Ditab

Ditab /diθ̠av/ is a language of Méich Bhaonnáiqh inspired by Iau, Proto-Lakes Plain and Semitic languages (particularly chanted Tiberian Hebrew). It's the ceremonial language of the continent Bådháchôth.

Todo

A reading tradition of Ditab with a Modern Hebrew accent: no tones or vowel or consonant length (so there will be a lot of ambiguity; Ditab isn't actually spoken that way)

• odhubh cabhechoth (fill in tones and vowel lengths) -> oduv kvekhot

Phonology

Ditab has

• 4 consonants: b d t k (add aleph?)
• a large inventory of vowels (about as many as Khmer): i ị e ẹ a ạ ọ o ụ u /i ɪ e ɛ æ ɑ ɔ o ʊ u/ + nasalized, -j, -w counterparts + ă (shva na3, by default /ä/)
• 6 pitch accent patterns (level, rising, falling, falling-rising, rising-falling, one like Swedish tone 2) (they should be loosely modeled after tropes)

There is a three way length distinction as well, in both consonants and vowels.

All four consonants have fricative allophones /v ð̠ θ̠ χ/ after vowels, unless they're geminated.

Word structure

Final stress like Tiberian Hebrew

Most ultimate stressed words are underlyingly either open syllable -V:, or "closed syllable" with allowed "codas" -C, -V, -VC, -(unstressed syllable)

Orthography

Ditab has an ASCII friendly orthography in addition to the 'default' one, where some vowels are written with consonant letters. It also has a Hebrew orthography with cantillation marks for tones and weird matres lectionis (like nun, mem, samekh, ayin etc.)

Morphology

Ditab morphology is entirely suffixing except for adjectives. Adjectives are a small closed class and work by infixing and/or changing the vowels in the noun according to a predictable umlaut pattern.

There is no grammatical gender, and two declension classes:

• Class one nouns mark the construct state with the suffix -bẽ́.
• Class two nouns mark the absolute state with -bẽ́.

Verbs inflect by aspect but not tense. Curiously, the imperfective and perfective forms are interchanged when the verb follows the interrogative particle kủ-, the negative particle bách- or the conjunctive particle adhùbh-.

Ditab is borderline polysynthetic in that some verbs have to incorporate their objects. Ditab also uses bipersonal inflections.

Syntax

Ditab is strictly OVS.