Numyut

Numyut
Numyuchi
замоз нумючүн zamoz numyuchün
Pronunciation	[ˈzɑmoz nuˈmʲutɕyn]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2025
Native to	Greater Numyutia
Ethnicity	Numyuts
Native speakers	800,000 (2025)
Language family	language isolate Numyut
Writing systems	Cyrillic Latin
Official status
Official language in	Numyutia
Regulated by	AZN

Numyut or Numyuchi is a language isolate spoken primarily in the region of Greater Numyutia, and is the native language of the Numyuts or Numyuchi people. It is the official and national language of the Socialist People's Republic of Numyutia, where it is regulated by the Academy of the Numyut Language (Ахадемe Замозүн Нумючүн, Akhademye Zamozün Numyuchün, AZN or АЗН); it is also the de facto official language of the anarchist breakaway state Bokchun Commune.

Numyut is written in both the Cyrillic and Latin scripts. The Socialist People's Republic only officially uses the Cyrillic script, but both scripts are taught in classrooms; Latin proficiency and use has also found to be higher among younger working-class speakers, as well as in the Bokchun Commune. This article mostly uses Cyrillic throughout for consistency.

Phonology

Consonants

	Labial	Coronal		Dorsal
		Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar
Stop/Affricate	p pʲ b bʲ	t d	tɕ dʑ		g
Nasal	m mʲ	n		ɲ	[ŋ]
Fricative	f	s z	ʃ ʒ	ç	x ɣ
Approximant	w	r		[ʎ]	ɫ

Numyut has four allophonic consonants /ç, ʎ, ŋ, ɲ/:

1. /ŋ/ appears as an allophone of /n/ before /g/, as in енгу [ˈeŋgu] "or". However, in fast or casual speech, these /ng/ clusters may lenite to leave just the /ŋ/ (as in енгу [ˈeŋgu] > [ˈeŋu]), which may give an erroneous impression to some non-native speakers that /ŋ/ is phonemically contrastive in Numyut.
2. In a similar fashion, /ɲ/ also appears as an allophone of /n/ before /tɕ, dʑ/, such as in унчу [ˈuɲtɕu] "fox". however, /ɲ/ also occurs as a separate phoneme from /n/, such as between the words муна [ˈmunɐ] "four" and муња [ˈmuɲɐ] "low".
3. /ç/ appears as its own phoneme, but also as an allophone of /x/ before /bʲ, dʑ, mʲ, ɲ, pʲ, tɕ/, such as in бөхчө [ˈbøçtɕø] "bowl, container", ахпят [ˈɑçpʲɐt] "grandfather" and мехминла [ˈmeçmʲinlɐ] "Wednesday"

The status of the Numyut rhotic consonant, written phonemically as /r/, varies greatly.

• In between rounded vowels (булюзджөpө), /r/ is pronounced roughly as a voiced velar approximant [ɰ], though this is typically transcribed as a voiced velar fricative /ɣ/.
• In between unrounded vowels (абулюзджepe), /r/ is pronounced as a voiced dental approximant [ɹ̪] (sometimes also transcribed as [ð̞] or [ð]). Conventionally however, this form of /r/ is transcribed as [ɹ] for simplicity.

Vowels

	Front		Back
	unrnd.	rnd.	unrnd.	rnd.
Close	i	y		u
Mid	e	ø		o
Open			ɑ

Numyut vowels are generally split into two categories: rounded vowels (булюзджөpө) and unrounded vowels (абулюзджepe). /o, ø, u, y/ are generally considered the rounded vowels, written ⟨о, ө, у, ү⟩ in Cyrillic and ⟨o, ö, u, ü⟩ in Latin respectively; the rest, /ɑ, e, i/, are the unrounded vowels, written ⟨a, e, и⟩ in Cyrillic and ⟨a, e, i⟩ in Latin. The distinction is important because Numyut incorporates vowel harmony.

Vowel harmony

Numyut incorporates vowel harmony, meaning that vowels in affixes and other lemmas will assimilate with the dominant vowels in a certain word. For example, grammatical case endings change depending on the prevalence of a type of vowel in the root word, such as in the accusative case ending broadly written -dEn:

example	accusative
малча malcha	малчадeн malchaden
көзөб közöb	көзөбдөн közöbdön

Because малча malcha "sweet black tea" only has unrounded vowels in it, -dEn becomes -den, yielding малчадeн malchaden. However, because көзөб közöb "corn cob" only has rounded vowels, -dEn instead becomes -dön and yields көзөбдөн közöbdön instead of *közöbden.

Broad writing

Broad writing (Numyut: лигобраст ligobrast, lit. "wide writing") or broad transcription refers to a transcription system for representing vowel-harmonic diaphonemes; i.e. because /i/ becomes /y/ when triggered by a round vowel, broad writing would represent /i/ and /y/ as the single diaphoneme I. Broad writing is primarily only used in Numyut linguistics. Standard Numyut has two diaphonemes, /E/ and /I/, but other dialects tend to have more; all recorded diaphonemes are shown in the table below.

Broad writing

Diaphoneme	Diallophones	Notes
E	/e/	Standard
	/ø/
I	/i/	Standard; absent in Krebsuyere, where /I/ is always pronounced /i/. Spelling remains the same as Standard
	/y/
O	/ɤ/, /ə/, /ø/	Non-standard; found as /ɤ/ in Üchlö and /ø~ə/ in Lunyus; both may be spelt ⟨ө⟩ in eye dialect.
	/o/	Standard
U	/ɨ/	Non-standard; found only in the traditional Tungerze dialect, and primarily among older speakers.
	/u/	Standard