単亜語/Anthropology

Dan'a'yo returns a shared world of the w:East Asian cultural sphere. The ancient w:Imperial examination (科挙(콰교)) created a common experience across the region. Everyone read the same w:Chinese classics and learned the same law codes. Peoples from various language families were nevertheless united and could communicate. With the advent of the internet and Unicode, there is an avenue for peaceful interaction, a reunification of shared cultural and linguistic norms. By taking w:Classical Chinese and updating it, Dan'a'yo can serve as a bridge for those who have drifted apart.

WALS

WALS is the greatest cross-linguistic comparison tool out.

	WALS	Dan'a'yo	Chinese	Japanese	Korean	Vietnamese
Headed		Mixed	Mixed	Final	Final	Initial
Adjective-Verb		Stative Verbs	Distinct	Stative verbs	Stative verbs	Stative verbs
Typology		Analytic	Analytic	Agglutinative	Agglutinative	Analytic
Honorifics		Yes	Lexical titles	Yes	Yes	Yes
Topic-Prominent		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Some
Isochrony		Syllable	Syllable	Mora	Syllable	Word
Pro-drop		Yes	Mostly	Yes	Yes	Yes
Noun-Verb Distinct		Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
P T K B D G	5	Other gaps	Other gaps	No gaps	Other gaps	Other gaps
Voiced Consonants Contrast	4	Fricatives and Plosives	Fricatives alone	Fricatives and Plosives	No	Fricatives alone
Tone	13	No	4	Pitch accent	No	6
Syllable Accent	14	higher pitch for first syllable		Underlies Tokyo pitch accent
Morpheme Fusion	20	concatenative	isolating and concatenative	Exclusively concatenative	Exclusively concatenative	Exclusively isolating
Noun morpheme complexity	21A	1	1	1	1	0
Verb morpheme complexity	21B	1	1	1	1	1
Maximal Verb categories	22	No	No	4	6	No
Marking in clauses, NPs, and whole language	23, 24, 25A	Dependent	Dependent	Dependent	Dependent	None
A and P marking	25B	non-zero	non-zero	non-zero	non-zero	zero
Inflections:	26	Suffixing	Suffixing	Suffixing	Suffixing	Not much
Reduplication	27	full and partial	full and partial	full only	full and partial	full and partial
Case	28	No	No	No	No	No
Verbal person/number	29	No	No	No	No	No
Plurals	33	suffix	suffix	suffix	suffix	suppletion
Plurals option	34	optional, only on humans	optional, only on humans	optional, only on humans	optional, only on humans	optional for all nouns
Plurals pronouns	35	person stem + nominal plural affix	Person stem + nominal plural affix	Person stem + nominal plural affix	Person-number stem + nominal plural affix	Person stem + pronominal plural affix
Associative Plural	36	same as additive	periphrastic	same as additive	same as additive	none
Articles	37	indefinite	only indefinite	only indefinite	periphrastic indefinite	both
Clusivity	39	No	Yes	No	No	Some
Deixis	41	Three-way	Two-way	Three-way	Three way	Three way defective
Demonstratives	42
Gender	44	Pronouns	Pronouns	Pronouns	No	Pronouns
Pronoun politeness	45	drop	binary forms	drop	drop	drop
Indefinite pronoun	46	interrogative	mixed	interrogative	interrogative	interrogative
Reflexive = intense	47	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Cases distinguished	49	4	No	8	7	No
Cases on phrases	50	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No
Markers	51	Postposition	not exactly	Postpositions	Postpositions	not exactly
Distributive numerals	54	suffix?	No	suffixing	suffixing	No
Classifier	55	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Genitive/Adj/Rel. Clause	60	Fully collapse?	weakly differentiated	Some morphological difference	highly differentiated	Adjectives and relative clauses collapsed
Lone adjectives	61	marked on next?	marked on next word	depends on conjugation class	marked on next word	marked on previous word
Action Nominal Clause	62	No	No	double possessive	sentential	Template:1
And=With	63	No	Yes	Yes	No	No
Noun-And=Verb-And	64	No	No	No	No	Yes
TAM marker	69	suffix	suffix and prefix	suffixing	suffixing	prefix
Special Prohibative	71	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Possibility	74	verbal construction	verbal construction	verbal affix	other	verbal construction
Word order	81	SVO	SVO	SOV	SOV	SVO
Subject Verb	82	SV	SV	SV	SV	SV
Object Verb	83	VO	VO	OV	OV	VO
Object Oblique Verb	84	XVO	XVO / VOX	XOV	XOV	VOX
Adposition	85	Postpositions	not exactly	Postpositions	Postpositions	not exactly
Genitive vs noun	86	Genitive-Noun	Genitive-Noun	Genitive-Noun	Genitive-Noun	Noun-Genitive
Adjective-Noun	87	Adjective-Noun	Adjective-Noun	Adjective-Noun	Adjective-Noun	Noun-Adjective
Demonstrative-Noun	88	Demonstrative-Noun	Demonstrative-Noun	Demonstrative-Noun	Demonstrative-Noun	Noun-Demonstrative
Numeral-Noun	89	Numeral-Noun	Numeral-Noun	Numeral-Noun	Numeral-Noun	Numeral-Noun
Relative Clause-Noun	90	Relative Clause-Noun	Relative Clause-Noun	Relative Clause-Noun	Relative Clause-Noun	Noun-Relative Clause
Polar Question Particle	92	Final	Final	Final	No	Final
Wh-word in situ	93	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Adverbial Subordinator and Clause	94	Final	Mixed	Final	Final	Initial
Object adposition	95	OV and post	mixed	OV and post	OV and post	VO and pre
VO RC Noun	96	VO-RC-N	VO-RC-N	OV-RC-N	OV-RC-N	VO-N-RC
VO Adj Noun	97	VO-Adj-N	VO-Adj-N	OV-Adj-N	OV-Adj-N	VO-N-Adj
Morphosyntax	98, 99	N-A	Neutral	N-A	N-A	Neutral
Ditransitives	105	indirect-direct	Mixed	indirect-direct	indirect-direct	double object
Interrogative	116	Particles	Particle	Particle	Verb morphology	Particle
Possession	117	Topic	Topic	Location	Location	Topic

Also, common nouns precede proper nouns in apposition.

Languages

The language communities that Dan'a'yo seeks to incorporate and unify are Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and to a lesser extent, Vietnamese. Korea and Japan have long formed a sprachbund already, and have many calques and grammatical features in common. They even share some vocabulary. There are those who think they are genetically related, but that has yet to be conclusively proven.

There is some additional similarities that must occur with southern Sino-Tibetan languages, but that is not a design goal, merely a consequence.

Proto

There is no proto-language which all our source languages are supposedly descended from. Our ancient form is Classical Chinese, which is well-known and actually exists in documented form.

Correspondences of initial consonants

Middle Chinese		Sino-Vietnamese	Sino-Korean	Sino-Japanese			Mandarin	Cantonese	単亜語/Anthropology
				Go-on	Kan-on	Tōsō-on
Labials	幫 p	p > b	p/pʰ	ɸ > h	ɸ > h	ɸ > h	p/f	p/f	p
	滂 pʰ	pʰ					pʰ/f	pʰ/f
	並 b	b		b > b/ph/v			pʰ/p/f	pʰ/p/f
	明 m	m > m/v	m	m	b	m	m/w	m	m
Dentals	端 t	t > đ	t/tʰ	t	t	t	t	t	t
	透 tʰ	tʰ > th					tʰ	tʰ
	定 d	d > đ		d			tʰ/d	tʰ/d
	泥 n	n	n	n	d	n	n	n~l	n
	來 l	l	l	r	r	r	l	l	l
Retroflex nasal	娘 ɳ	n	n~ø	n	d		n	n~l	ny
Retroflex stops	知 ʈ	ʈ > tr	tʰ/tɕ/tɕʰ	t	t	s	tʂ	ts	t
	徹 ʈʰ	ʂ > s					tʂʰ	tsʰ
	澄 ɖ	ɖ > tr		d			tʂʰ, tʂ	tsʰ, ts
Dental sibilants	精 ts	s > t		s	s		ts, tɕ	ts	j
	清 tsʰ	ɕ > th					tsʰ, tɕʰ	tsʰ
	從 dz	s > t		z			tsʰ, tɕʰ, ts, tɕ	tsʰ, ts
	心 s		s	s			s	s	s
	邪 z			z			tsʰ, ts	z, ʑ
	俟 ʐ	s		z			tʂʰ, s	tsʰ, ts	sy
Retroflex sibilants	莊 tʂ	ʈ > tr	tɕ/tɕʰ	s			tʂ, ts	ts	j
	初 tʂʰ	ʂ > s					tʂʰ, tsʰ	tsʰ
	崇 dʐ			z			tʂʰ, tsʰ, tʂ, ʂ	tsʰ, ts, s
	生 ʂ		s	s			ʂ, s	s	sy
Palatals	章 tɕ	c > ch	tɕ/tɕʰ				tʂ	ts	j
	昌 tɕʰ	tʃ > x					tʂʰ	tsʰ
	禪 dʑ	ɕ > th	s	z			tʂʰ, ʂ	tsʰ, ts, s
	書 ɕ			s			ʂ	s	sy
	船 ʑ			z	s		tʂʰ, ʂ	s
	日 ny	ɲ > nh	z > ∅	n	z	z	ɻ, ʔ	j	ny
	以 j	d	ø	j	j		j, w~ʋ	j, w	y
Velars	見 k	k > c/g	k/h	k	k	k	k, tɕ	k, kʷ	k
	溪 kʰ	kʰ > kh					kʰ, tɕʰ	h, f, kʰ, kʰʷ
	群 g	ɡ > c	k	g			kʰ, tɕʰ, k, tɕ	kʰ, kʰʷ, k, kʷ
	疑 ŋ	ŋ > ng	h		g	g	ʔ~ɰ, j, w~ʋ, n	ŋ, ʔ, j	ø
Laryngeals	影 ʔ	ʔ > y	∅	∅	∅	∅	ʔ, j, w~ʋ	ʔ, j, w
	曉 h	h	h	k	k		x, ɕ	h, f, j	h
	匣 ɦ			ɣ > g/w			x, ɕ	h, w
	云 ɦj	v, h	ø	j	j		j, w~ʋ	j, w	ø

Phonologies

Korean has a tense/lax system which is completely unknown to the others in the region. Japanese alone contrasts voiced/unvoiced, instead of aspirated/un-aspirated like the rest. The Chineses have contour tones which are much more complicated than JK pitch accent system. All these features must be ignored as they have no common parallels.

Korean has the most robust phonotactics, with CVC syllables allowing many kinds of consonants in the coda. Mandarin has only /n/ and /ŋ/ there. Japanese has gemination – which doubles the next voiceless stop, and a homorganic nasal – which can be /m/, /n/, or /ŋ~ɴ/. In short, a rough compromise is possible, with everyone having to learn something, but nothing like what it would take to learn any other language.

Orthographies

Chinese characters have roughly stayed the same for 1,000 years, but some changes have crept in. The most overreaching is the Simplified characters of mainland China, which are utterly dependent upon Mandarin pronunciation and incompatible with the region as a whole. Korean uses ancient versions, which are sometimes grossly out of date and far more obtuse than what others write. A strong, compromise position is to use Japanese Shinjitai, which has mild updates and simplifications to some characters.

A phonetic alphabet is hard to agree upon. Japanese hiragana and katakana are no capable of indicating precise coda consonants. Bopomofo is a decent phonographic system, however it is not well-known. Extended-Bopomofo is even less so, and would have to use many rare characters. Korean Hangul is generally well-suited. However, find /u/ is not supported, and must be accomplished by a work-around at present.

Prolegomena

Multilingual dictionary sources – such as Wiktionary – already document much of the vocabulary in common across the Far East Asian region. Selection of a limited number of Chinese characters must involve a kind of voting process.

Implementation

Japan is well-positioned to begin education of Dan'a'yo at an early age. Korean politics are unfortunately embroiled over a senseless debate about the national character of learning Chinese characters, a holdover from the war and the product of pride. Chinese standard education frowns upon teaching grammar, but there is a revival of Classical education. Many teaching resources are still needed.