Verse:Anachron/Arabo-Japanese

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This form of Japanese borrows mainly from Perso-Arabic and replaces some existing Chinese vocabulary during the period corresponding to our timeline's Late Middle Japanese period. Japanese is spoken in Irta's Japan, Sakhalin, Mongolia and parts of Canada. It's notable for having lots of Arabic and Persian loanwords, in addition to earlier Sino-Japanese (Go-on and Kan-on) vocabulary.

Todo

Japanese-made Perso-Arabic words analogous to wasei eigo and wasei kango?

Some unexpected Sino-Japanese words where OTL Japanese would use a native or English word

jigā = liver, seat of emotions (like "heart" in English), (poetic) other/second

  • the first two senses come from PIE *yekwr, the last one from PIE *dwi-kwer-

nān - bread; (poetic) name

  • ishin is a more common poetic synonym for "name"

nāme - book

kitābuhāne - library

abū - cloud (Internet)

mīe = fruit (earlier *miwe)

baji = some

hendese = geometry

umīzu = hope

bāchi = garden

nei = reed flute

sarāmōreikun = assalāmu 3alaykum

ōreikunsarān = wa 3alaykum salām

S, D, T, Z -> suw-, zuw-, tsuw-, zuw-

zuiudō = Difda3

nōsu = nafs

ishichōmāru = isti3māl

tasuwauō, tasuō - taSawwur

rutsū - luTf

tsuibbu = Tibb

bōzū = ba3D

tsuiuru = Tifl

ar ir ur ār īr ūr ayr awr > ā ē ō ā īa ūa eia oua

History

The most recent wave of Iranian and Scythian migration into Irta's northeast Asia began in the 11th century and reached its peak at the 12th. Unlike in our timeline, many of the EMidJp > ModJp sound changes such as intervocalic /φ/ loss and monophthongization had not taken place at this time and only occured after Japanese had absorbed a lot of Perso-Arabic influence.

Personal names

Persian origin

Hēdoushi, Rusutan, Sōrābu, Hereizūn, Janshīzu, Kaifusurou, Manūchē, Mērān, Shiamaku, Shiyawashi

Orthography

Irta Japanese is written in a mix of two scripts: Perso-Arabic and a cursive form of Hiragana. It's written from right to left.

Grammar

Verbs of Arabic origin use VN + suru or VN + iru (analogous to the way they work in Turkish).

dāsu suru = to study

Izae

Sometimes compounds in Irta Japanese use a construction called izae, which works like ezāfe in Persian. An example is mūjika-i-āsumān "music of the spheres". In some instances personal affixes are borrowed from Persian -- an example with te "hand":

  • 1sg teyan
  • 2sg teyatsu
  • 3sg teyashi
  • 1pl teyamān
  • 2pl teyatān
  • 3pl teyashān

Sometimes emphatic pronouns are formed from the root fud- (fudan, fudatsu, fudashi etc.) from PIE *swe - these are the only true personal pronouns in Irta Japanese. Like our Japanese, Irta Japanese is pro-drop.

Texts

Subete no insān wa umarenagara ni shite āzāzu de ari, katsu, heishiatsu to hakku to ni tsuite barābā de aru. Insān wa, akuru to ejidān to wo sazukerarete ori, tagai ni rūha-i-barādā wo motte keadā shinakereba naranai.

Judeo-Arabo-Japanese

written in Hebrew script and has a Hebrew lexical layer

Vowel devoicing actually drops vowels in native words

Fewer phonotactic restrictions (e.g. final consonants are allowed); separate /l/ is introduced as well as emphatics, e.g. /ts/ undergoes a phonemic split from /t/