Tumachee

Tumachee
yûkka tûmax
Pronunciation	[ʝúkʲɑ dúmɑx]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2024
Setting	Sleeping Bull
Native to	Sleeping Bull Confederacy
Native speakers	78,000 (2024) 6,000 L2 speakers
Language family	Tumachic Tumachee
Early form	Proto-Tumachic
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Official language in	Sleeping Bull Confederacy

Tumachee(yûkka tûmax; Tumachee: [ʝúkʲɑ dúmɑx]) is a Tumachic language spoken by the Tumachee people in the fictional He-who-uses-the-loom River Basin(Tumachee: Kumâxâ Kexôskibân) and the coast of the He-who-irrigates Lake(Kumâzixâ Gzînbân) of the North-western United States. It is the sole member of the Tumachic language family alongside Gzuwê.

Tumachee is also an official language of the Sleeping Bull Confederacy, as the first, fifth and twentieth Sleeping Bulls were all Tumachee native or L2 speakers.

It is a highly agglutinative language with a very rare verb-object-subject basic word order and a free noun-adjective order. The language is also very context-reliant, where sentences can change meaning based on the context of the conversation.

Etymology

Endonym

The Tumachee endonym, tûmax, is probably derived from the Proto-Tumachic word *dúmh₂s, 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 *dúmh₂s: Tumachee tumîxi 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.

History

Proto-Tumachic, the reconstructed ancestor of the two Tumachic languages, emerged around 600-700 years ago in modern-day Utah. Around 400 years ago, small populations that would eventually become the Tumachee would migrate west to the He-who-uses-the-loom River Basin, where they would settle in the lowland areas, as opposed to their distant mountain cousins in Utah, the Gzuwê.

Sleeping Bull Confederacy

Around 200 years ago,

Phonology

Orthography

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

Aa [ɑ]	Ââ [ɑ́]	Bb [b][p]	Kk [k]	Dd [d][t]	Ee [e]
Êê [é]	Gg [g][k]	Hh [ɦ]	Ḫx [x]	Ii [i]	Îî [í]
Ll [l]	Mm [m]	Nn [n̪]	Oo [ɔ]	Ôô [ɔ́]	Pp [p]
Ss [s]	Tt [t]	Uu [u]	Ûû [ú]	Ww [w]	Yy [ʝ]
Zz [z]

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar/ Dental	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	pulmonic	p b	t d	(c)	k g
	palatalised		tʲ dʲ		kʲ gʲ
Nasal		m	n̪		(ŋ)
Fricative			s z	ʝ	x	ɦ
Affricate			t͡ɕ
Approximant	normal	w		(j)
	lateral		l	(ʎ)		(ɫ)

Initial voicing

Tumachee has initial voicing, meaning voiceless consonants are automatically voiced at the beginning of a word, though their orthographic representation is not changed, so âto is pronounced [átɔ] but sâto is pronounced [zátɔ].

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. The consonant [w] can act as both a vowel or a consonant, though unlike other vowels it has no high tone variation.

Morphology

Names

Mononyms

Traditionally, the Tumachee people have assigned mononyms to newborn children. These "baby names" usually have meanings related to when, where and/or how the baby was born, e.g. Kêxalgzîgziwewakbân, or "Boy born with difficulties under a full moon". Later on in life, a new name would be assigned to the person based on the person's achievements, merits or what they are known for, e.g. "Woman Who Walks a Lot"(Ḫawakozozxes), and very occasionally would they take a name given to them by a different tribe, e.g. "Sleeping Bull"(Kîkzowalei).

Modern names

In more recent times, most Tumachee people have adopted American-style polynyms, as in the first name-last name system, with the traditional mononyms often being used as middle names, e.g. John Kêxalwisusu("Born At The River") Smith.

Nouns

Adjectives

All nouns in Tumachee have their own adjective form, which is usually manifested in an agglutinate suffix form like -mix. Each noun has their own unique adjective/suffix form, meaning you could make basically any word by agglutinating a noun and a noun-derived suffix. For example, the word and name "Ox-like-the-water" would be Kîkwisyigûn(lit. ox.NOM-water.ADJ), with -yigûn being the suffix form of yîlgos, water.

Numerals

Tumachee natively uses a base 7 counting system, though most modern Tumachee use the mostly universal base 10 counting system.

Tumachee		English
Name	Digit	Name	Digit
kûnsu/ sêlo	0	zero	0
kkêo	1	one	1
minnâ	2	two	2
xûx	3	three	3
xêrdaz	4	four	4
sômzo	5	five	5
entix	6	six	6
ûrzun	7	seven	7
îmmiko	10	eight	8

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

		Singular	Plural
First person		ud	kûxod
Second person		mikkê	mîkked
Third person	Masculine	bân	bâniu
	Feminine	xes	xesû
	Neuter/ Object	ôn	lôu

Noun forms

All the personal pronouns in Tumachee also act as nouns, as in bân can mean "he(singular)" or "one man". Other forms are a bit less logical: mikkê can mean "you(singular)" but also "any one person other than the speaker", or in other words, "an other person". Tumachee personal pronouns' suffix forms are also the same as their stems, so for example ôn can also be suffix -ôn. In this way, along with rules regarding adjectives, one can create an agglutinate mononym for practically anything, such as Ûrberûrxês, "Woman who makes soil", or Gzêkukzôbâniu, "(Group of) men who like food". Many words are agglutinated this way: for example, the word for "Buddhist monk" is udgzîmkzôzunubân, or "holy man who likes solitude", and the archaic word for "king" was Tumîxiwenembân, or "man who owns the prairie".

Syntax

Constituent order

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

Agglutination

Like in German, Tumachee has the ability of creating new words by adding existing words together. For example, the word "pill" is sikkumix, which is a combination of sikku, "medicine" and -mix, the suffix form of "small".

Stem & suffixes

Words in Tumachee have two forms: a stem and a suffix form. The stem form are the standalone words themselves, sometimes called the nominative declension. The suffix forms are used for agglutinate words like the -mix in sikkumix. -mix is a suffix form of the adjective wêlmix, meaning "small".

Noun case

Tumachee has five noun cases: the nominative, accusative, genitive, dative and instrumentative. Each case has at the very least its own suffix, though the instrumentative case has its own prefix to go with the suffix.

	Case
	Nominative	Accusative	Genitive	Dative	Instrumentative
Prefix	∅				ke-
Suffix		-sô	-xâ	-su	-ki