Paang

Cuam (CuamR /khuəm/ with rising tone) is an Irtan Southern Chinese/SEA language in the Cuamic family; it has influenced the Scandinavian-inspired Irtan Chinese lect.

Cuam is inspired by Irish, Thai and Hmong.

Phonology

Initials: all Irish single consonants plus prenasalized stops and sh(n/l/r)-; allow br dr gr fr cr tr bl dl gl fl cl tl; p- only occurs in borrowings; stops are +asp/-asp like in Scottish Gaelic

shm- is only used in so-called shm-reduplication

Séimhiú should have different outcomes from Irish

In unmutated words, all Irish unmutated initials + séimhiúed initials are permissible

séimhiúed words can't séimhiú again, but when they get urúed it manifests as prenasalization:

• **CV-(initial) > (lexically séimhiúed initial)
• **-n CV-(initial) > n:(initial) > nC (prenasalized initial)

Vowels: all combos of +-pal x vowel allowed in Irish (assuming broad final)

Allowed finals: -d -g -idh (-j) -imh (nasalization + -j) -bh (-w) -mh (nasalization + -w) -m -n -il -r

Tones are essentially the same as in Thai:

• "Dead syllables" (checked):
  • short vowel: a¹ a² (low high)
  • long vowel; á¹ á² (low falling)
• "Live syllables" (non-checked): long: áM áL áF áH áR (mid low falling high rising, as in Thai)

entering tone syllables (open short vowel, or d/g final) can only take a and à tones

forbids shm- like Irish but unlike Tigolic

Grammar

absolute state is sometimes a floating mutating morpheme that marks gender (marks absolute state, construct state doesn't mutate). Sometimes absolute state manifests as a separate preposed word or syllable which may or may not mutate the word itself. (absolute state comes from a preceding classifier)

1-10: leidh¹, nán², feó¹, tlud¹, daimh⁵, án², ciúr³, shnán², shleidh¹, faoil²

Diachronics

Some "possible" syllables should be disallowed bc of historical sound change, like unasp stop initial + nasal coda + 2nd tone syllables in Mandarin

Before having mutations, Cuam had long, short and ultrashort vowels. Mutations come from preceding ultrashort syllables that are lost; this came before the medieval Sinosphere register/tone split affecting most languages in the Sinosphere, resulting in mutation depending on tone. This earlier, very complex system of mutations and tonal ablaut got simplified into noun genders by analogy.

Orthography

A Far East Semitic based abugida

Tone diachronics

Middle Cuam (before the tone split) had 3 tones, like Middle Chinese, marked in the native script as unmarked, tone 1 and tone 2.

Consonant classes (séimhiú didn't change the consonant class while urú did)

• Mid: *k- series, glottal stop
• High: *kh- series, voiceless fricatives, shR-
• Low: *g series, voiced fricatives, resonants

Tone chart

class	ending	none	-่	-้	-๊	-๋
mid	dead	low	-	fall	high	-
mid	alive	mid	low	fall	high	rise
high	dead	low	-	fall
high	alive	rise	low	fall
low	dead (short vowel)	high	fall	-
low	dead (long vowel)	fall	-	high
low	alive	mid	fall	high