Tũka

Tũka
Tuica
i tũka
Pronunciation	[i tujka]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2024
Language family	A priori Artistic language Tũka

Tũka(/tuːkə/; Tũka: [tujka]), also called Tuica, is an a priori artlang that follows the design principle of "simple sounds, complex grammar". In principle, the language is heavily influenced by Toki Pona, though the orthography is inspired by Polynesian languages and Portuguese.

Phonology

Orthography

Tũka orthography is heavily inspired by Portuguese and the Polynesian languages. Almost all consonants in Tũka are identical to their IPA symbols, except for /ɲ/, which is written ⟨nh⟩, like in Portuguese.

Tilde letters

Like in Portuguese, Tũka has tilde letters(letters with a squiggly line on top, like ⟨Ãã⟩), though their pronunciation is different. In Portuguese(and the IPA), tilde letters represent nasalised vowels, but in Tũka they represent vowels followed by a voiced palatal approximant(/-j/), although ⟨Ĩĩ⟩ represents a vowel preceded by a voiced palatal approximant.

When a voiced alveolar nasal consonant(/n/) is followed by a ⟨ĩ⟩, the diphthong(triphthong?) is written ⟨nhi⟩.

Consonants

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Velar	Palatal	Glottal
Plosive	p	t	k		ʔ ⟨‘⟩
Nasal	m	n		ɲ ⟨nh⟩
Fricative		s
(Lateral) Approximant		l		j ⟨y⟩

Vowels

	Short		Long
	Front	Back	Front	Back
Close	i	u	iː ⟨ie⟩	uː ⟨ou⟩
Open	a		aː ⟨ah⟩

Phonotactics

Tũka uses what I call Juke's law, which I have used in other languages, like in Kutic and Proto-Tassinean. Essentially, two phonemes of the same consonant category(e.g. plosive, fricative, etc.) can not be directly adjacent to each other, e.g. /tka/ would not be possible, as both /t/ and /k/ are plosives.

Morphology

Colours

English	Tũka
red	mlilã
blue	lupa
yellow	akla
orange
purple	pitou
green	ukaku

"Orange-yellow/saffron"

Unlike in English, where orange and yellow are considered separate colours, in Tũka, they are considered two shades of the same colour, akla, which often gets translated as "orange-yellow" or "saffron". A comparable naturalistic equivalent would be the distinction between goluboy and siniy in Russian, which Russian speakers consider entirely separate colours, about as distinct as an English speakers distinguish blue and green. To an English speaker, goluboy and siniy would be considered two shades of the same colour, blue.

In the same vein, while English speakers consider yellow and orange to be completely separate colours, Tũka speakers consider them two shades of one colour: akla, which most Tũka speakers consider to be attributable to the hex code #faa805.

Syntax

Gender

Tũka has five grammatical genders: masculine-feminine-neuter for people, and animate-inanimate for non-human things, though animate-inanimate is usually used to denote if something is alive or dead respectively. If a noun has a masculine, feminine or neuter gender, then it is assumed to be a live human. If the human is dead, in an attempt to not dehumanise the dead person, the word tlapi(basically meaning "unfortunately dead") is used. The word tlapi is ungendered, so its inflection does not change regardless of who is being talked about.

Inflection-wise, grammatical gender only affects adjectives. Particles, nouns or agglutinative case suffixes do not change form based on grammatical gender.

Animacy

For non-human things with no clear gender(yes, including animals, grammatical gender in Tũka does not necessarily correspond with sex), the genders inanimate or animate are used. Although inanimate and animate technically only mean things that do or do not move naturally, animacy in Tũka is mostly used to refer to alive or dead things, with the animacy of the adjective sometimes semantically affecting the word, e.g. lumũ taht(lit. inanimate leaf) means "autumn leaf", as autumn leaves are usually categorised by their yellow-orange colour that signifies death.

Number

Unlike in English, where only singular and plural declensions exist, Tũka uses three declensions: singular, dual and plural, in this case "plural" meaning three or more of an item, and all words have to be distinguished by a number particle, such as i tũka("Tũka language"), lit. sg.nom, though i is only in nominative.

Tũka grammatical number particles

		Number
		Singular	Dual	Plural
Case
	Nominative	i	ĩ	nhi
	Accusative	u	ũ	nu
	Genitive	ie	ã	lu
	Locative	‘u	ku	nhu

Examples

I lã u tũka in sikuĩ.

sg.nom 1.sg sg.acc Tũka pres speak-1.sg.

I speak (the) Tũka (language).

Personal pronouns

Personal pronouns are always preceded by a number particle, so grammatical number and case is inferred by the particle before it.

Person	1st	2nd	3rd
	lã	lĩ	lũ

The ⟨ĩ⟩ in lĩ is the only word where ⟨ĩ⟩ is pronounced /ij/ instead of /ji/.

Constituent order

Tũka uses an SOV constituent order in most sentences, though the verb comes first(VSO) in imperative sentences, as well as the imperative particle, im, which goes after the verb.

Noun-adjective order

Tũka puts the adjective after the noun, an aspect of the language borrowed from Toki Pona.