Vadi

Introduction

Vadi is an extinct language once spoken in Minhay. A small parchment fragment was discovered in April 2015 in a cave outside of Peħħat, a small township in Sakkeb Prefecture. Soon larger fragments and then the wonderfully preserved Kalapái Scriptum were discovered in an isolated hut, dated as late as the mid to late 1800's CE. The Kalapái Scriptum is a collection of letters between two farmers who were embroiled in an ongoing feud regarding the property lines between their lands. The letters were written in a mixture of Vadi intermixed with words from the unrelated Peshpeg language, which is itself unrelated to Minhast. A few letters were written entirely in the the extinct Minhast Knife Speaker dialect. Also found among the letters are legal papers drawn from the Prefect of Dog Speaker Country. The farmers' letters contained several texts clearly indicating code-switching between Vadi and the Knife Speaker dialect. The portions containing the intermixed Knife Speaker and Peshpeg words were used to decipher the Vadi texts. The Dog Speaker papers did not contribute directly to the decipherment of the language, but as an external source it provided a great deal of context of the nature of the feud between the litigants. This external contextual source clarified the translation of otherwise ambiguous passages. The Kalapái Scriptum is thus popularly referred to as the "Minhast Rosetta Stone".

Phonology

Consonants

Minhast Consonantal Inventory

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	m	n		ŋ
Plosive	p b	t d		k g		ʔ
Fricative	v	s				h
Affricates
Approximants	w		j
Trill		r
Lateral Approximant		l

Example texts

Ji tábila nikku úla hai, petta ulátane
/d͡zi 'ta:bɪla nɪk:u 'u:la haɪ, petta u'la:tane/
Ji tábi-la nikku úla hai, petta ulátane
1S land-PL seize try 2S PST, thief 2S.EMP)
You tried to seize my lands, you are a thief indeed!

Ka úla mai naha ji tábila, ji puni úla mekmek serí!
/ka 'u:la maɪ 'naha d͡zi 'ta:bɪla d͡zi 'pu:ni 'u:la 'mekmek se'ri/
Ka úla mai naha ji tábi-la nikku e, ji puni úla mekmek serí
if 2S come here 1S land-PL seize FUT, 1S RSLT 2S kill FUT)
If you come here to seize my land, I will kill you!

Ji úla nánani.
/d͡zi 'u:la 'na:nani/
ji ula nanani
1S 2S RV~disgust
You truly disgust me.

OVS -> matrix clause SC -> dependent clause

SVO -> matrix clause, COND SOV -> dependent clause, RSLT

OSV