Kaikiwan

Kaikiwan
túlelù káikwi
Pronunciation	[ʔɤ́ʎɨ̯ʎù kái.kʷi]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2023-2024
Native to	Kaikiwi Island
Ethnicity	Kaikiwan
Native speakers	5-10 (2023) L2: 6,000-10,000
Language family	Kaikiwi–Tol-Sun Kaikiwic Kaikiwan
Standard form	OPKLC Standard Kaikiwan
Dialects	Eastern dialect(Mwípék) Northern dialect(Tùwanòpék) Diasporic dialects Hawaiian dialects
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Recognised minority language in	New Zealand Hawai'i
Regulated by	OPKLC (Organisation for the Preservation of Kaikiwan Language and Culture)

Kaikiwan(túlelù káikwi; Kaikiwan: [ʔɤ́ʎɨ̯ʎù kái.kʷi]) is a Kaikiwi–Tol-Sun language spoken natively on the island of Kaikiwi. It is a critically endangered language with a native speaker population of around 10 at the highest estimates. Very few native Kaikiwans still inhabit Kaikiwi Island; instead, the vast majority of said native speakers live in New Zealand or Hawai'i; the youngest of these native speakers, 78-year-old Mániwamaé, was born and raised in Oahu.

Although there are not many remaining native speakers of the language, the L2(second-language) community is thriving. Thousands of non-native Kaikiwan speakers live in New Zealand, Hawai'i and Japan, with even the most conservative estimates putting the number of L2 speakers at around 6,000, with the most optimistic estimates putting it as high as 10,000.

Aesthetics

Kaikiwan is heavily aesthetically influenced by the Polynesian languages, mainly Hawaiian and Māori, and much of its vocabulary is borrowed from said languages as well as English and Japanese. However, its grammar is entirely unique and not based on any prevailing natlangs, and any similarities are coincidental unless specified otherwise.

Usage

Kaikiwans and the Kaikiwan language are native to Kaikiwi Island(Kaikiwan: pi‘kà káikwi), though very few people still live on Kaikiwi Island, with only about 10.7% of Kaikiwan speakers living on Kaikiwi Island. Instead, the vast majority of Kaikiwans are diasporic, and live in various countries, though mostly countries that border the Pacific Ocean.

Hawaii

The vast majority of Kaikiwan natives and L2 speakers alike live in Hawaii, specifically in Honolulu, with about 67% of the Kaikiwan diaspora living in Hawaii. Most Kaikiwan village elders also live in Hawaii, apart from the Pa‘éne-ikipíwa village, that still inhabit the eastern coast of Kaikiwi Island.

Phonology

Orthography

Kaikiwan uses the Latin alphabet, although with 15 letters instead of the usual 26.

Aa

Ee

Gg

Hh

Ii

Kk

Ll

Mm

Nn

Oo

Pp

Ss

Tt

Uu

Ww

The Kaikiwan alphabet is mostly directly phonetic, with almost all the letters only corresponding to one allophone, although ⟨Tt⟩ represents /ʔ/ in onset positions and ⟨Uu⟩ represents /ɤ/ and /u/ in both of their usages.

Phonetic tone is distinguished by putting accents on vowels.

Áá

Àà

Éé

Èè

Íí

Ìì

Óó

Òò

Úú

Ùù

Elongated vowels are distinguished by a certain diacritic that looks like a dash.

Āā

Ēē

Īī

Ōō

Ūū

Consonants

	Bilabial/ Labial-velar	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	p	t		k · g	ʔ
Nasal	m	n	ɲ
Fricative		s
Approximant/ Lateral Approximant	w		ʎ

The glottal stop is represented by two glyphs: in initial position, the glyph ⟨t⟩ is used, where as in any other positions, the ⟨‘⟩(ókina), derived from Hawaiian orthography, is used.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Close-mid			ɤ · o
Open	a	(ä)

Elongated vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	iː	ɨː
Close-mid			ɤː · oː
Open	aː

Prosody

Intonation

Kaikiwan uses intonation to quite an extent in morphology, though it is rarely found in grammar(e.g. particles, noun declension suffixes, verb conjugations) and even less in loanwords from Polynesian languages or more recently, English or Japanese.

The language has two types of tones: rising and falling, and they are only used on independent vowels and diphthong-initial vowels e.g. /a/ → /á/ and /ai/ → /ái/.

There is some historical evidence that Kaikiwan may at one point had tone on nasal consonants, especially /m/, though modern Kaikiwan only uses tone on consonants for ideophones, like in English "hmm?".

Kaikiwan intonation is technically phonemic, meaning semantics can change based on tone pronunciation alone, though in practice very few words distinguish between themselves solely on tone. A commonly used example of this in the language itself would be the word for the islands of Hawai'i, húwui, and the word for "salmon", hùwui, although hùwui is an archaic term, and most modern speakers prefer the term sámo, based on the English term.

Phonotactics

Kaikiwan has a (C/W)V(V)(C/W) syllable structure, where W is /w/ or any labialised consonant, like /pʷ/.

Morphophonology

Kaikiwan has a sandhi system similar to the French liaison. The most common type of sandhi in Kaikiwan is what the OPKLC calls naso-palatal sandhis, or when one word ends with a /n/ and the next word begins with a /ʎ/, in which case the two sounds combine into one /ɲ/. A less common sandhi is the alveolo-labial sandhi, where a /t/ and a /w/ side by side merge into a /tù/.

Morphology

Numerals

Many Kaikiwan numerals are derived from Proto-Polynesian. Thus, this table also shows their respective etymologies. If the etymology box is empty, then it is unknown or derived from Proto-Kaikiwic.

Kaikiwan numerals

English	Kaikiwan	Pronunciation	Etymology
one	mima	mima
two	lwa	ʎʷa	From Proto-Polynesian *rua.
three	olu	oʎu	From Proto-Polynesian *tolu.
four	keno	kɨ̯no
five	mwó	mʷó
six	ono	ono	From Proto-Polynesian *ono.
seven	sima	sima	From English seven.
eight	lwakeno	ʎʷakɨ̯no	lwa, "two" + keno, "four".
nine	iwa	iwa	From Proto-Polynesian *hiwa.
ten	tumi	ʔɤmi̩	From Hawaiian ‘umi.

Nouns

Collective nouns

For a full list, see §Collective nouns.
In English, collective nouns are used to indicate mainly groups of animals, like "a murder of crows" or "a rafter of turkeys". In Kaikiwan, there are collective nouns for almost all non-abstract nouns, and different collective nouns are used based on the number of said noun.

For example, take the word tona; "person". When there are one or two people, there is no collective noun nor plural declension; it is simply mima tona or lwa tona(lit. "one person", "two person"). After three, the plural declension is used. Then, at 5 people, the collective noun iku, roughly translating to "group" is used, and at 10 people, the word mwéké("army") is used.

Thus, there are two categories of collective nouns: 5+ and 10+.

Because the usage of collective nouns is dependent on the grammatical number, they can be used to infer the number of a noun, e.g. one could infer that Mwéké-na tonai, "army of people", means at least 10 people.

Some other examples are:

Noun	Collective noun
	5+	10+
tona "person"	iku "group"	mwéké "army"
migu "fruit"	miuk "dozen"	kówe "plantation"
òpan "tree"	okámwe "grove"	sikiwa "forest"

Personal pronouns

Kaikiwan has five personal pronouns, divided into two categories: inclusive and exclusive.

Person	Exclusive	Inclusive
1	po	tèo
2	sáwa	sákona
3	tona	iku

Syntax

Nouns

Cases

Kaikiwan noun cases are distinguished by a hyphen before the case suffix. This does not appear phonetically- it is entirely an orthographic convention.

There are four noun cases: nominative, accusative, genitive and dative. Specifically the accusative suffix varies in tone based on the previous noun's tone, e.g. sámo-tó or hùwui-tò. If there is no clear tone, e.g. in túlelù, -to is used.

Noun cases

Tone	Case
	Nominative	Accusative	Genitive	Dative
No tone		-to	-na	-ō
Rising		-tó
Falling		-tò

Verbs

Weak verbs

Kaikiwan weak verbs do not have inflection or conjugation, and thus require a pronoun preceding the verb to understand the aspect of the verb. Most weak verbs are verbs relating to everyday things, e.g. tikīa(to toast), néwa(to work).

To indicate tense, prefixes are added.

		Prefix
Tense
	Simple Present
	Simple Past	a‘-
	Imperfect	ā‘-
	Simple Future	i‘-
	Conditional	ī‘-

Strong verbs

Kaikiwan strong verbs change form irregularly based on pronoun and context. However, because strong verb conjugations are unique(usually based on intonation), strong verbs do not require a preceding pronoun.

Strong verbs are often related to the state of a person or what an animal/insect is doing.

Conjugation of īni("to be")

		Pronoun
		1.SG	1.PL	2.SG	2.PL	3.SG	3.PL
Tense
	Simple Present	in	ini	ín	íni	ìn	ìni
	Simple Past	san	sani	sán	sáni	sàn	sàni
	Imperfect	isen	iseni	isén	iséni	isèn	isèni
	Simple Future	tan	tani	i‘an	i‘ani	i‘ān	i‘āni
	Conditional	ana	ani	ána	áni	na‘na	na‘ni

Conjugation of ēso("to have")

		Pronoun
		1.SG	1.PL	2.SG	2.PL	3.SG	3.PL
Tense
	Simple Present	es	esi	és	ési	si‘sa	si‘si
	Simple Past	ske	skē	ské	ském	skè	skèm
	Imperfect	ka	kasi	ika	ikasi	kes	kesi
	Simple Future	ala	ali	ála	áli	àla	àli
	Conditional	lak	laki	lāk	lāka‘l	ki‘lā	ki‘lāi

Sentences

Constituent order

Kaikiwan uses an OVS constituent order. In imperative phrases, OSV is used instead.