Lifashian
| Lifashian | |
|---|---|
| sá lommá lífasyása | |
| Pronunciation | [[sɑː ˈlɔŋnɑː ˈliːfæʃɑːsæ]] |
| Created by | Lili21 |
| Date | Apr 2019 |
| Setting | Alt-Earth |
| Ethnicity | Lifashians (lífasyi) |
| Native speakers | 6,200,000 (2016) |
Indo-European
| |
| Official status | |
Official language in | Dár Lífasyám |
| Regulated by | National Lifashian Language Board so Majalis Lommehi Dáré Lífasyám |
Lifashian, natively referred to as (at) lífasyátat or (sá) lommá lífasyása, is an Indo-European language, an isolate inside the family, spoken in an alternate timeline of Earth[1] in the northeastern corner of Asia Minor, i.e. the historical region of Pontus and neighboring areas across the Pontic Alps into the Armenian highlands. It is the official language of the former Soviet republic of Dár Lífasyám, spoken by the majority of its population.
Lifashian developed on its own, distinctly from other Indo-European languages, despite sharing some traits with the Anatolian languages, Armenian, and Greek. Its vocabulary has a substantial number of inherited roots, but through millennia the language absorbed many loanwords, especially from Persian and Arabic (through the former), and to smaller extents from its neighbours Armenian, the Kartvelian languages and Turkish, as well as from Greek and Russian.
In external history and setting, Lifashian is meant to be a more serious reboot of Wendlandish, though belonging to a different IE branch and being located in another area of Eurasia.
Orthography
Since 1919, Lifashian is written in an adaptation of the Latin script, replacing the Perso-Arabic script previously in use:
| a | á | b | c | d | e | é | f | g | h | i | í |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /æ/ | /ɑː/ | /b/ | /tʃ/ | /d/ | /e/ | /eː/ | /f/ | /ɡ/ | /h/ or /x/ or /ɣ/ |
/i/ | /iː/ |
| j | k | l | m | n | ng | o | ó | p | q | r | s |
| sy | t | u | ú | w | y | z | zy | ||||
| /ʃ/ | /t/ | /u/ | /uː/ | /w/ | /j/ | /z/ | /ʒ/ | ||||
The common sequence /ŋn/ is written as mm.
Phonology
Consonants
The consonants of modern and literary Lifashian are the following ones:
| → PoA ↓ Manner |
Labial and Labiodental |
Alveolar | Palatal and Alveolo-Palatal |
Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasals | m | n | ŋ | ||||
| Plosives | Voiceless | p | t | k | (q) | (Ɂ) | |
| Voiced | b | d | ɡ | ||||
| Affricates | Voiceless | tʃ | |||||
| Voiced | dʒ | ||||||
| Fricatives | Voiceless | f | s | ʃ | (x) | h | |
| Voiced | z | ʒ | (ɣ) | ||||
| Laterals | l | ||||||
| Trill | ɹ | ||||||
| Approximants | w | j | |||||
The phonemes /q Ɂ x ɣ/ only occur in Perso-Arabic words, but except for careful formal speech most speakers merge the former with /k/, do not pronounce /Ɂ/, and merge the latter two with /h/. The main minority of Dár Lífasyám, Laz speakers, are prone to using them more except for the glottal stop.
The consonants /z ʒ/ were also introduced from Persian and do not appear in native words, but also due to their prominence in Russian loans they are distinguished by virtually every speaker.
Vowels
Modern standard Lifashian has a ten-vowel system with five phonemes whose main distinction is of length, and length and quality for low vowels.
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| High | i iː | u uː |
| Mid | e eː | o oː |
| Low | æ | ɑː |
In the speech of young urban Lifashians there is a noticeable ongoing sound change in the high vowels, where the vowels are being restructured with long ones being front and short ones being back, and then distinguishing them for roundedness. Therefore, the high vowels of those speakers ae [iː yː ɯ u], result of the [i] → [ɯ] and [uː] → [yː] shifts.
Hamza
Peculiar of Lifashian vowels is hamza (/ˈhæŋzæ/, also written as hangza according to pronunciation), a phenomenon referred to with the Arabic word for a similar-sounding but unrelated phoneme. Lifashian hamza is in fact closer to Danish stød or the Latvian broken tone, and its origins reach back to Proto-Indo-European, reflecting an original *h₁ in some positions. Hamza is not represented orthographically.
Hamza may occur on any vowel, either long or short, as long as it is stressed (either primarily or in compounds). Hamza on short vowels is always realized as creaky voice or pharyngealization, while hamza on long vowels, for many speakers, is phonetically closer to a broken tone, with a full glottal stop interrupting the sound, before a short echo of the vowel:
- elemi "I eat" /ˈeˤlemi/ [ˈeˤlemi]
- élom "I ate" /ˈeːˤlom/ [ˈeɁĕlom]
- lúlasyam "twelve" (masc.) /ˌluːˤˈlæʃæm/ [ˌluɁŭˈlæʃæm]
Minimal pairs distinguished by hamza include the forms of some verbs whose root has hamza and the non-singular endings were originally stressed on an ending that absorbed the root vowel, such as mulúti /muˈluːˤti/ "he/she/it speaks" vs. mulúti /muˈluːti/ "they speak".