Gaju: Difference between revisions

|name = Gaju

|nativename = Gaju

|region = Southeast Asia

|setting = Rttirria

|fam1 = Rttirrian

|fam2 = South Rttirrian

|fam3 = [[Old Gaju]]

}}

The language has been documented from the [[Old Gaju]] period in the 14th century. While it was used widely across much of eastern Rttirria at that time, its homeland has slowly shrunken over time into the countryside, small towns, and jungles as Rttirri has come to dominate the national landscape. The Gaju community, as well as some ethnically Rttirri Easterners resenting Western cultural influence, has pushed for greater recognition and representation of Gaju and other minority languages. In the 1970s, it became an official language of all of Rttirria; citizens have the right to receive voting ballots, drivers' license exams, court interpreters, and other official documents and proceedings in the Gaju language.

==History==

Gaju is a member of the South Rttirrian branch of the Rttirrian language family of [[w:Southeast Asia|Southeast Asia]]; the dialects of Proto-South-Rttirrian that would become Gaju split off from those that would become Rttirri around the 3rd to 5th century CE, probably in southeastern Rttirria.

Gaju is considered more linguistically [[w:conservative (linguistics)|innovative]] than Rttirri, having undergone many phonological and grammatical changes from Proto-South-Rttirrian that did not occur in Rttirri. The main such changes are summarized here:

* Gradual development of a [[w:tone (linguistics)|tone]] system. First, coda */ʟ/ disappeared and left a low tone on the preceding vowel, all vowels took a low tone before stops, and various grammatical particles and affixes took low tones—other syllables took high tones. From there, further phonological elision and grammaticalization of morphemes led to a contour tone system.

* The gradual allowance of a few nasal consonants in coda position: /m n ŋ/.

|-

! Near-high

|

|

! Mid

| '''e''' /e/

| '''o''' /o/

|-

! Near-low

|

|-

! Low

===Tones===

Gaju distinguishes four tones: high, low, rising, and falling. They are distinguished in the Latin script as follows:

The rising and falling tones are uncommon, being found only in loanwords and in a small number of native words where elision of ''VCV'' sequences has caused high-tone and low-tone syllables with the same vowel to occur adjacently to each other.

An example of four words distinguished only by tone:

*'''High:''' ''ga'' ("day"), cognate to Rttirri ''ya''

===Phonotactics===

Loanwords containing syllables ending in a consonant other than one of these, or containing consonant clusters, usually make use of an epenthetic /ə/:

==Orthography==

==Vocabulary==

Gaju has historically featured very few of the [[w:Sanskrit|Sanskrit]] and [[w:Arabic language|Arabic]] loanwords that abound in [[Rttirri]]. However, the Gaju community's close proximity to [[w:Myanmar|Myanmar]] has given their language numerous loanwords from local languages, such as [[w:Burmese language|Burmese]], [[w:Thai language|Thai]], and the [[w:Karen languages|Karen]] languages. It has also taken on some loans from Rttirri.

==Grammar==

|-

! Mood

|-

! Tense

|-

! Auxiliary Verb

|}

Example:

:1PL.NOM parent-ACC PL 1PL.GEN FUT-visit

:We will visit our parents tomorrow.

Nouns can take the following cases:

|-

| dative

|-

| ablative

|-

| locative

|-

| comitative

|-

| instrumental

|-

| vocative

|}

Cases other than the nominative may be used alongside adpositional particles.

:fox red very quick PERF dog-LOC lazy over PST-jump

:The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

| ''di''

|}

Genitive pronouns follow the nouns they modify. The third-person singular plural is a recent innovation, derived from ''fòkom'' ("there").

|-

| my

|-

| your

|-

| his/her/its

|-

| our

|-

| all of your

|-

| their

|}

===Derivation===

|-

! Verb

| -

|-

! Adjective<br>or Determiner

|-

! English

|-

| who/whom

|-

| when

|-

| where

|-

| why

|-

| how

|}

A common usage of OSV word order is to draw attention to the object, such as to evoke pity:

:child-ACC beautiful three 3SG.GEN PERF 3SG.NOM PST-abandon

:He abandoned his three beautiful children.

| because

|-

| before

|-

| after

|-

| until

|-

| although

|}

===Relative and independent clauses===

:where dumpling PL that-ACC 1SG.NOM PST-bake exist

:Where are the dumplings that I baked?

Independent clauses are demarcated with the particle ''shu''.

:3SG.NOM PERF PST-say that 3SG.NOM home-DAT go-want.

:She said that she wanted to go home.

==See also==