Sohcahtoan

Sohcahtoan
外事語(sō-kato-gū)
Pronunciation	[ˈsoːkatogɯː]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2022
Native to	Republic of Sohcahtoa
Language family	Altaic Japonic part. Ryukyuan Sohcahtoic Sohcahtoan
Early form	Ancient Sohcahtoan
Official status
Official language in	Republic of Sohcahtoa
Recognised minority language in	Japan

Sohcahtoan(外事語, sō-kato-gū pronounced [ˈsoːkatogɯː]) is a Japonic conlang spoken on the fictional island of Sohcahtoa. Its phonology, lexical base and grammar are all firmly Japonic, although more recently loanwords from other languages such as Portuguese(ッアスカ, 'asuka([ˈʔasɯka]) from Portuguese açúcar, meaning "sugar") and modern Japanese(共和国, kū-a-gugeō([ˈkɯːagɯgeoː]) from Japanese 共和国, kyōwakoku, meaning "republic").

Phonology

Orthography

Modern Sohcahtoan uses all three scripts used in the Japanese language today: Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji, and each script more of less retain their original purpose as in Japanese. However, some hiragana are pronounced differently than in Japanese, most notably <を> being pronounced [(w)o] in Japanese and [oː] in Sohcahtoan, and <は> being pronounced [ha] or [wa] in Japanese and [aː] in Sohcahtoan.

Additionally, while Japanese kanji have two ways to read a kanji(onyomi and kunyomi), Sohcahtoan kanji have only one way to read a kanji.

Ancient Sohcahtoan uses the Latin script, as some sounds like [ə] can not be represented using solely Hiragana or Katakana. The Ancient Sohcahtoan alphabet is heavily based on the Portuguese alphabet, such as how <ã> is used to represent [ə].

Consonants

	Labial		Dental/ alveolar		Post- alveolar/ palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal		m		n
Plosive	p	b	t	d			k	ɡ		ʔ
Affricate			t͡s
Fricative	s	z	ʃ
Approximant						j
Lateral				l
Flap				ɾ

Vowels

	Front		Central	Back
Close	i			ɯ
Close-mid	e			o
Open	a

All vowels in Sohcahtoan(except [i]) have elongated versions, those being ō([oː]), ā([aː]), ē([eː]) and ū([ɯː]).

Prosody

Stress

Sohcahtoan is a prototonic language, meaning that linguistic stress is placed on the first syllable of a word. This feature is from Ancient Sohcahtoan.

Phonotactics

Syllables in Sohcahtoan follow the form of (C)V as in Japanese. This contrasts with the Ancient Sohcahtoan pattern of (C)V(C).

Morphology

Most words in Sohcahtoan originate in Ancient Sohcahtoan(see here for examples), which itself descends from Proto-Japonic. More recent words, such as "coffee", "sugar" and "computer" are loanwords from Portuguese.

Syntax

Ancient Sohcahtoan and modern Sohcahtoan both have very similar grammar to Japanese.

Constituent order

Ancient Sohcahtoan uses an S-O-V(subject-object-verb) format as in Japanese, however when asking a question the language uses a V-O-S(verb-object-subject) structure, e.g. ānu ā bōru ka adosata(犬はボールかあどさた, The dog has a ball) and Adosata ka bōru ānu?(あどさたかボール犬？, does the dog have a ball?)

Noun phrase

"The dog" - "ānu"(犬)

Sohcahtoan, like Japanese, doesn't have a word for "the", unless you are also specifying the location of something, e.g. if you wanted to say "the dog", it would be simply "ānu"(犬literally "dog"), but if you wanted to say "this dog" or "that cat" it would be "げん犬"(gen inu) or "がん猫"(gan nero) respectively.

Sentence phrase

"Cows eat grass" - "ēshi ā kosa ō chigarā"(牛は草を食らー)"

In this sentence, ēshi(牛 cow, oxen) is the subject, kosa(草 grass) is the object and chigarā(食らー to eat, to consume) is the verb.