Tarkandamonian: Difference between revisions

Tarkandamonian, from the word ''Tarkandamon'', meaning "Those who speak properly", is the official language spoken in Ōran Kan, a country situated between the border of the Pakistani-admininstered Gilgit-Baltistan region, and Indian-administered Kashmir. It is separated from Ladakh by a small strip of land approximately 25KM in length extending from Gilgit-Balikstan to Kashmir. It is estimated that roughly 100,000 speakers live outside of Ōran Kan, the vast majority having fled the country after a military coup led by Brigadier General Enor Gavilna overthrew President Gar Tindra in early July 1983. The majority of the expatriate community lives in various parts of the EU, with the largest number in Spain and Italy.

Knowledge of the language's history is unknown prior to the 1870's, when British explorers arrived after the First Anglo-Sikh War and began documenting the language. Although phylologists and linguists have attempted to the link the language to neighbouring Indo-Aryan and Sino-Tibetan languages, as well as the language isolate Burushaski also located in the same geographical region, Tarkandamonian shows no genetic relationship to any of its neighbors. More exotic relationships have been proposed, the most prominent of these being the Austronesian theory proposed by Samuel Burdock from the University of Kentucky. Proponents of the theory point to the preponderance of circumfixation in verb forms, even though none of these circumfixes show any similarity in form or function as those of the Austronesian languages.

Typologically, Tarkandamonian is a fusional language, with SOV syntax and Nominative-Accusative alignment. Nouns do not inflect for gender, number, or case (with the exception being the construct state case marker). Core case relations are expressed by strict word order of the core noun arguments, with the nominative argument preceding the patient argument; however, when the direct object is omitted, obligatory agreement markers surface in the verb forms. Postpositions mark oblique nominal arguments. The language lacks both definite and indefinite markers, although indefiniteness can be explicitly expressed by the cardinal number ''nomir'' ("one").  

Pronouns display more inflectional complexity. Unlike nouns, they do mark for number.  There are portmanteau forms that encode agent and patient core arguments. While the language does not mark for gender, it differentiates third person core arguments with two distinct forms, a proximal and obviative form.

<!--   Vowels -->

Tarkandamonian was written in an Arabic-derived script via Muslim-ruled Sindh prior to its discovery by Western explorers in the 1870's by the ruling elite, but an Indic-derived script was in use among the merchant class.  After the British annexed Ōran Kan, the Latin alphabet was introduced and replaced the pre-existing scripts.

The Language Regulation Act of 1973 established the Academy of Proper Speech, responsible for standardizing the national language. The Academy enacted a series of orthographic reforms in 1976 to reflect the pronunciation of the Geruna dialect, which formed the basis of the standard language. After the July 1983 Revolution, the leaders of the military coup, all from Bāzor Province, declared the Bāzor dialect as the basis of a new official standard language. The Academy instituted another series of language and orthographic reforms, however these reforms were incomplete as of 2017. The modern standard language, a hybrid of the two dialects, was a result of these incomplete reforms. The orthography, as it was originally meant to reflect the pronunciation of Geruna dialect, still remains faithful to that dialect's phonology. However, the orthography did not accurately reflect the pronunciation of words from the Bāzor dialect. Numerous spelling irregularities have arisen, particularly noticeable where Bāzor cognate words supplanted Geruna terms. For example, the Geruna word for "immediately" <orin> was replaced by the Bāzor cognate /toɾm/, but the modern spelling retains the Geruna spelling.

In this article, the IPA representation will be provided alongside the Tarkandamonian word or phrase if the pronunciation deviates from the older Geruna-based spelling.

Tarkandamonian has only two formal cases, a direct case and a construct case.  The direct case represents both the subject and the object, differentiated by word order.  The construct case marks the dependent noun argument in possessive phrases.

! Suffix

| -∅  

*temple

*thief

*mountain

*bori-na /boɾn/

*zuge-na /d͡ʒɛn/

*ravarn-a /ɾa'vana/

* of/belonging to the temple

* of/belonging to the thief

* of/belonging to the mountain

 

| style="text-align:center"|ria /ɾi/

| IPA =  

| IPA =  

| style="text-align:center"|v-

| style="text-align:center"| v-

| [placeholder] ||  

| kopen ||  

|[placeholder] 

| hoz ||