Ín Duári

Introduction

Golahát is an indigenous minority language spoken in small pockets in Minhay. The language is not related to the Minhast language, nor the Peshpeg language, another minority language in the Minhast Nation. A relationship with the extinct Corradi language, another language indigenous to Minhay, has not been successfully demonstrated. Some linguists have also tried to establish a relationship with nearby languages in Northeast Asia, including Japanese, Korean, Ainu, and various Altaic, Tungusic, and Paleosiberian languages. Others have tried to link it to the Indo-European language family, due to typological similarities between the two. Nevertheless, a relationship with other languages continues to elude scholars, and thus Golahát remains classified as a language isolate.

Golahát is an exonym, originating from the Peshpeg word gola, meaning foreigner, and -hát, a Peshpeg suffix used to derived denonyms; the suffix -hát is itself a borrowing from the Minhast suffix -ast/-hast. Golahát speakers refer to themselves as im Doari, meaning "the people", and their language as penáz, meaning "those who speak (intelligibly)".

Like Peshpeg, Golahát is an endangered language; according to the 2010 census, less than one thousand people still speak the language, the youngest in their late 30's or early 40's. Golahát has fared better than Peshpeg, which has only a few hundred speakers at most. Nevertheless, Golahát continues to lose speakers due to several factors, such as the influx of Minhast speakers into traditionally Golahát-speaking areas, emigration by the younger generation to urban areas in search for employment, and the influence of the Minhast-dominated media.

Morphology

Golahát is a fusional language with some agglugination.

Nouns

Nouns inflect for gender, number and case. There are four main noun classes and three peripheral ones. The first four classes denote mostly humans, higher animals, lower animals and plants or natural phenomena, and natural inanimate objects. Nouns in the third class contains mostly body parts. The next two denote verbal nouns, abstract concepts, and miscellaneous objects. The final class contains only a few common nouns, mostly inanimate.

These nouns have been organized by traditional grammarians according to five declensions, each reflecting their general semantic domain and their inflectional paradigm. These are known as the Toma, Reváni, Thuhar, Chernwin, Ardhen and Nieri Declensions.

The first class, called the Toma-class (toma means "primary, foremost"), is reserved almost exclusively for humans and certain domesticated animals; a few exceptions occur, such as weapons, or toponyms that are clearly of Golahát origin. Nouns in the Toma-class end in either a final -e, -n, -en, or -ne in the nominative singular, depending on whether the root ends in a vowel or consonant. Notice that the Accusative is unmarked. Plurality is indicated by CV- reduplication of the first syllable of the root, plus an optional -ha final suffix added to the case suffix.

Case	Noun Classes
	Toma Declension		Reváni Declension		Thuhar Declension		Chernwin Declension		Ardhen Declension		Nieri Declension
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nominative	sorane		talare
Accusative	sora		talar
Genitive	soranai		talarai
Comitative	soraie		talarie
Ablative	soraien		talarien
Allative	soraion		talarion
Locative	soraiona		talari
Root	sora		talar		ren		nevwin		artan		vidhri
Meaning	woman		child		tree		hand		speech		home

Higher animals, particularly mammals and birds, and humans that tend to lack or be deficient in agency, such as infants, make up the second noun class, the Reváni-class (reváni means "honored, honorable"). Unlike the Toma nouns, the Nominative case is unmarked while the Accusative is explicitly marked.

Syntax

Constituent order

Canonical word order is VSO. Nevertheless, SVO, SOV, VOS, OSV, and OVS may appear as the case system allows such flexibility since it explicitly marks syntactic roles. Modifiers for the most part follow their heads, although determiners and deictics precede their heads.