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 led 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. Though they were deep and Nepokian sounded less and less Indo-European, under certain circumstances some consonant clusters (which are alien to Polynesian) into Late Middle Nepokian. This stage ceased to exist when all clusters were finally broken up and r, s and t gradually shifted to l, h and k.

In the late 18th century, when the Europeans made their first notices about this tongue, some people still pronounced the Nepokian l in certain circumstances as r. Though formerly classified as arbitrary, it was rather a late Middle Nepokian pronunciation. This wasn't the case with s and h, or t and k, as their sound shifts were finished centuries before. Linguists set the transition from Middle to New Nepokian in the 15th century.  

Modern Nepokian is spoken since the arrival of German colonialists in Southern Pacific. Phonological (i.e., múhuki becoming mūki 'five', a very rare exception as there are no such contractions elsewhere) and grammatical changes are few, but the vocabulary was enriched dramatically.