Ish

Ish
Created by	User:Prinsessa
Language family	? Ish

Introduction

Ish is the anglicised exonym of a language mostly spoken around coastal areas. Its speakers are in close contact with speakers of Ash, who are relative newcomers to the area, but this dates back many centuries and has led to a great deal of cultural and linguistic exchange between the two. Most speakers of either language has at least some degree of familiarity with the other, and pidgin forms exist.

Phonology

Ish has a small phonemic inventory but allows consonant clusters. The maximum syllable structure is /CɰVCɰ/.

Vowels

There are four phonemic vowels, romanised like their IPA counterparts.

	Front	Back
Oral	/e/	/a/
Nasal	/ẽ/	/ã/

The back vowels are sometimes rounded to [ɒ] and [ɒ̃] by an adjacent /ɰ/ and are then spelled o and õ.

Consonants

	Coronal	Dorsal
Plosive	/t~ɾ/ d	/k/ c
Affricate	/tˢ~s/ t	/kˣ~x/ q
Sonorant	/l~ɾ/ l~d	/ɰ~w~j/ w~y

The phoneme /ɰ/ is palatalised to [j] by a nearby /e/ in which case it is romanised as y.

Lenition, fortition, and nasalisation

Consonants except for affricates may be nasalised by a nearby nasal vowel. Nasality can also spread from roots to affixes. Between oral vowels consonants may also voice or change in other ways. Word-final changes in pausa also occur.

Initial

	/k/ / #_V	/t/ / #_V	/l/ / #_V
Oral	[k] c	[t] d	[l] l
Nasal	[ŋ] ŋ	[n] n

Medial

	/k/ / V_V	/t/ / V_V	/l/ / V_V
Oral	[g] c	[ɾ] d
Nasal	[ŋ] ŋ	[ɾ̃] d

Final

	/k/ / V_##	/t/ / V_##	/l/ / V_##
Oral	[k̚] c	[t̚] d	[l̚] l
Nasal	[ŋ̚] ŋ	[n̚] n

Labiovelar ligatures

One of the most salient features of the phonology is the free variation in pronunciation of labiovelar clusters, romanised with additional letters.

	/kɰ/	/lɰ/
Oral	[gʷ~bᶭ] ȹ (c + p)	[ɾʷ~ⱱᶭ] ȸ (d + b)
Nasal	[ŋʷ~mᶭ] ɱ (m + ŋ)	[ɾ̃ʷ~ⱱ̃ᶭ] ȸ (d + b)

The forms shown here are medial, but they otherwise follow the same pattern of initial and final forms as the other consonants.

Grammar

Words in Ish do not have a lot of morphology besides a very productive affinity for compounding. Most content words do not fit neatly into any particular class of words, but are either verbs or nouns depending on their syntactic position, making word order somewhat rigid. However there are function words, some of which are fused.

Glossed examples

The following examples are given with both variations on the labiovelar realisations.

Possession

ɱõȸ ota tedoȹ
/lɰãlɰ atˢa tˢetakɰ/ [mᶭɒ̃‿ⱱ̃ᶭɒ.sa tˢe.ɾɒp̚ᶭ]~[ŋʷɒ̃‿ɾ̃ʷɒ.sa tˢe.ɾɒk̚ʷ]
good NDIR.PROX mouth
I speak well.

Question

qa nãtẽɱ o tot o
/kˣa tatˢẽkɰ a(t) tˢatˢ (a)ɰa/ [kˣã nã.sẽ‿mᶭɒ tˢɒ‿sᶭɒ]~[kˣã nã.sẽ‿ŋʷɒ tˢɒ‿sᶭɒ]
Q in-live NDIR place DIST
Where do you live?

Continuous aspect

tececey ad aqoȹo ya
/tˢekekeɰ at akˣakɰa (e)ɰa/ [tˢe.ʔe.gej aɾ‿a.xɒ.bᶭɒ ja]~[tˢe.ʔe.gej aɾ‿a.xɒ.gʷɒ ja]
away-go~CONT NDIR Appa PROX
We are going to Appa.