Nēpoki: Difference between revisions

|pronunciation = [neːpoki]

|region = Polynesia

|speakers = -

|date =  

|iso1 =

|agency       =  

'''Nepokian''' (natively written as nēpoki) is an [[w:Indo-European_languages|Indo-European language]]. Linguists classify it as an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. Nepokian shares some characteristics with the Anatolian languages, which lead linguists to group them together. But as Nepokian has some unique features not known to any other Indo-European tongue so far, these similarities may be only due to the antiquity of both branches.  

Around 800 B.C., Nepokians and Polynesians arrived at Samoa. This proximity was underlined by the big changes, primarily phonological, which happened in the transition from Old to Middle Nepokian. They were that deep, that Nepokian sound less and less Indo-European. When the first Europeans came across Nepokians, they must have spoken Middle Nepokian. The first written Nepokian sentences in Latin letters are late Middle Nepokian.  

In the 20th century, some people still pronounced the Nepokian l in certain circumstances as r. Though this was classified as arbitrary by Europeans, it was rather a late Middle Nepokian pronunciation. Therefore, the stage of New Nepokian must have begun quite recently. Contemporary dialects who use r instead of l do not differentiate between historical r and l, so they change all r and l either to r or l.

| 'o

| o

| 'o

| ō

| o

| oi, 'oi

| o

| ou, 'ou

| mo

| no

| lo

| lo

The grammar of Nepoki is essentially a ‘reflex’ of Proto-Indo-European. It's an inflectional language with declensional and conjugational patterns, sometimes seeming more conservative than Proto-Indo-European itself. Several striking similarities with Anatolian languages have been found. The presence of allative and elative besides the eight ‘classical’ PIE cases even led to the assumption that Nepoki is a ‘para-proto-indo-european’ language and not a descendent of PIE proper. However, Nepokian allative –a has the same origin as Hittite allative –a (< *- eh₂) and Nepokian elative –e seems to go back to PIE *-er. Nepokian might therefore preserve a very old stage of Proto-Indo-European. As Hittite, Nepokian has to genders, animate and unanimate.  

Nouns belong to one of two genders: animate and unanimate (neuter). Apart from that, nouns are inflected for three numbers: singular, dual and plural; as well as for ten cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, locative, allative and elative. All declensions can be traced back to PIE ones, though some simplifications happened.  

This declension, being recently established as a separate one, stems from neuter nouns of PIE o-declension (*-óm). All unanimate nouns ending in o belong here. The singular is identical to the first declension.