Tameï
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| Tameï | |
|---|---|
| Pronunciation | [[Help:IPA|[[tameˈ(j)i], [tameˈ(j)ija(ː) mɛmˈbɛ]]]] |
| Created by | Lili21 |
| Date | Dec 2017 |
| Setting | alt-Earth |
| Ethnicity | Tameï |
| Native speakers | 42,000,000 (2017) |
Isolate
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| Official status | |
| Regulated by | Central National Committee of the Tameïan Language (gulafuniow lâneychär′owŧow komityetu mâ tameïyâ mâ mämbä) |
Tameï ([tameˈ(j)i] or tameïyâ mämbä [tameˈ(j)ija(ː) mɛmˈbɛ]; also Tamei in modern orthography) is a language isolate spoken in the Tameï Islands (Tameinywe neyny), an independent volcanic archipelago country in the Indian Ocean, along the Ninety East Ridge, about 1000 km WSW of Sumatra and roughly halfway between Sri Lanka and the Australian territory of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.
Tameï is Earth's second most spoken language isolate (after Korean), being the native tongue of about 42 million people, mostly in the Tameï Islands but also in countries of the former USSR. Tameï is one of two official languages in the country - the Tameïan People's Socialist Republic (officially Tameïyūn mâ Meyʌhäht′eyä Xʌtxuyalixuticeyki Repibulik and Социалистическая Республика Тамеиского Народа) as Russian is still official for historical and cultural reasons, despite actual Russian native speakers being only 1% of the Tameï population.
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 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 French (borrowed early enough to have underwent Tameï vowel shifts), then from English, Persian, Pashto (the latter two especially in more colloquial registers), and more recently from Russian and 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[1] 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[2], 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 Damin, one of only two non-African languages using click consonants; it also has the cross-linguistically rare phoneme /ɢ/ (written ǥ).
Phonology
Modern Standard Tameï (based on the dialect of the capital region in central Heyta Hʌna island) has a phonemic inventory of 7 (or 8) monophthongs, two diphthongs, and 37 consonants (including 8 clicks).
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i ī i | u ū u | |
| High-mid | e e | o o | |
| Low-mid | ä æ～ɛ | ʌ ʌ～ɔ | |
| Low | a â a (aː) | ||
| Diphthongs | ey e̞ɪ̯ | ow o̞ʊ̯ |
The 7 monophthongs are /i u e o ɛ ʌ～ɔ a/, mainly written 〈i u e o ä ʌ a〉; /i u/ may also be spelled 〈ī ū〉for etymological reasons, while many speakers still distinguish /a/ from /aː/ (the latter consistently written 〈â〉). The â vowel has such treatment because, unlike 〈ī ū〉from historical /eː oː/, it is not historical /aː/ (which became /ʌ/ in all Tameï dialects), but a later development mainly from /aɣ/ (and also /aŋ/) sequences - in fact, the French and the Neykachūnī orthographies show the earlier forms; compare the earlier spellings of "person" as laguenaï and лағнай with modern lâney. For an /aŋ/-derived â, see the name Françoise, which was still written with /ŋ/ in the Neykachūnī orthography as Фыранғсѧсы /fɯɹaŋˈsɑːzɯ/, but in the modern spelling it is Furâxʌz (or the variant Furâxʌzī), representing /fuɹaˈsʌz(i)/.
This consonant-loss and lengthening process was ongoing in the late 19th century, as also shown by other sources like /ah/ followed by a consonant, as in the Persian loan châr [ɕa(ː)ɹ] from شهر šahr[3] (Neykachūnī orthography шахыр, representing /ˈɕahɯɹ/).
The two diphthongs, /e̞ɪ̯/ and /o̞ʊ̯/, derive from historical /aɪ̯ aʊ̯/ (and were in fact still written as 〈ай ав〉in the 1884 orthography); many dialects, especially those spoken on the islands farther from Heyta Hʌna, keep values closer to the original ones.
Note that the grapheme i always represents a vowel and is therefore always in hiatus with any preceding or following vowel, unless it forms a plural noun in -iemi.
Consonants
| → PoA ↓ Manner |
Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasals | m m | n n | ny ɲ | |||||
| Plosives | Voiceless | p p | t t | k k | q q | ′ Ɂ | ||
| Voiced | b b | đ d | g g | ǥ ɢ | ||||
| Clicks | Plain | p′ ʘ | t′ ǀ | r′ ǃ | c′ ǂ | |||
| Nasalized | mp′ ʘ̃ | nt′ ǀ̃ | nr′ ǃ̃ | nc′ ǂ̃ | ||||
| Affricates | Central | c tɕ | ||||||
| Lateral | ŧ tɬ ŧ′ tɬ' |
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| Fricatives | Central | f ɸ | s θ d ð |
x s z z |
ch ɕ yh ç |
ӿ x | h h | |
| Lateral | ł ɬ | |||||||
| Approximants | Central | r ɹ | y j | w w | ||||
| Lateral | l l | |||||||
/l ɹ j m n ɲ/ can also be geminates.
Orthography
Tameï is written in an extended Latin alphabet, which uses diacritics and digraphs to distinguish different consonants.
The Tameï Latin script order, almost uniquely among Latin alphabets, is based on the Cyrillic script order first used in the 1884 Neykachūnī orthography, with diacritic forms coming after the diacriticless ones and additional letters stacked at the end. ′, which represents the /Ɂ/ phoneme, has no uppercase form. All digraphs except for the two diphthongs 〈ey ow〉are considered distinct letters, as are all letters with diacritics.
The Tameï alphabetic order is A Ä Â B W G Ǥ D Đ E Z I Ī Y Yh K L Ł M N Ny O P P′ R R′ S X Ӿ T T′ Ŧ Ŧ′ U Ū F H C C′ Ch Q ′ Λ (J V). The "foreign" letters J V (pronounced as /ɕ/ (or /j/), /f/) are only used in words of foreign origin whose spelling is kept - this often means given names or toponyms (e.g. La Joyeuse [laɕuwaˈjuz] (less commonly also [laɕaˈjuz]), Port Vieux [pɔɹuˈfju]). Some words that keep foreign spellings may have silent letters (Soviet [ˈsɔfje]; Stalin [ˈtalin] (both also used as given names among Tameïs)) or unwritten epenthetic vowels (Abdul- [abudul-]; Grâce [guˈɹas]).
The word Tameï is usually written with a diaeresis as a relic of the original French-based orthography, but colloquially it is also written as Tamei as in all other cases of [eˈ(j)i] in modern Tameï.
The Tameï orthography is defective, as it does not represent stress, which is unpredictable and phonemic (even though with a limited functional load).
Morphology
Nouns
Gender
Tameï has three grammatical genders (chiâ, pl. chigūz): masculine, feminine, and neuter. In most cases, they can be predicted based on the ending of the noun:
- The masculine class (p′ūkiŧow chiâ) includes most nouns ending in consonants (except -x and -z), including in -ey and -ow;
- The feminine class (ninyaŧow chiâ) includes all nouns ending in -i and -e (excluding the -wałe deverbal suffix, which is neuter), and most -ū and -a ones (incl. all Russian borrowings in -a).
- The neuter class (đalūnaŧow chiâ) includes all nouns ending in -u and -o, all those nouns ending in -x and -z, and many -a ones.
There is no general pattern, not even semantic, for which -a nouns are feminine and which ones are neuter: for example among geographical features neyna "island" and r′ulka "beach" are feminine, while łäna "stream" is neuter, while among body parts kilka "foot" is neuter and nʌmisa "leg" is feminine. Furthermore, deadjectival nouns from adjectives in -a are usually masculine (e.g. täzifeyza "red hue").
Some prescriptivists try to match Russian borrowings to their Russian gender, resulting thus in e.g. rubuli "ruble" being masculine (while in Tameï it is usually feminine). With this particular word it is notable, as Tameï banknotes until the 2000 series used the prescriptivist masculine form (tamei rubuli), while since the 2000 series the more natural feminine form (tameiyâ rubuli), which has always been used colloquially, is printed on them.
A notable feature of Tameï classes is that they almost never correlate with natural gender: as such the word p′ūki "man" is feminine, while niny "woman" is masculine (as is đalūn "stone", which is the root đalūnaŧe "neuter" is built on).
Plural nominative
The plural nominative is, for many nouns, a principal part, because various, as of today still unclear, sound changes in the past have led many native root nouns to have extremely irregular forms.
The easiest plural nominative form is the -emi suffix, used by virtually all loanwords, no matter what their origin is. It is written -ëmi after a vowel which is not -i, -ī, or -e; the original vowel is, however, unpronounced.
- meydan (square) → meydanemi (squares)
- owhani (bread; flatbread) → owhaniemi ((pieces of) flatbread)
- riwalucia (revolution) → riwaluciaëmi [-tɕi(j)emi] (revolutions)
- xuturaitelixutuwo (construction site) → xuturaitelixutuwoëmi [-wemi] (construction sites)
Some words of foreign, especially French, origin, are invariable, as for example all month and weekday names. The word tawarich (comrade) uses the Russian plural tawarichi when used as a vocative, and tawarichemi otherwise.
Rubuli "ruble" (also the name of the Tameï currency) always has the plural rubuley, taken from the Russian genitive plural.
The -emi suffix is, for native words, used for many -i and -u nouns, in the latter case usually forming -wemi:
- kʌrami (head) → kʌramiemi (heads; but also kʌramimi)
- beyđi (knot) → beyđiemi (knots)
- lâneychär′u (nation) → lâneychär′wemi (nations)
Other regular patterns are -eyä → -eymi (meyʌhäht′eyä "people" → meyʌhäht′eymi "peoples") and, for the derivational suffix -wałe, -weyłi (deydiwałe "birth" → deydiweyłi "births").
-ney and -ni often pluralize to -nny [-ɲː], sometimes with vowel changes:
- taney (song) → tenny (songs)
- towni (eye) → tanny (eyes (not to be confused with the above))
- lâney (person) → lânny (people; but the singular is also often used with a plural meaning)
- rânychani (coconut palm) → rânychanny (coconut palms)
Other -ey nouns typically pluralize to -eywe (much like adjectives):
- yâłey (train) → yâleywe (trains)
- c′owey (bird) → c′oweywe (birds)
- qâchey (tuna fish) → qâcheywe (tuna fishes)
-na, if preceded by a front vowel or -ey, usually becomes -ny [ɲ] in the plural. This is also true with some foreign roots:
- neyna (island) → neyny (islands)
- łäna (stream) → łäny (streams)
- nânyarugencina (Argentinian) → nânyarugenciny (Argentinians)
A few -a nouns (all feminine) have their plural in -â (with a stress shift):
- nʌmisa /ˈnʌmiθa/ (leg) → nʌmisâ /nʌmiˈθa/ (legs)
- ӿuda /ˈxuða/ (fingernail) → ӿudâ /xuˈða/ (fingernails)
- mp′ilena /ʘ̃iˈlena/ (road) → mp′ilenâ /ʘ̃ileˈna/ (roads)
Some -CCV nouns undergo cluster breaking, often with not quite predictable results:
- nr′ownu (time, year) → nr′aluny (times, years)
- mämbä (language) → mämeybi (languages)
- r′ulka (beach) → r′uleychi (beaches)
Others are synchronically irregular:
- nyuta (day) → nyich (days)
- niny (woman) → nayim (women)
- kilka (foot) → kiwchiny (foot)
- p′ūki (man) → p′ūx (men)
Some nouns (mostly neuter, but a few masculine ones as well) pluralize with -ūz, with or without any other change:
- kamo (leaf) → kamūz (leaves)
- đalūn (pebble) → đownūz (pebbles)
- chiâ (category, group, class) → chigūz (categories, groups, classes)
Some adjectival roots pluralize as adjectives do:
- nânytamei(yâ) (Tameï) → nânytameinywe (Tameïs)
- nânyexulamur(â) (Muslim) → nânyexulamurye (Muslims)
- täzifeyza (red hue) → täzifeyziwe (red hues)
Adjectives
Tameï adjectives are much less inflected than nouns. They distinguish the three genders in the singular, only two in the plural (masculine-feminine vs. neuter), and for case they only inflect for nominative vs. oblique. In the oblique, there is only one form for the singular and one for the masculine-feminine plural, and the neuter plural is the same as in the nominative. There are four different patterns depending on the adjective's ending in the masculine singular nominative: one for those which end in consonants (incl. -ey and -ow), one for those in front vowels or -a (but not -i), one for those in back vowels, and one for those in -i (but not -ī).
| Pattern 1 (consonants) exulamur (Islamic) |
Pattern 2 (front vowels or -a) feyza (red) | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |||||||
| Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | Masc. & Fem. | Neuter | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | Masc. & Fem. | Neuter | |
| Nominative | exulamur | exulamurâ | exulamurow | exulamurye | exulamurâna | feyza | feyzeâ | feyzow | feyziwe | feyzâna |
| Oblique | exulamurūn | exulamurīnya | feyzūn | feyzīnya | ||||||
| Pattern 3 (back vowels) bozorugu (saint) |
Pattern 4 (-i) tamei (Tameï) | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |||||||
| Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | Masc. & Fem. | Neuter | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | Masc. & Fem. | Neuter | |
| Nominative | bozorugu | bozoruguwâ | bozorugunu | bozorugunywe | bozorugowna | tamei | tameiyâ | tameiyow | tameinywe | tameinyân |
| Oblique | bozorugūn | bozorugunya | tameiyūn | tameinya | ||||||
The mâ genitive particle does not require the oblique form if it appears before the adjective (thus after a noun), but, if the adjective is the first word in the sentence, mâ can't be placed before it and the adjective needs to be in oblique form, e.g.:
- kūlūnyäp′ämīnya tameinya mâ neyny purawitelixutuwo "Colonial-era Tameï Islands' government"
- purawitelixutuwo mâ kūlūnyäp′ämiwe mâ tameinywe mâ neyny "government of the colonial-era Tameï Islands"
Numerals
Tameï has a base 10 numeral system with a moderate complexity given by the fact that, due to historical changes, most of the individual numbers between 1 and 100 are irregular - there are some patterns but also many numbers with unexpected forms.
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Numbers above 100 are easily formed with u, e.g. 101 yhʌd u ney, 102 yhʌd u bud, and so on. Upper hundreds are compounds:
- 200 – buyhʌd
- 300 – nt′azʌd
- 400 – sachʌd
- 500 – mʌchʌd
- 600 – nūyhʌd
- 700 – ǥâcʌd
- 800 – ławayhʌd
- 900 – kaŧīyhʌd
1000 is yâz, and numbers above it are simple juxtapositions (e.g. 4829 sâch yâz ławayhʌd u nayennyt′e). Even higher numerals are French loans: 1.000.000 is meleyâ and 1.000.000.000 is meleyʌđu.
Vocabulary
Days and months
Both days of the week and months of the year used in Tameï are clear French borrowings, but they do show the usual vocalic changes that happened in Tameï since they were borrowed:
| Day | Name | Shortening | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | lâđe | lâ | [la(ː)ˈde] |
| Tuesday | mowđe | mo | [mo̞ʊ̯ˈde] |
| Wednesday | mīkurīđe | mī | [mikuɹiˈde] |
| Thursday | chuđe | ch | [ɕuˈde] |
| Friday | fâdurīđe | fâ | [ɸa(ː)duɹiˈde] |
| Saturday | xâđe | xâ | [sa(ː)ˈde] |
| Sunday | đemʌch | de | [deˈmʌɕ] |
| Month | Name | Shortening | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | châfī | châ | [ɕa(ː)ˈfi] |
| February | fīūrei | fīū | [fi.uɹeˈi] |
| March | mowxu | mow | [ˈmo̞ʊ̯su] |
| April | afurel | afu | [aɸuˈɹel] |
| May | mī | mī | [ˈmi] |
| June | chuwä | chu | [ɕuˈwɛ] |
| July | chīlī | chī | [ɕiˈli] |
| August | otu | otu | [ˈotu] |
| September | xīputâbu | xīp | [sipuˈta(ː)bu] |
| October | ūkutūbu | ūku | [ukuˈtubu] |
| November | nūfâbu | nūf | [nuˈɸa(ː)bu] |
| December | đīxâbu | đīx | [diˈsa(ː)bu] |
Public holidays
There are 13 festivities for a total of 15 days of public holidays currently observed in the Tameï Islands. Even if five of these days are religious festivities, they are officially mandated by law and observed regardless of one's own religion:
- January 1 — New Year's Day (nyuta mâ peyniow mâ nr′owna)
- January 7 — Orthodox Christmas (purawoxulaweyurâ Nūīla)
- March 12 — Day of the February Revolution (nyuta mâ Riwalucia mâ fīūrei)
- April 22 — Birthday of Vladimir Lenin (nyuta mâ deydiwałe mâ Vladimir Lenin [- ulaˈdimiɹu ˈljenin])
- May 1-2 — Day of the International (nyuta mâ Etīrunazyūnal)
- May 9 — Victory Day (nyuta mâ Pabiyeda)
- June 28 — Day of the Tameïan Revolution of 1934 (nyuta mâ tameinywâ mâ Riwalucia mâ yâz kaŧīyhʌd nt′âdahählä mâ nr′owna)
- August 4 — Birthday of Līley Grâce Châmenychūmp′ (Founder of the Tameïan Communist Party, leader of the Revolution of 1934, and first president of the Tameïan People's Socialist Republic) (nyuta mâ deydiwałe mâ Līley Grâce Châmenychūmp′)
- November 7-8 — Day of the October Revolution (nyuta mâ Riwalucia mâ ūkutūbu)
- December 25 — Catholic Christmas (katūlikurâ Nūīla)
- variable dates — Eid al-Fitr (Eyđalufituru), Eid al-Adha (Eyđalada), Easter Sunday (đemʌch mâ Pʌkusu)
Given names
Tameï given names are of four main origins: native Tameï ones, French names, Islamic names, and Communist names. Especially the latter category has been expanding massively throughout the 20th century and, despite the end of the communist regime in the Tameï Islands, Communist names are still popular for newborns. The syncretism of sources has led Tameïs to have names which may sound weird in other parts of the world, such as Abdullenin or children having Iosif Stalin as middle names.
Tameïs usually have from one to four names; Grâce (written as in French but pronounced [guˈɹas]) is particularly common both for boys and girls, and it is estimated that about half of all Tameïs have it as a second name.
Common names include:
- Boys' names: Abdulkommunizumu, Abdullenin, Abdulmarx [-ˈmaɹukusu], Abdulstalin, Bīnʌ (< Bénoit), Chlʌǥī′ey, Furâxʌ (< François), Grâce, Heykä, Ītīn (< Étienne) Komsomoletsu, Lelyä (< Lilian), Līley, Lui (< Louis) P′alkey, Soviet, (Iosif) Stalin, Tsetun, Ŧ′īkaney
- Girls' names: Akīnä, Amatulkommunizumu, Amatullenin, Amatulmarx, Amatulstalin, Chlūī (< Chloë), Furâxʌz(ī) (< Françoise), Grâce, Lelyan(ī) (< Liliane), Mowten(ī) (< Martine)