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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 [[w:French language|French]] (borrowed early enough to have underwent Tameï vowel shifts), then from [[w:English language|English]], [[w:Persian language|Persian]], [[w:Pashto language|Pashto]] (the latter two especially in more colloquial registers), and more recently from Russian and [[w:Japanese language|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; however, its modern, Latin spelling, was only created after the Revolution of 1934. Today's Tameï orthography is not completely phonemic, and has a few etymological spellings; some words (mostly French and Russian proper names) keep the original spelling (transliterated in the case of Russian), but pronounced as a Tameï word, like the city of ''Stalinahâly''<ref>Tameï for "Stalin City".</ref>, is {{IPA|[ˈtʲælʲinæˌχɑj]}}. | 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 [[w:French language|French]] (borrowed early enough to have underwent Tameï vowel shifts), then from [[w:English language|English]], [[w:Persian language|Persian]], [[w:Pashto language|Pashto]] (the latter two especially in more colloquial registers), and more recently from Russian and [[w:Japanese language|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; however, its modern, Latin spelling, was only created after the Revolution of 1934. Today's Tameï orthography is not completely phonemic, and has a few etymological spellings; some words (mostly French and Russian proper names) keep the original spelling (transliterated in the case of Russian), but pronounced as a Tameï word, like the city of ''Stalinahâly''<ref>Tameï for "Stalin City".</ref>, is {{IPA|[ˈtʲælʲinæˌχɑj]}}. | ||
Tameï is a mostly agglutinating language, with complex inflected verbs but light nominal morphology (mostly consisting of highly irregular pluralization patterns). On the phonetic side, it has a system of vowel harmony which deeply characterizes the language and is also extended to loanwords: Tameï has, therefore, a complex vowel inventory with 10 monophthongs and at least 18 or 19 diphthongs. Together with [[w:Damin|Damin]], one of only two non-African languages using [[w:Click consonant|click consonants]]. | Tameï is a mostly agglutinating language, with complex inflected verbs but light nominal morphology (mostly consisting of highly irregular pluralization patterns). On the phonetic side, it has a system of vowel harmony which deeply characterizes the language and is also extended to loanwords: Tameï has, therefore, a complex vowel inventory with 10 monophthongs and at least 18 or 19 diphthongs. Together with [[w:Damin|Damin]], Tameï is one of only two non-African languages using [[w:Click consonant|click consonants]]. | ||
==Phonology== | ==Phonology== |
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