Kyrdan languages: Difference between revisions
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A few languages left little to no written records and are extinct, among those '''Old Ķyrdum''' is the most well known thanks to several inscriptions and temple metal tablets. It is likely that Kērsalur slowly substituted Ķyrdum, becoming a new prestige variety and liturgical language. An evidence of this is the bilingual inscription from the temple of Entirŋum, which tells about the sermon, delivered in that temple by the Green Goddess with the Kērsalur words on top and a smaller text and a less precise translation in Ķyrdum (this is also the only bilingual text with Ķyrdum words). Other language, known from another Ķyrdum inscription the lake Aita, was called '''Qaǯašale''', but nothing is known about it apart from its name. The inscription also implied the existence of other languages in that area, but no names were mentioned in it. | A few languages left little to no written records and are extinct, among those '''Old Ķyrdum''' is the most well known thanks to several inscriptions and temple metal tablets. It is likely that Kērsalur slowly substituted Ķyrdum, becoming a new prestige variety and liturgical language. An evidence of this is the bilingual inscription from the temple of Entirŋum, which tells about the sermon, delivered in that temple by the Green Goddess with the Kērsalur words on top and a smaller text and a less precise translation in Ķyrdum (this is also the only bilingual text with Ķyrdum words). Other language, known from another Ķyrdum inscription the lake Aita, was called '''Qaǯašale''', but nothing is known about it apart from its name. The inscription also implied the existence of other languages in that area, but no names were mentioned in it. | ||
==Writing systems== | |||
The Kyrdan languages have kept the ancient logo-syllabic writing system, called ''Namķaudir'' (from Ķyrdum "that preserves words"), adapting it to their evolution. This writing system was in use for over a millenium and was kept almost completely unchanged until the regularisation of the Kērsalur spelling. The first inscriptions were purely ideographic, which makes them technically impossible to know in which language they were written, though some ideograms later became logograms in Namķaudir, so many of these ideograms can be recognised and read, even though their original pronunciation is unknown. This later script is a syllable-based logography (or a logo-syllabic system) in which symbols represent morphemes and individual syllables rather than whole words or even sentences. Thus many words are written with purely phonetic glyphs with only small common morphemes having their own separate logograms. Along with words written phonetically, a special set of symbols, called ''zēalak'' ("silent words") are used, which are not pronounced, but indicate proper names, placenames, natural phenomena, stars and planets, living beings (except humans). They have no direct counterpart in spoken language, but help to disambiguate interpretation. The exact number of symbols is unknown, since most of them are rarely used and can be found in religious text or old inscriptions. Kērsalur has the largest amount of syllabic symbols - 460, while Cirdamur and Kirtumur have less - 333 and 360 respectively. All three varieties have separate set of symbols: one for syllables of the form '''CV''' and one - of '''VC''' (where '''C''' is a consonant and '''V''' is a vowel). | |||
==Vocabulary comparison== | ==Vocabulary comparison== | ||
The table below provides a vocabulary comparison that illustrates phonetic correspondences among different Kyrdan varieties: | The table below provides a vocabulary comparison that illustrates phonetic correspondences among different Kyrdan varieties: | ||