Aoma

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Aoma together with Rinap form the main languages of Herookuan family deriving from the ancestral Rinapri. Though Aoma is spoken in Eastern Sceptre it has not much to do with the languages of Western Sceptre.

Phonology

Very similar to Rinapian ones

Consonants

Bilabial Labio-dental Dental Alveolar Post-alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal
Nasal m n ŋ
Plosive p b t d k g ʔ
Fricative f v θ ð z s ʃ ʒ x h
Approximant ɹ j
Trill r
Lateral app. l

Consonants k, l, m, n, p, ɹ, r, s and t all have a geminated version which are mostly found in two-syllable verb infinite forms. The double-consonants have special marks in written Mihkanor so glottal stop is indicated by writing the consonants separately. Notice: pp [p:ʰ], tt [tθ]

Vowels

Front Back
Close i y u
Near-Close ɪ ʊ
Close-Mid e ø o
Open-mid ɛ œ ʌ ɔ
Near-open æ
Open a ɑ

Similarly to consonants, vowels have geminated forms marked with special graphemes so that glottal stop is indicated by writing the short graphemes separately. Since i, æ and œ are often written over preceding consonants, there is a special glottal stop grapheme for them. There are also graphemes for vowel combinations occurring at the end of words but their pronounciation varies: aee [aɛ:]/[æeˑ], oee [oe:]/[œɛˑ] and uee [wɛ:]/[ʊe:].

Orthography

Aoma has a hand-written script developed in Eastern Sceptre from the Eastern Temple Marks of third era. Shinesharers, spreaders of the religion of Light, took the original marks to north where they were developed into Northern script (our Latin). Decorational Jauhmø script is also still used for formal documentation.

Basics

Aoma is a Verb-Subject-Object language with strong head-initiality (right-branching). The language has two numbers (Singular and Plural), three persons (first, second and third), five cases (nominative, accusative, prepositional, dative and genitive) and four genders (divine, masculine, feminine and neuter). Important to the speakers and the society is the formal register with Polite forms of second person pronouns, honorifics and anti-honorifics.

Verbs are conjugated according to person, number, tense, aspect, mood which are indicated by suffixes, prefixes and reduplication. There are three conjugations: vowel-ending (a/o and e), consonant-ending (m and tes/kes/hes) and irregular which do show characteristics of either first or second conjugation.

Noun declension according to number and case correlates with the four noun classes which are indicated by the last vowel: divine a, masculine y, feminine u and neuter i. The declension is shown with suffixes and apophony.