Paang

Cuam (CuamR /khuəm/ with rising tone) is an Irtan Southern Chinese/SEA language in the Cuamic family; it has influenced the Scandinavian-inspired Irtan Chinese lect.

Cuam is inspired by Irish, Thai and Hmong.

Phonology

Initials: all Irish single consonants plus prenasalized stops and sh(n/l/r)-; allow br dr gr fr cr tr bl dl gl fl cl tl; p- only occurs in borrowings; stops are +asp/-asp like in Scottish Gaelic

shm- is only used in so-called shm-reduplication

Séimhiú should have different outcomes from Irish

In unmutated words, all Irish unmutated initials + séimhiúed initials are permissible

séimhiúed words can't séimhiú again, but when they get urúed it manifests as prenasalization:

• **CV-(initial) > (lexically séimhiúed initial)
• **-n CV-(initial) > n:(initial) > nC (prenasalized initial)

Vowels: all combos of +-pal x vowel allowed in Irish (assuming broad final)

Allowed finals: -d -g -idh (-j) -imh (nasalization + -j) -bh (-w) -mh (nasalization + -w) -m -n -il -r

Tones are essentially the same as in Thai:

• "Dead syllables" (checked):
  • short vowel: a¹ a² (low high)
  • long vowel; á¹ á² (low falling)
• "Live syllables" (non-checked): long: áM áL áF áH áR (mid low falling high rising, as in Thai)

entering tone syllables (open short vowel, or d/g final) can only take a and à tones

forbids shm- like Irish but unlike Tigolic

Grammar

absolute state is sometimes a floating mutating morpheme that marks gender (marks absolute state, construct state doesn't mutate). Sometimes absolute state manifests as a separate preposed word or syllable which may or may not mutate the word itself. (absolute state comes from a preceding classifier)

1-10: leidh¹, nán², feó¹, tlud¹, daimh⁵, án², ciúr³, shnán², shleidh¹, faoil²

Diachronics

Some "possible" syllables should be disallowed bc of historical sound change, like unasp stop initial + nasal coda + 2nd tone syllables in Mandarin

Before having mutations, Cuam had long, short and ultrashort vowels. Mutations come from preceding ultrashort syllables that are lost; this came before the medieval Sinosphere register/tone split affecting most languages in the Sinosphere, resulting in mutation depending on tone. This earlier, very complex system of mutations got simplified into noun genders by analogy.

Orthography

A Far East Semitic based abugida

Tone diachronics

Middle Cuam (before the tone split) had 3 tones, like Middle Chinese, marked in the native script as unmarked, tone 1 and tone 2.

Consonant classes (séimhiú didn't change the consonant class while urú did)

• Mid: *k- series, glottal stop
• High: *kh- series, voiceless fricatives, shR-
• Low: *g series, voiced fricatives, resonants

Tone chart

class	ending	none	-่	-้	-๊	-๋
mid	dead	low	-	fall	high	-
mid	alive	mid	low	fall	high	rise
high	dead	low	-	fall
high	alive	rise	low	fall
low	dead (short vowel)	high	fall	-
low	dead (long vowel)	fall	-	high
low	alive	mid	fall	high