Verse:Chlouvānem Inquisition/Līlasuṃghāṇa

Līlasuṃghāṇa

Official name	Līlasuṃghāṇa ga ṭūmma Quaestorship of Līlasuṃghāṇa
Country	Chlouvānem Inquisition
Tribunal	Jade Coast Area
Diocese	Nanašīrama
Divisions	24 districts, 21 cities, 11 parishes, 15 villages
Largest division (pop.)	Usāṃrātnam core district (1,372,443 (5.62.2ᘔ312))
Official language	Chlouvānem
Other languages	Nanašīrami vernacular (Līlasuṃghāṇi dialect)
Demonym	Chl.: Līlasuṃghāṇi ; Līlasuṃghānyūs Nan.: Læilasihæc ; Læɂi
Area	4.486 e (7.59010) 8,500.8 km2 (3,282.18 mi2)
Population	29,698,169 (9Ɛ.42.53512) (4E ᘔƐ (13110) census)
Population density	2.321/e (3,91310) 3,493.57/km2 (9048.3/mi2)
Government type	Quaestorship
Quaestor	Chilamulkāvi Narṣakarai Lārta
Capital	Līlasuṃghāṇa
Time zone	LIL (Līlasuṃghāṇi time — Līlasuṃghāṇi avyāṣa)
Telephone area code	(+87) 02

Līlasuṃghāṇa ("[place of] singing nāmñė cubs"; Chlouvānem pronunciation: [ˌɴ̆ʲiːɴ̆asũˈgʱaːɳa]; vernacular Līlasuṃghāṇi: Læilasihåṇ [ˈɴ̆ɛi̯ɴ̆ɐʂ(ɯ)ˌɣɔ̃]; popularly shortened to Līlah [ˈɴ̆ʲiːɴ̆aɦ]) is the capital of the Chlouvānem Inquisition, the holy city of the Yunyalīlta, a quaestorship (Chl.: ṭūmma) within the diocese of Nanašīrama, which it is also the episcopal seat of, and the largest city on Calémere, even though it is not, administratively, a single city.

Līlasuṃghāṇa lies on the southeastern shore of Lūlunīkam Lake (an inlet of the Flæmvasta sea) in the Jade Coast, with most of the quaestorship's area extending south along the southern branch of the Lake, formed by the clearwater Lanamilūki river coming from the wetlands and várzeas of Talæñoya. Most of the area where the present-day core districts of Līlasuṃghāṇa lie were formerly a swampland where the Ėmīlumi river ("river of tigers"), the Hanaiyami river ("cocoa river"), and the Rajālyāti river ("silver-black river") - all three blackwater - reach Lūlunīkam lake. This former swamp, nestled between low forested hills and the shore, was mostly drained through centuries and is now one of the most densely populated pieces of land on Calémere. Despite lying just south of the 15th parallel north, Līlasuṃghāṇa has an equatorial rainforest climate with constant rainfall throughout the year and no distinct seasons.

Despite being referred to as a "city", Līlasuṃghāṇa is a quaestorship, which means that it has - at least for the core wards, called districts (hālgārai) a consolidated government at the level of cities, circuits, provinces, and even some functions of the diocese itself. Administratively, there are, however, places in Līlasuṃghāṇa designed as cities, parishes, or even villages: the area of the quaestorship is extremely large, covering also some valleys of tributaries of the Lanamilūki river to the south where the only settlements are floating villages in the middle of igapós. About 45% of the land area of the quaestorship is covered by rainforest or swampland.

The quaestorship of Līlasuṃghāṇa, at the 4E ᘔƐ (131₁₀) census, had a population of 9Ɛ.42.535 (29,698,169₁₀) people. The Līlasuṃghāṇa metropolitan area is the second-largest in the world (after the polycentric conurbation of eastern Hachitama diocese) and extends into neighboring parts of Nanašīrama and also the dioceses of Talæñoya to the south as well as Lgraṃñælihaikā and Kāṃradeša across the lake.

Chlouvānem is the administrative language of the city, spoken, as in the whole Inquisition, in a state of diglossia alongside the local vernacular; the Līlasuṃghāṇi vernacular shares traits with most vernaculars of the eastern part of the Jade Coast. It has distinctive features of both the coastal Jade Coast vernaculars to the east - such as the extensive reworking of the vowel system - but also the typical stød-like phonation of the Lanamilūki Valley vernaculars (cf. Nanašīrama > nanɧæirm [nãˈxʷɛ̃ɪ̯̃ˤ]; dældā "language" > døldå [dzʏɴ̆ˈdɔːˤ]).
The typical Līlasuṃghāṇi pronunciation of standard Chlouvānem also has a few peculiarities, which however may not be heard in more formal speech because of switching to a more standard pronunciation: its most noticeable features (and the most joked upon by non-natives) are the use of [œ œː] for /a aː/ in closed syllables before a nasal consonant (nāmvute "I crush" [nœːmʋyte]), also /aː/ as [œː] in open syllables before /j/ and a front vowel (jāyim "girl" [ɟ͡ʑœːim]), and the fronting of /u/ to /y/ in non-final syllables (ānukte "to lie on" [aːˈnykte]).
The Laifutaši language, which was spoken in pre-Yunyalīlti times in the area and greatly influenced Chlouvānem (and also some words of the local vernacular not present in standard Chlouvānem), has left its trace in many toponyms in the area: lake Lūlunīkam; the rivers Lanamilūki, Hanaiyami, and Rajālyāti; the diocese of Nanašīrama itself, and obviously most names of districts (such as Himakouta, Hājurvānim, Sarālilyāniah, or the omnipresent -dāneh ending).

Etymology

The name of Līlasuṃghāṇa predates the city, and is a bahuvrihi compound of līlas - the name (nowadays archaic) of cubs of nāmñė, a tropical seal living along most of the Inquisition's tropical coasts - and suṃghāṇa, meaning "melody". The name thus means "melody of nāmñė cubs", intended as "the place where nāmñė cubs sing melodies".

An inhabitant of the city is referred to as Līlasuṃghāṇi or, more formally, Līlasuṃghānyūs. In the vernacular, the demonym is Læilasihæc [ˈɴ̆ɛɪ̯ɴ̆ɐʂxɛc͡ɕ]. The vernacular-derived form Læɂi [ˈɴ̆ɛʔi] is commonly used both in the vernacular and in Chlouvānem, albeit only informally.

History

The area around Lūlunīkam lake, including the location of present-day Līlasuṃghāṇa, has been inhabited for millennia by tribes speaking languages such as Laifutaši or Old Kāṃradeši. In the early part of the First Era, this area was outside the realms of the Kūṣṛmāthi civilization but in its sphere of influence. About halfway through the Era, Lahob-speaking tribes (the Ur-Chlouvānem) settled in the area, finishing their long migration journey across the whole continent and started settling together with the local people, with common intermixing.

While for many centuries there were various settlements in the swamplands and by the hills of today's Līlasuṃghāṇa, the founding of the city itself happened in 2E 126 (174₁₀) by order of Great Inquisitor Kahėrimaili ga Banditiāvi Dalaigana, aiming to build the holiest city the world had ever seen. The center of this settlement was on a bigger hammock in the swamp, not far from the Hanaiyami river and about three kilometers upstream from the lakeside - today's Kahėrimaila ("clear water") district, named after the founding Great Inquisitor's regnal name. The only access to the early city was from the Hanaiyami river, and a smaller settlement was built at its mouth, functioning as a gate for the city - this area has been later remodelled by land reclamation and it is now the Janaimarta ("port city") district; many foundation-era buildings can however be seen in the neighboring Nājādaneh district, in the Hanaiyami ga maiti memāyi jarmān (Hanaiyami River Mouth Park), and by the Saṃryojyam lakeshore.

Līlasuṃghāṇi Vernacular

The vernacular language, spoken by about 70% of the inhabitants (a good number of residents come from other areas of the country), is part of the Jade Coast dialect continuum and has traits of both coastal Nanašīrami dialects to the east and Lanamilūki Valley ones to the south. A noticeable characteristic in two thousand years of evolution from Chlouvānem is the restructuring of the vowel system. Original Chlouvānem vowels all diverged in quality (often through diphthongization) and vowel length has later become phonemic based on syllable structure.

The most notable phonetic developments from classical Chlouvānem include:

• Various early consonant mergers: palatalized dentoalveolars first merged with the palatals, while /mʲ/ and /ɴ̆ʲ/ shifted to /mj ɴ̆j/ and /ʀʲ/ to /ʑ/. /f/ was also probably shifted to */hʷ/ before merging with /ɦ/ into /h/ (the intermediate */hʷ/ stage explains some other changes explained below); /ɦ/ however had the tendency of aspirating an unaspirated voiced stop earlier in the word, as long as only vowels or sonorants came in between; grammatically, -h was also generalized as a case ending in the direct case to all "h-class nouns" (this will have a major phonological impact later on). The glottal stop disappeared, leaving vowels in hiatus.
• The first syllable of the main root (the head, in compounds) always took fixed primary stress. If a root has four syllables or more, the second-to-last also takes secondary stress.
• The first of many vowel changes started with the disappearance of breathy-voiced vowels. They mostly merged with the vowels of the same quality but long (but ą was retracted; note that the same quality of ę is the one of æ, not e), often leaving however their trace by aspirating an immediately following or preceding stop.
• The so-called (first) "Southern Vowel Shift" took place - ultimately adding many new phonemic vowel qualities but eliminating phonemic length; its changes were many but can be resumed this way:
  • a → a, but å /ɔ/ before either r or l and a stop;
  • ā → å /ɔ/
    • both short and long /a/ became, however, ø /œ/ in a close syllable before a nasal; long /a/ also underwent this change before /j/.
  • e → e and ė → *ei
  • i became /e̝/ while ī remained as a normal /i/; note that /ji/ became, however, /i/.
  • u was fronted to /y/, while ū was only shortened to /u/
  • o became (or remained?) /o/, while å was monophthongized to /ɔ/
  • æ was lowered to /a/; ǣ (including from earlier ę) remained the same, but shortened
  • ai, au also gave æ /ɛ/
  • oe, ei merged into /ɔɪ̯/
  • ṛ, ṝ got an epenthetic å before.
• A new, at first allophonic, length contrast arose: stressed vowels in an open syllable became allophonically long, the others remained short.
• Stødogenesis: both primarily- and secondarily-stressed long vowels, as well as VN and Vr clusters were allophonically pharyngealized when followed anywhere in the word by either a laryngeal consonant - excluding */hʷ/ - or a retroflex one.
• Syncope of all absolutely word-final unstressed vowels, as well as unstressed pretonic vowels (except if preceded by two consonants; if there are two consecutive syllables between two different stresses, then the first is syncopated if the first syllable's consonant is a sonorant and the other isn't), were deleted. Deleted /e̝/, /i/ umlauted a preceding vowel by raising it; /u/ by backing it. Long vowels became phonemic because of this.
• /h/ and /hʷ/ were deleted in all positions except before /e/, /a/, and /ɔ/; /ɴ̆/ was also deleted when preceding a consonant that is not a stop or /s/. This made stød phonemic, moreover becoming a distinct feature of "h-nouns".
• Vowel quality for non-mid vowels and their length were tied, with /eː e̝ː/ becoming /eː/ and their short counterparts becoming /e̝/; the same happened with /o/ which was raised to /u̝/.
• Stød is lost if there's another vowel with stød later in the word; this does not apply to compound words, except those that had already become full lexical units.
• Some more consonant changes resulted in the disappearance of unvoiced aspirated stops (which merged with the plain ones, except for th → /θ/), /gʱ/ > /h/, and merger of /s/ into /ʂ/; /ɕ/, meanwhile, was backed and labialized to /xʷ/. v was also hardened to /b/ between vowels if pretonic.

Some examples of changes in common words:

• lila "person" > *lyílah > *líːlah > *liːˤla > *liːˤl > lil /ɴ̆iːˤ/
• marta "city" > *mártah > *mårtah > *måˤrta > *måˤrt > mårs /mɔˤʌs/
• chlǣvānem "Chlouvānem" > *chlɛvånem > *chlɛvåːŋm > *šlɛwåːm > *šlɛbåːm > ɧæbåm /xʷɛˈbɔːm/
• līlasuṃghāṇa > *lyīlasugghāṇah > *lílasyˌghåṇah > *liːlasyghåːṇah > liːˤlasyghåːˤṇa > liːlsyghåːn > lilsuhåln /ˈɴ̆iːɴ̆ʂyˌhɔːˤŋ/