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Tameï: Difference between revisions
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Despite fairly regular contacts with the peoples of Indonesia through centuries, the first major external influence in the Tameï Islands came with the first Western contact in 1559 through a French expedition by Bénoit de Neuilly on the ship L'Orléanaise. Established in 1602 as a French colony, the Tameï islands remained under French rule until 1814, when they were conquered by the British. They remained a British colony until the Communist Revolution of 1934 which saw the Tameï Islands, extremely rich in raw materials, become an important partner of the USSR, a role fulfilled until the dawn of the 21st century, with multi-party elections first being allowed in 1999. Self-defined Tameï people (even if heavily intermixed with other groups) are the majority, forming 57% of the population; there are also substantial Pashtun (21%) and Punjabi (13%) components. Religiously, there is no absolute majority; the largest religion is [[w:Sufism|Sufi Islam]], followed by 30% of the population, with atheism or irreligiousness (28%) and more or less syncretic modern forms of Tameï shamanism (24%) also being relevant percentages. | Despite fairly regular contacts with the peoples of Indonesia through centuries, the first major external influence in the Tameï Islands came with the first Western contact in 1559 through a French expedition by Bénoit de Neuilly on the ship L'Orléanaise. Established in 1602 as a French colony, the Tameï islands remained under French rule until 1814, when they were conquered by the British. They remained a British colony until the Communist Revolution of 1934 which saw the Tameï Islands, extremely rich in raw materials, become an important partner of the USSR, a role fulfilled until the dawn of the 21st century, with multi-party elections first being allowed in 1999. Self-defined Tameï people (even if heavily intermixed with other groups) are the majority, forming 57% of the population; there are also substantial Pashtun (21%) and Punjabi (13%) components. Religiously, there is no absolute majority; the largest religion is [[w:Sufism|Sufi Islam]], followed by 30% of the population, with atheism or irreligiousness (28%) and more or less syncretic modern forms of Tameï shamanism (24%) also being relevant percentages. | ||
This history, and the varied ethnic composition of the Tameï state (which saw a large influx of West and South Asians during the British period, as well as European communists during the 20th century), are reflected in its language, which has up to 20% of its lexicon of foreign origin, with early loans from [[w:French language|French]], then from [[w:English language|English]], [[w:Persian language|Persian]], [[w:Pashto language|Pashto]] (the latter two especially in more colloquial registers), and more recently from Russian and [[w:Japanese language|Japanese]] (the latter because of heavy Japanese cultural influence since the end of the Communist era). Tameï was first written under French rule in a French-derived spelling which did not consistently represent all the sounds of the language; the first native Tameï orthography, designed by Russian-educated Chlʌǥī′ey Neykachūnī<ref>The name is cited in modern orthography; during his time his name was written in the French-based spelling as ''Cheláguëaï Naïcacheauni'', or as ''Шлѧґӣӏай Найкашӯнӣ'' in the orthography that bears his name.</ref> in 1884 (and therefore known as Neykachūnī orthography), was an adaptation of Cyrillic to the Tameï language - while it did not gain recognition outside of the growing Tameï intelligencija, it formed the basis for the current orthography, established in 1901 (which is most commonly used with a Cyrillic-derived alphabetic order and maps diacritic forms or digraphs 1:1 to the Cyrillic Neykachūnī orthography, even if some conventions - as the use of '''x''' or '''ch''' are ultimately derived from the French-based spelling), which also shows some developments that had become standard across most of the Tameï Islands in the meantime. Today's Tameï orthography is not completely phonemic, as it shows vowel length distinctions (as '''ī ū â''') that are not kept anymore in most dialects); some words (mostly French and Russian proper names) keep the original spelling (transliterated in the case of Russian), but pronounced as a Tameï word. For example, the country's second-largest city, ''La Gracieuse'', is pronounced as [laguɹaˈɕuz], and the third-largest, ''Stalinahowa''<ref>Tameï for "Stalin City".</ref>, is [ˈtalinaˌhowa]. | This history, and the varied ethnic composition of the Tameï state (which saw a large influx of West and South Asians during the British period, as well as European communists during the 20th century), are reflected in its language, which has up to 20% of its lexicon of foreign origin, with early loans from [[w:French language|French]] (borrowed early enough to have underwent Tameï vowel shifts), then from [[w:English language|English]], [[w:Persian language|Persian]], [[w:Pashto language|Pashto]] (the latter two especially in more colloquial registers), and more recently from Russian and [[w:Japanese language|Japanese]] (the latter because of heavy Japanese cultural influence since the end of the Communist era). Tameï was first written under French rule in a French-derived spelling which did not consistently represent all the sounds of the language; the first native Tameï orthography, designed by Russian-educated Chlʌǥī′ey Neykachūnī<ref>The name is cited in modern orthography; during his time his name was written in the French-based spelling as ''Cheláguëaï Naïcacheauni'', or as ''Шлѧґӣӏай Найкашӯнӣ'' in the orthography that bears his name.</ref> in 1884 (and therefore known as Neykachūnī orthography), was an adaptation of Cyrillic to the Tameï language - while it did not gain recognition outside of the growing Tameï intelligencija, it formed the basis for the current orthography, established in 1901 (which is most commonly used with a Cyrillic-derived alphabetic order and maps diacritic forms or digraphs 1:1 to the Cyrillic Neykachūnī orthography, even if some conventions - as the use of '''x''' or '''ch''' are ultimately derived from the French-based spelling), which also shows some developments that had become standard across most of the Tameï Islands in the meantime. Today's Tameï orthography is not completely phonemic, as it shows vowel length distinctions (as '''ī ū â''') that are not kept anymore in most dialects); some words (mostly French and Russian proper names) keep the original spelling (transliterated in the case of Russian), but pronounced as a Tameï word. For example, the country's second-largest city, ''La Gracieuse'', is pronounced as [laguɹaˈɕuz], and the third-largest, ''Stalinahowa''<ref>Tameï for "Stalin City".</ref>, is [ˈtalinaˌhowa]. | ||
Tameï is a mostly agglutinating language, with complex inflected verbs but light nominal morphology (mostly consisting of highly irregular pluralization patterns). On the phonetic side, it is, together with [[w:Damin|Damin]], one of only two non-African languages using [[w:Click consonant|click consonants]]; it also has the cross-linguistically rare phoneme /ɢ/ (written '''ǥ'''). | Tameï is a mostly agglutinating language, with complex inflected verbs but light nominal morphology (mostly consisting of highly irregular pluralization patterns). On the phonetic side, it is, together with [[w:Damin|Damin]], one of only two non-African languages using [[w:Click consonant|click consonants]]; it also has the cross-linguistically rare phoneme /ɢ/ (written '''ǥ'''). | ||