentiated by quality: the short counterpart is noticeably more open. Kirtumur also has two diphthongs: "ei" [eɪ] and "au" [aʉ], with the second being pronounced [ɛʏ] in the northeast.

Early in its history a sound change took place that gave rise to the Kirtumur vowel harmony. According to this rule, a front vowel differs depending on the vowel in the following syllable. When the next syllable contains a high vowel ([i] or [u]) or a diphthong, then the vowel is [i] and in other cases it is [ɛ], for instance: enethachi "she/he gave it to them", inišuki "she/he bought it for them". Certain prefixes, like the locative prefix, does not change, however. If the vowel is [ɛ], then both [i] and [ɛ] can appear before it, but the latter appears much more often then the former.

Consonant clusters

The number of permissible clusters is high, but not every consonant sequence is allowed. If a certain prohibited cluster would form, the first consonant usually assimilates to the second. but this is not always the case. Here, in the table below the most common assimilation types are shown. The first consonant is in the leftmost column, while the second consonant of a cluster is in the topmost row.

Consonant Clusters

	ph, p	th, t	kh, k	ch, c	z	s	š	x	h	w	y
ph, p	pp	pp	pp	pp	zp	sp	šp	p	p	p	p
th, t	tt	tt	kt	tt	t	st	št	xt	t	t	xt
kh, k	kk	kk	kk	kk	zk	sk	šk	xk	k	k	k
ch, c	cc	cc	cc	cc	c	sc	sc	c	c	c	c
z	p	t	k	c	zz	zz	zz	zz	z	z	k
s	p	t	k	c	ss	ss	ss	ss	s	s	k
š	p	t	k	c	šš	šš	šš	šš	š	š	k
x	p	t	k	c	zk	sk	šk	kk	x	x	k
h	p	t	k	c	z	s	š	h	h	h	h

Stress

Like other Eastern varieties, Kirtumur does not possess a strong stress and thus it generally does not cause any vowel reduction of unstressed syllables (a feature, shared with Kērsalur, but not with some westernmost dialects, like Ilusal). A stress is generally fixed on the root vowel of a word, but some suffixes can cause the stress shift to the right, like the inanimate locative marker -enei which receives stress on its first vowel ([ˈlum] "surface" - [lu.ˈmɛ.nɛɪ] "on the surface" ) or the negative active present conjugation, which shifts the stress to the person suffix ([ˈkʰɑ.tʰɑ] "to stop" - [kʰɑ.ˈtʰeɪ.ŋi] "I'm not stopping him/her". In composite words the stress always falls on the second root vowel or a suffix - [nɑm.sɑ.ˈlir] "speech, the manner of speaking".