Ancient Sohcahtoan

Ancient Sohcahtoan
pē sō-ktã-gū
Pronunciation	[ˈpeːsoːktəguː]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2023
Native to	Republic of Sohcahtoa, São Martim
Native speakers	2,300 (2023)
Language family	Altaic Japonic part. Ryukyuan Sohcahtoic Ancient Sohcahtoan
Early form	Proto-Sohcahtoic
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Recognised minority language in	São Martim, Portugal
Regulated by	ASRO/ORAS

Ancient Sohcahtoan is a Japonic language that is the precursor of Sohcahtoan. Nowadays, it is used for solely ceremonial purposes at festivals, and no one actually uses it in everyday speech. Much of Ancient Sohcahtoan has been documented verbally, however some words have been comparatively reconstructed from modern Sohcahtoan. These comparatively reconstructed words are marked with an "*"(asterisk) at the beginning of a word.

Phonology

Orthography

Whereas modern Sohcahtoan uses the three Japanese scripts, Ancient Sohcahtoan was probably written using a rudimentary runic alphabet to represent the phonology. However, as the Japanese scripts began to heavily influence Sohcahtoan, the runes fell out of use in favour of Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji, which led to vowel and consonant change, e.g. ʂ -> ʃ and the complete dropping of [ə](ã) and [u], the former turned into [eoː] and the latter into [ɯ].

In modern times, linguists began recording Ancient Sohcahtoan with the Portuguese Latin script, which probably originates from Portuguese colonisers on the island of São Martim, where Ancient Sohcahtoan was preserved due to general Portuguese non-interference, compared to on the mainland where the language quickly began to adapt to Japanese scripts, which all but wiped out Ancient Sohcahtoan on the mainland.

Alphabet

à and ã(from Portuguese) represents the [ə] sound. Letters with "-" diacritics represent elongated vowels, e.g. ⟨ā⟩, ⟨ē⟩, ⟨ū⟩, and ⟨ō⟩.

Majuscule	A	Ā	Ã	B	K	D	E	Ē	G	I	K	M	N	O	Ō	P	R	S	T	U	Ū	Y	Z
Minuscule	a	ā	ã	b	k	d	e	ē	g	i	k	m	n	o	ō	p	r	s	t	u	ū	y	z

Consonants

	Labial		Dental/ alveolar		Post- alveolar/ palatal		Velar
Nasal		m		n
Plosive	p	b	t	d			k	ɡ
Affricate			t͡s
Fricative	s	z	ʂ
Approximant						j
Lateral				l
Flap				ɾ

Vowels

	Front		Central	Back
Close	i			u
Close-mid	e			o
Mid			ə
Open	a

All vowels in Ancient Sohcahtoan(except [i] and [ə]) have elongated versions, those being ō([oː]), ā([aː]), ē([eː]) and ū([uː]).

Prosody

Stress

Ancient Sohcahtoan is a prototonic language, meaning stress is placed on the first syllable of a word. This feature has been inherited by modern Sohcahtoan.

Phonotactics

Ancient Sohcahtoan, contrary to its more widely spoken descendant, uses the structure of (C)V(C) for syllables, which is quite different from modern Sohcahtoan's (C)V syllabic structure.

Additionally, the [ɾ] sound can only be succeeded by a vowel, hence the word kãkã-rã does not fit in the (C)V(C) structure.

Examples

Ancient Sohcahtoan *kak → Sohcahtoan 'kā, meaning "red".

Ancient Sohcahtoan ãkom → Sohcahtoan eōko, meaning "blue".

Ancient Sohcahtoan ūn → Sohcahtoan ānu, meaning "dog".

Proto-Japonic *kəkərə → Ancient Sohcahtoan kãkãrã → Sohcahtoan kokora, meaning "heart".

Morphology

Most words in Ancient Sohcahtoan originate in Proto-Japonic. Indeed, there are many similarities between the two languages; both languages have the [ə] sound, which other languages that derive from Proto-Japonic lost(and indeed, modern Sohcahtoan also lost the [ə] sound).

Syntax

Ancient Sohcahtoan and modern Sohcahtoan both have very similar grammar to Japanese.

Constituent order

Ancient Sohcahtoan uses an S-O-V(subject-object-verb) format as in Japanese, however when asking a question the language uses a V-O-S(verb-object-subject) structure, e.g. ūn ã *mārã kã ēdus(The dog has a ball) and Ēdus kã *mārã ūn?(does the dog have a ball?)

Noun phrase

"The dog" - "ūn"

Ancient Sohcahtoan, like Japanese, doesn't have a word for "the", unless you are also specifying the location of something, e.g. if you wanted to say "the dog", it would be simply "ūn"(literally "dog"), but if you wanted to say "this dog" or "that cat" it would be "gēn ūn" or "gān nūrã" respectively.

Example texts

Gondola no Uta(*Gondōra nu Ãto)

Note: this is only the first stanza.

In Ancient Sohcahtoan:

ãnukuē a minēredãm
kãrã asã mēterã
*kak *megubēra
goimã māt (a)ni
ãlsa derenerã nu
sēmemã māt (a)ni
asu nu yuēten nu
nēye *mãnu o

In English:

life is brief
fall in love, maidens
before the crimson bloom
fades from your lips
before the tides of passion
cool within you,
for there is no such thing
as tomorrow, after all