Tameï
| Tameï | |
|---|---|
| Pronunciation | [[Help:IPA|[[tameˈ(j)i], [tameˈ(j)ija(ː) mɛmˈbɛ]]]] |
| Created by | Lili21 |
| Date | Dec 2017 |
| Setting | alt-Earth |
| Ethnicity | Tameï |
| Native speakers | 42,000,000 (2017) |
Isolate
| |
| Official status | |
| Regulated by | Central National Committee of the Tameïan Language (gulafuniow lâneychär′owƛow komityetu mâ tameïyâ mâ mämbä) |
Tameï ([tameˈ(j)i] or tameïyâ mämbä [tameˈ(j)ija(ː) mɛmˈbɛ]; also Tamei in modern orthography) is a language isolate spoken in the Tameï Islands, an independent volcanic archipelago country in the Indian Ocean, along the Ninety East Ridge, about 1000 km WSW of Sumatra and roughly halfway between Sri Lanka and the Australian territory of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.
Tameï is Earth's second most spoken language isolate (after Korean), being the native tongue of about 42 million people, mostly in the Tameï Islands but also in countries of the former USSR. Tameï is one of two official languages in the country - the Tameïan People's Socialist Republic (officially Tameïyū mâ Meyʌhäht′eyä Sʌtsuyalisuticeyki Repibulik and Социалистическая Республика Тамеиского Народа) as Russian is still official for historical and cultural reasons, despite actual Russian native speakers being only 1% of the Tameï population.
Despite fairly regular contacts with the peoples of Indonesia through centuries, the first major external influence in the Tameï Islands came with the first Western contact in 1559 through a French expedition by Bénoit de Neuilly on the ship L'Orléanaise. Established in 1602 as a French colony, the Tameï islands remained under French rule until 1814, when they were conquered by the British. They remained a British colony until the Communist Revolution of 1934 which saw the Tameï Islands, extremely rich in raw materials, become an important partner of the USSR, a role fulfilled until the dawn of the 21st century, with multi-party elections first being allowed in 1999. Self-defined Tameï people (even if heavily intermixed with other groups) are the majority, forming 57% of the population; there are also substantial Pashtun (21%) and Punjabi (13%) components. Religiously, there is no absolute majority; the largest religion is Sufi Islam, followed by 30% of the population, with atheism or irreligiousness (28%) and more or less syncretic modern forms of Tameï shamanism (24%) also being relevant percentages.
This history, and the varied ethnic composition of the Tameï state (which saw a large influx of West and South Asians during the British period, as well as European communists during the 20th century), are reflected in its language, which has up to 20% of its lexicon of foreign origin, with early loans from French, then from English, Persian, Pashto (the latter two especially in more colloquial registers), and more recently from Russian and Japanese (the latter because of heavy Japanese cultural influence since the end of the Communist era). Tameï was first written under French rule in a French-derived spelling which did not consistently represent all the sounds of the language; the first native Tameï orthography, designed by Russian-educated Chlʌǥī′ey Neykachūnī[1] in 1884 (and therefore known as Neykachūnī orthography), was an adaptation of Cyrillic to the Tameï language - while it did not gain recognition outside of the growing Tameï intelligencija, it formed the basis for the current orthography, established in 1901 (which makes use of two Cyrillic letters 〈з ӟ〉and is most commonly used with a Cyrillic-derived alphabetic order (the Tameï alphabet goes A, Ä, Â, B, W, G, Ǥ, D...)), which also shows some developments that had become standard across most of the Tameï Islands in the meantime. Today's Tameï orthography is not completely phonemic, as it shows vowel length distinctions (as 〈ī ū â〉) that are not kept anymore in most dialects); some words (mostly French and Russian proper names) keep the original spelling (transliterated in the case of Russian), but pronounced as a Tameï word. For example, the country's second-largest city, La Gracieuse, is pronounced as [laguɹaˈɕuz], and the third-largest, Stalinahowa[2], is [ˈtalinaˌhowa].
Tameï is a mostly agglutinating language, with complex inflected verbs but light nominal morphology. On the phonetic side, it is, together with Damin, one of only two non-African languages using click consonants; it also has the cross-linguistically rare phoneme /ɢ/ (written 〈ǥ〉).
Phonology
Modern Standard Tameï (based on the dialect of the capital region in central Heyta Hʌna island) has a phonemic inventory of 7 (or 8) monophthongs, two diphthongs, and 37 consonants (including 8 clicks).
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i ī i | u ū u | |
| High-mid | e e | o o | |
| Low-mid | ä æ～ɛ | ʌ ʌ～ɔ | |
| Low | a â a (aː) | ||
| Diphthongs | ey e̞ɪ̯ | ow o̞ʊ̯ |
The 7 monophthongs are /i u e o ɛ ʌ～ɔ a/, mainly written 〈i u e o ä ʌ a〉; /i u/ may also be spelled 〈ī ū〉for etymological reasons, while many speakers still distinguish /a/ from /aː/ (the latter consistently written 〈â〉). The â vowel has such treatment because, unlike 〈ī ū〉from historical /eː oː/, it is not historical /aː/ (which became /ʌ/ in all Tameï dialects), but a later development mainly from /aɣ/ (and also /aŋ/) sequences - in fact, the French and the Neykachūnī orthographies show the earlier forms; compare the earlier spellings of "person" as laguenaï and лағнай with modern lâney. For an /aŋ/-derived â, see the name Françoise, which was still written with /ŋ/ in the Neykachūnī orthography as Фыранғсѧсы /fɯɹaŋˈsɑːzɯ/, but in the modern spelling it is Furâsʌz (or the variant Furâsʌzī), representing /fuɹaˈsʌz(i)/.
This consonant-loss and lengthening process was ongoing in the late 19th century, as also shown by other sources like /ah/ followed by a consonant, as in the Persian loan châr [ɕa(ː)ɹ] from شهر šahr[3] (Neykachūnī orthography шаӿыр, representing /ˈɕahɯɹ/).
The two diphthongs, /e̞ɪ̯/ and /o̞ʊ̯/, derive from historical /aɪ̯ aʊ̯/ (and were in fact still written as 〈ай ав〉in the 1884 orthography); many dialects, especially those spoken on the islands farther from Heyta Hʌna, keep values closer to the original ones.
Consonants
| → PoA ↓ Manner |
Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasals | m m | n n | ny ɲ | ||||
| Voiceless plosives | p p | t t | k k | q q | ′ Ɂ | ||
| Voiced plosives | b b | d d | g g | ǥ ɢ | |||
| Clicks | p′ ʘ | t′ ǀ | r′ ǃ | c′ ǂ | |||
| Nasalized clicks | mp′ ʘ̃ | nt′ ǀ̃ | nr′ ǃ̃ | nc′ ǂ̃ | |||
| Affricates | ƛ tɬ ƛ′ tɬ' |
c tɕ | |||||
| Fricatives | f ɸ | з θ ӟ ð |
ł ɬ s s z z |
ch ɕ yh ç |
ⱨ x | h h | |
| Approximants | l l r ɹ |
y j | w w |
/l ɹ j m n ɲ/ can also be geminates.
Orthographically, 〈ᕕ ᕕ′〉are used as the uppercase forms of 〈ƛ ƛ′〉.
Orthography
Tameï is written in an extended Latin alphabet, which uses diacritics and digraphs to distinguish different consonants. One basic letterform (and a form with a diacritic) is taken from Cyrillic; two letterforms are from the IPA and Americanist notation respectively; the latter's uppercase form is typographically rendered with a Canadian Syllabics glyph.
The Tameï Latin script order, almost uniquely among Latin alphabets, is based on the Cyrillic script order first used in the 1884 Neykachūnī orthography, with diacritic forms coming after the diacriticless ones and additional letters stacked at the end. ′, which represents the /Ɂ/ phoneme, has no uppercase form. All digraphs except for the two diphthongs 〈ey ow〉are considered distinct letters, as are all letters with diacritics.
The Tameï alphabetic order is A Ä Â B W G Ǥ D E Z З Ӟ I Ī Y Yh K L Ł M N Ny O P P′ R R′ S T T′ U Ū F H Ⱨ C C′ Ch Q ′ Λ ᕕ ᕕ′ (J V X). The "foreign" letters J V X (pronounced as /ɕ/ (or /j/), /f/, /kus(u)/ (or /z/ or ∅) respectively) are only used in words of foreign origin whose spelling is kept - this often means given names (e.g. Abdulmarx [abudulˈmaɹukusu]) or toponyms (La Joyeuse [laɕuwaˈjuz] (less commonly also [laɕaˈjuz]), Port Vieux [pɔɹuˈfju]). Some words that keep foreign spellings may have silent letters (Soviet [ˈsɔfje]; Stalin [ˈtalin] (both also used as given names among Tameïs)) or unwritten epenthetic vowels (Abdul- [abudul-]; Grâce [guˈras]).
The word Tameï is usually written with a diaeresis as a relic of the original French-based orthography, but colloquially it is also written as Tamei as in all other cases of [eˈ(j)i] in modern Tameï.
The Tameï orthography is defective, as it does not represent stress, which is unpredictable and phonemic (even though with a limited functional load).