Ín Duári

Introduction

Golahát is an indigenous minority language spoken in small pockets in Minhay. The language is not related to the Minhast language, nor the Peshpeg language, another minority language in the Minhast Nation. A relationship with the extinct Corradi language, another language indigenous to Minhay, has not been successfully demonstrated. Some linguists have also tried to establish a relationship with nearby languages in Northeast Asia, including Japanese, Korean, Ainu, and various Altaic, Tungusic, and Paleosiberian languages. Others have tried to link it to the Indo-European language family, due to typological similarities between the two. Nevertheless, a relationship with other languages continues to elude scholars, and thus Golahát remains classified as a language isolate.

Golahát is an exonym, originating from the Peshpeg word gola, meaning foreigner, and -hát, a Peshpeg suffix used to derived denonyms; the suffix -hát is itself a borrowing from the Minhast suffix -ast/-hast. Golahát speakers refer to themselves as ín Duari, meaning "the people", and their language as penáz, meaning "those who speak (intelligibly)".

Like Peshpeg, Golahát is an endangered language; according to the 2010 census, less than one thousand people still speak the language, the youngest in their late 30's or early 40's. Golahát has fared better than Peshpeg, which has only a few hundred speakers at most. Nevertheless, Golahát continues to lose speakers due to several factors, such as the influx of Minhast speakers into traditionally Golahát-speaking areas, emigration by the younger generation to urban areas in search for employment, and the influence of the Minhast-dominated media.

Phonology

Orthography

Ammerkast Characters
a, á, e,é, i, í, o, ó u, ú, b,p,f, d, ð, t, þ, g, k, n, m, l,r, z, s,h, ḩ, w,y

Consonants

Golahát Consonantal Inventory

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal	Laryngeal
Nasal		m	n
Plosive		p b	t d		k g	ʔ
Fricative	Non-Sibilant	f v	θ ð		x		h
	Sibiliant		s z	ʃ
Affricates
Approximants		w		j
Trill			r
Lateral			l

Vowels

	Front	Near- front	Central	Near- back	Back
Close	i u ɪ ɪ̈ o ɛ a
Near-close
Close-mid
Mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open

Prosody

Length and Stress

Vowel length is distinctive in Golahát, and is indicated by acute accents over the lengthened vowels. Additionally, the acute accent in ú and í also signify vowel tenseness.

Vowel length is almost always associated with syllable stress. As a general rule, long vowels cannot occur in CVCC clusters, although some exceptions arise, as in mínþir (exhaustion). If two or more long vowels occur in a word, the final long vowel is stressed.

Morphology

Golahát is a fusional language with some agglugination.

Nouns

Nouns inflect for gender, number and case. There are four main noun classes and three peripheral ones. The first four classes denote mostly humans, higher animals, lower animals and plants or natural phenomena, and natural inanimate objects. Nouns in the third class contains mostly body parts. The next two denote verbal nouns, abstract concepts, and miscellaneous objects. The final class contains only a few common nouns, mostly inanimate.

These nouns have been organized by traditional grammarians according to five declensions, each reflecting their general semantic domain and their inflectional paradigm. These are known as the Toma, Reváni, þúhar, Ḩernwin, Arðen and Nieri Declensions. These declensions can generalized as follows:

• The Toma Declension (toma means "primary, foremost"), is reserved almost exclusively for humans and certain domesticated animals, mostly pets, which are often anthropomorphized. These nouns tend to possess a high level of agency, although a few exceptions occur, notably weapons. A little bit over a third of all Golahát nouns fall under this category. Nouns in the Toma Declension end in either a final -e, -n, -en, or -ne in the nominative singular, depending on whether the root ends in a vowel or consonant. Notice that the Accusative is unmarked. Plurality is indicated by CV- reduplication of the first syllable of the root, plus the affix -ha which is added before the case suffix. In the case for the Accusative, the plural marker -ha- is infixed before the final root vowel, as indicated by the underline.

• Higher animals, particularly mammals and birds, and humans that tend to lack or be deficient in agency (e.g. infants), make up the second noun class, the Reváni Declension (reváni means "honored, honorable"). Unlike the nouns in the Toma Declension, the Nominative case in the nouns of the Reváni Declension is unmarked while the Accusative is explicitly marked with the suffix -e. As in the Toma Declension, the plural affix -ha- is suffixed to the noun root before the case suffix, except for the Nominative, where it is infixed.

• The þúhar ("forest") Declension refer to non-mammalian and non-avian animals; the elements fire, earth, wind, and water; and large trees. Like the Reváni declension, the Nominative case is unmarked while the Accusative case is marked. The case suffixes of this declension contain a submorpheme -l, which preceding root consonants assimilate to, e.g. root/Nominative seiván but accusative seiváli ("tree").

Case	Noun Classes
	Toma Declension		Reváni Declension		þúhar Declension		Ḩernwin Declension		Arðin Declension		Nieri Declension
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nominative	sorane	sosorahane	talar	tatalahar	seiván
Accusative	sora	sosohara	talare	tatalahare	seiváli
Genitive	soranai	sosorahanai	talarai	tatalahra	seiváli
Comitative	soraie	sosorahaie	talarie	tatalahre	seivásse
Ablative	soraien	sosorahaien	talarien	tatalahrien	seivás
Allative	soraion	sosorahaion	talarion	tatalahrion	seivássen
Locative	soraiona	sorahaiona	talari	tatalahri	seivás
Root	sora		talar		seiván		nevwin		artan		vidhri
Meaning	woman		child		tree		hand		speech		home

Verbs

The Golahát verb is moderately synthetic, capable of indicating voice, tense, aspect, and modality. Five tenses, a present, past, remote past, immediate future, and general future are distinguished.

Syntax

Constituent order

Canonical word order is VSO. Nevertheless, SVO, SOV, VOS, OSV, and OVS may appear as the case system allows such flexibility since it explicitly marks syntactic roles. Modifiers for the most part follow their heads, although determiners and deictics precede their heads.