Pangali

Introduction

Summary of Creator

Pangali (English: /peɪŋˈgɑli/ or /pɛnˈgɑli/; Pangali: [paŋˈa.li]) is a poorly made attempt at channeling the creator's artistic nature a constructed language developed by Sámuel Hiette Kannosíni for the purposes of his own gasket-blowing frustration enjoyment and glee.

Classification

The language is classified as an agglutinative language isolate with a tripartite morphosyntatic alignment that declines nouns under a 12 case system and conjugates verbs for person, tense, aspect, and mood. Adjectives are not inflected and have zero-grade derivation for adverbial phrases. The primary word order is OSV, however due to nouns being heavily inflected other word orders are possible, with SOV being the most prominently encountered alternate order. Whereas in many languages adpositions are used to indicate different relations between phrases, Pangali typically makes use of existing cases or a variation of Suffixaufnahme (also known as case stacking), wherein different cases are combined to carry the function of an adpositional function not normally covered by the standard twelve.

Fictional Setting

The Pangali language is the language used by the Pangalu, or the Pangali people, an indigenous people of the Pangali island chain, which is located roughly five hundred and thirty kilometers due west of the Phillipines. Until 2003 they were considered an uncontacted people, but on March 17th, 2003 an exploratory party onboard a rudimentary sailing vessel voyaged from the northern island of Mpaluwi towards the Phillipines. Enroute to their destination, however, they were intercepted by the Philippine Coast Guard some two hundred kilometers northeast of the coast of Tandag City and, controversially, detained for a period of 5 months and 23 days.

Official justification for the length of the detainment was given by the Phillipine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) soon after the party’s release, stating: “Due to the immense language and cultural barrier, as well as concern for the potential spread of disease to the isolated people, and questions regarding their motivation for travel made difficult by the aforementioned barriers, quarantine and detainment procedures were deemed not only the most efficient course of action, but also the safest, for all parties involved.”

The following months gave rise to an increase of international attention surrounding the Pangali people and the continuing communication efforts between them and the Philippine Government. It was later announced by the Philippine DFA that the isolated tribe “no longer wishes to be isolated”, and thus were subsequently placed underneath an international spotlight.

Naturally with the indigenous people now slowly but surely increasing contact with the modern world, records of their culture and language are a must in order to maintain a positive relationship, and thus the purpose of this wiki is, succinctly summarized, to address the linguistic side of such matters.

Phonology and Orthography

Phoneme Inventory

Consonants

Pangali Consonantal Inventory

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	/m/	/n/		/ŋ/
Plosive	/p/ /mp/ [b]	/t/ /nt/ [d]		/k/ /ŋk/ [g]	/ʔ/
Fricative		/s/ [z]	/ʃ/ [ʒ]
Approximant	[ʋ]	/l/		/w/

Vowels

Pangali Vowel Inventory

	Front	Central	Back
Close	/i/	[ɨ] [ʉ]	/u/
Close Mid
Mid		[ə]
Open Mid	[ɛ]	[ɐ]	[ɔ]
Open	/a/

Romanization

The Pangalu have no writing system and due to cultural reasons have declined offers to be taught the Romanization provided by academics. Despite this, field linguists who have begun the process of recording the language have developed a relatively Anglo-centric Romanization system, which is presented in the tables below.

Consonants

Pangali Consonant Romanization

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n		ng
Plosive	p mp	t nt		k ngk	h
Fricative		s	sh
Approximant		l		w

Vowels

Pangali Vowel Romanization

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Open	a

Allophonic Variation [WIP]

Nonprenasalized and nongeminated consonants that occur intervocalically are voiced if the preceding syllable is unstressed.

        /upaki/ = [ˈu.pa.gi], but /upanki / = [ ˈu.pɛ.nki]; /ŋotasa/ = [ˈŋo.ta.zə], but /ŋotasːa/ = [ˈŋo.taˌsːa]

Vowels preceding /ʔ/ are centralized. /a/ is both centralized and raised to [ɐ]

       /ʃanuʔa/ = [ˈʃa.nʉ.ʔə], /saʔamu/ = [sɐˈʔamu]; /piʔa/ = [ˈpɨʔa]

/i/ and /u/ are lowered preceding nasals and prenasalized consonants.

      /sintu/ = [ˈsɛ.ntu], /ʔuŋa/ = [ˈʔɔ. ŋa]

/w/ is realized as [ʋ] intervocalically.

    /ŋisatawu/ = [ŋiˈsa.ta.ʋu]

/a/ is reduced to /ə/ in word final syllables if the preceding syllable is unstressed.

   /uŋkula/ = [ˈɔ.ŋku.lə]

Phonotactics

Pangali's phonotactics are fairly simple, not unlike that of Tagalog, with a syllable structure of CV.

With the exceptions of geminate nasals and fricatives, consonant clusters are not permissible even across syllable boundaries. Any consonant may begin a syllable, but all syllables must be open syllables. Due to the nature of this syllable structure non-conforming loanwords are often heavily altered. It should be noted that calques are extremely more common in favor of familiarity, however.

Note the insertion of /u/ to break apart clusters in the following example.

        Helicopter: /ˈhɛl.iˌkɒp.təɹ/ > /ʔalikuputalu/, [ˈʔa.liˌku.pu.da.lu]