Debazi

Debazi Debazi
Progress: 20%
Type
Fusional
Alignment
Nominative-accusative
Head direction
Initial	Mixed		Final
Primary word order
Subject-verb-object
Tonal
No
Declensions
Yes
Conjugations
Yes
Genders
Masculine-feminine
Nouns decline according to...
Case		Number
Definiteness		Gender
Verbs conjugate according to...
Voice		Mood
Person		Number
Tense		Aspect

Debazi (IPA: [debazi]) is a Leyen-Mangellian language spoken on the continent of Mangell. It is spoken by about 12,000,000 people, being the official language of the Ballpoint Republic and one of the lingua francas of the world of Spectradom.

Introduction

Debazi is my fifth conlang, first started in 2024 as part of my worldbuilding projects. Specifically, it is linked to my project "Drawn to AfterLife."

Debazi, like all of my serious conlangs, is meant to be similar to natural languages in terms of scope. It is inspired chiefly by Arabic.

This is a work of love and I ask any readers that, outside of grammatical mistakes, they do not make any edits without my permission. This work is protected by copyright, and I do plan on using it in monetized material; this wiki is a service both for myself and for any future fans.

History

Main article: Classical Munkai

Debazi is descended from Classical Munkai, a language spoken somewhere near or to the east of the Leyen Rift in central Mangell. Mangellian history is quite separated from that of the other continents until the Lítakun Era of Rokashikan history, when sailors from Debaz reached Skulyp.

Phonology

Main article: Debazi phonology

Consonants

Consonant phonemes

		Labial		Alveolar		Palatal		Velar
Nasal		m		n		(ɲ)		(ŋ)
Stop		p	b	t	d	(c)	(ɟ)	k	g
Affricate				ts	dz	tɕ	dʑ
Fricative	plain	f		θ̠	ð̠	ç		x	ɣ
	sibilant			s	z	ɕ	ʑ
	lateral			ɬ	tɬ
Approximant			ʋ		l	j	(ʎ)	(w)	(ɫ)
Trill				r̥	r

Vowels

Vowel phonemes

	Front		Central		Back
	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
Close	i	y uɥ			(ɯ)	u
Close-mid	e	ø	ə	(ɵ̞)		o
Open-mid	ɛ					ɔ
Open	æ		a aj		ɑw
Diphthongs	ju jo jɔ ja ɵj (ej ow)

//ɵ ɯ ej ow// are considered diaphonemic, rather than regularly phonemic, in Liðakuin. In the latter two's case, while no known dialect appears to have all of /ej e ɛ/ and all of /ow o ɔ/, the exact results are heavily dialect-dependent. In the former two's case, in the standard dialect of Liðakuin these have merged with other phonemes /ə o/.

Stress

Liðakuin is a dynamic-accent language. Stressed syllables are louder and longer than non-stressed syllables. Additionally, several of the vowel phonemes are laxened in unstressed syllables.

Stress is unpredictable in Liðakuin. It usually falls on "long" vowels, specifically one of /æ aj e o i uy/, but can fall on any vowel.

Liðakuin speakers also tend to reduce the vowels /a i y u uɥ e ei o ou/ to [ɐ ɪ ʏ ʊ ʉ ɛ e ɔ o] when unstressed. This results in /e ɛ/ and /o ɔ/ to be merged in unstressed position.

Phonotactics

The maximal syllable structure in Liðakuin is CCVCC. Liðakuin generally abhors hiatus that does not occur at word boundaries - that is, within the same word, two vowels are not allowed to touch, and compounded words or affixed words that would result in two vowels touching frequently have a consonant inserted between them, such as a sonorant or the otherwise non-phonemic glottal stop. This inserted consonant is epenthetic and is rarely written orthographically, and is also one of the key differences between different dialects of Liðakuin.

Orthography

Main article: Liðakuin orthography

Liðakuin may be either written using the Latin alphabet or the native Liðakuin script.

Romanization

Consonants

Consonant phonemes

		Labial		Alveolar		Palatal		Velar
Nasal		m		n		nj		ng
Stop		p	b	t	d	kj	gj	k	g
Affricate				ts	dz	tj	dj
Fricative	plain	f		þ	ð	hj		h	q
	sibilant			s	z	sj	zj
	lateral			ʒ	tʒ
Approximant			v		l	j	lj		w
Trill				hr	r

Vowels

Vowel phonemes

	Front		Central		Back
	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
Close	i	y uy			ú
Close-mid	é	ö	u			ó
Open-mid	e					o
Open	ä		a æ		á
Diphthongs	eu ei ju jó jo ja ui ou

Morphology

Nouns

Liðakuin nouns have one of three genders: masculine, feminine, or neuter. Nouns decline based on this as well as one of several declension classes, named after the nominative ending:

• 1: ur class; masculine nominative nouns end in -ur, feminine nominative nouns end in -un, and neuter nominative nouns end in -us.
• 2: ing class; masculine nominative nouns end in -i, feminine and neuter nominative nouns end in -ing. This class is sometimes referred to as the "neuter-neutralizing class" as neuter declension 2 nouns are usually identical to feminine declension 2 nouns.
• 3: a/ar class; nominative nouns end in one of those two endings. Generally a noun ending in -ar in class 3 is neuter, while a noun ending in -a in class 3 is feminine, but nouns with either ending of any of the three grammatical genders are still considered class 3, as the declension pattern only depends on if there is an r after the a or not.
• 4: -n(n) class; masculine nominative nouns end in -n or -nn, and neuter nominative nouns generally end in -nt. Feminine nominative nouns may end in -n, -nn, or -na, but despite ending in -a, the rest of the forms of such nouns will not decline as if they were class 3 nouns.
  • 4a: nouns in this sub-class do conjugate for plurality by adding an -s (-us in nominative) to the end of the word.
  • 4b: nouns in this sub-class do not conjugate for plurality, and have the same form in singular and plural forms. As this sub-class is larger than sub-class 4a, often sub-class 4b is considered simply "class 4", with sub-class 4a nouns being considered exceptions.
• 5: sonorant class; nouns in this class end in -l, -r, -hl, -hr, or -m in their nominative and accusative forms. The other forms do not care which of the above sounds ends the word, solely that it is one of those five sounds. While nouns of any gender can have any of the class 5 nominative endings, -hr is more commonly associated with neuter, while -m is more commonly associated with masculine.
• 6: hard nouns, so-named for the final sound many nouns in this class have in their roots. Any noun whose nominative form ends in a stop or fricative is almost certainly declension class 6, but nouns ending in vowels can still readily occur in declension 6, it is simply that, for vowel-ending nouns, declension 6 looks more like an irregular case of declension 1. Class 6 is often separated into subclasses based on the number of vowels present. These are solely for phonotactics, however, with a k being added before the ending for declension 6 nouns that end in a vowel in their accusative case.

Other resources

• Liðakuin on Star Dragon's Den