Takkenit

Takkenit language or Takkenkikle [ˈtɑ.kːən.ˌkik.lə] - is a language, spoken in a mesolithic Eastern European plains (circa 6000-7000 BCE) on the territories of modern Northern Ukraine and Western Belarus. It showed some features, found in distant languages like Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Yuralic or even Chukchi and Yukaghir to the far east of Siberia. Some linguists claim this to be relicts of a hypothetical proto-Nostratic unity, however this theory is still disputed.

Takkenit language
Takkenkikle
Pronunciation	[/ˈtɑ.kːən.ˌkik.lə/]
Created by	Raistas
Setting	Almost real world
Language family	Indo-Uralic Takkenit language

Introduction

Internal history

The name Takkenkikle comes from takkune ("tribe", "people, related to each other") and kikle ("speech", "language"), so it translates as people's language.

Phonology

Orthography

Takkenit has never been a written language, its stories and songs were transfered orally from generation to generation until the extinction of the language. I use Latin script with some additional letters (ŋ and sometimes also ə) to fully cover the phonology of Takkenit, which is fairly simple.

Consonants

The Takkenit consonant inventory is very simple. The most interesting feature of it is a complete lack of any fricatives. Geminated consonants, which are represented with double letters (like tt, or kk) can be analyzed as a sequence of two same sounds. The consonants [n] and [t] are more often dental while [l] is more often alveolar and [r] is always alveolar, that's why t near [r] is also always alveolar, like in English, but near [n] it is always dental, like in Spanish or other non-Germanic languages. The [j] sound can palatalize a preceding consonant but this palatalization is not phonemic and occures only before this sound.

	Labial	Denti-Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal	m	n		ŋ
Plosive	p	t		k
Approximant	(w)	l	j	w
Trill		r

Vowels

The vowel inventory of Takkenit is even simpler than the consonant one containing only four phonemes, but the allophonic variation is much greater. Despite that, the phonology became even simpler near the time of language's extinction with all unstressed vowels merged into [ə] and vowel assimilation, which then gave new consonant alterations. This was due to increasing contacts with more technologically advanced mesolithic and neolithic tribes. The table below shows the middle stage of the language right before those contacts and language assimilation process in the period of its largest ammount of speakers.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	(ɨ)1	u
Mid	(e)1	ə	(ɤ)1 (o~ɔ)2
Low	(æ~ɛ)2		ɑ

1. These sounds are allophones of /ə/. When under stress it is pronounced [e], in words with high vowels it is [ɨ] or [ɤ] and near [ɑ] it remains [ə]. The pronunciation vary greatly between different tribes, showing some kinds of vowel harmony, which was present earlier but broke soon.
2. Can be found in South-East dialect as an archaic feature of older vowel harmony. However its vowel harmony is based on frontness and backness (like in modern Finnish, for examle), while the older one was based on vowel height. For example kemi [ˈke.mi] which means "blood" is komə [ˈko.mɤ] in this dialect. The word itself comes from *kɯmɨ. Or kikle [ˈkik.lə] ("speech") which is käkle [ˈkæk.le] in South-East and comes from *kekemə ("to make sounds", "to tweet").

Stress

The stress is not phonemic in Takkenit, at least in its middle and late stages. It has a trochaic system, where the main stress is always on the first syllable of the word and secondary ones are put one every odd-numbered syllables exept for the last one, which is always unstressed. Similar system is in Finnic and Samic languages and was also present in Proto-Uralic. An early pre-ablaut stage of Proto-Indo-European could also have such a system.