Ash

Ahgo
ahgoa
Pronunciation	[[Help:IPA|ˈʔɑħˌk̠ɔ̯ɑː]]
Created by	Ava Skoog
Language family	? Ahgo

Introduction

Ahgo (ahgoa, lit. "seaspeak", pronounced [ˈʔɑħˌk̠ɔ̯ɑː]) is the anglicised name of a language mostly spoken around coastal areas, notably the town of Ahba. Its speakers are familiar with technological advancements such as nautical vessels and steam locomotives.

The language is mildly synthetic to polysynthetic, largely based around agglutination with fusional elements. There is a great focus on verbs, nominals being mostly uninflected, and significant pro-drop tendencies and a general focus around deixis rather than pronominal distinctions. The word order is heavily SOV.

Phonology

Phonemes

The underlying sounds of Ahgo are few enough that a simple listing is preferable to a traditional table:

Vocalic	/a~Ø i~j~Ø u~w~Ø/
Plosive	/p~β t~ð k~ɣ/
Affricate	/t͡ɬ~ɬ t͡s~s/
Fricative	/h~ʔ/
Nasal	/m~˜ n~˜ ŋ~˜/

The reasoning for this rather unusual classification is down to phonotactic patterning: these five groups all behave somewhat differently and serve as a more useful distinction than point of articulation when describing the phonology of Ahgo. The pair or triplet given for each phoneme refers an important feature of the language which is the alternation between various allophonic realisations despite the relatively low number of underlying sounds, making the variation richer on the surface.

Romanisation

The romanisation strikes a balance between representing phonemes versus surface realisations and uses the following seventeen letters:

a

ã

e

ẽ

y

o

õ

w

b

d

g

s

l

h

m

n

ŋ

An example of a word with its archiphonemic, phonemic and surface transcriptions as well as romansiation:

//ˈwat.ha.ku//

→ /ˈwah.taˌku/

→ [ˈʔɔ̯ɑħ.t̠ɐˌɣʊ]

→ oahdago "during the day"