Amaian [AMI]
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Registered by
[Deactivated User] on 16 November 2016
+ shared with: [Deactivated User]
+ shared with: [Deactivated User]
Language type
Other
Species
Human/humanoid
About Amaian
Spoken in Amaia, a country of frowny people with edgy senses of humor and abysmal economic inequality (but at least there's wine and dumplings)! The language is similarly dark, with:
I've sunken far enough down into Amaian that it actually makes sense to me. And presumably, the Amaians are several more levels down from me in this inferno of insanity. Enjoy your visit!
- something called 'total harmony' (all the consonants and vowels in the word are either front or back)
- 11 declension classes (plus irregular nouns) (oh yeah, all these classes have front/back forms and high/low accent forms, so it's actually 44 classes, plus irregulars)
- a horrifyingly complex way of morphologically marking relative clauses on verbs
- at least seven different allomorphs of the 3PThird person plural (person)
neither speaker nor addressee, they/them subject morpheme on verbs, depending on the verb form and frontness/backness
- obligatory evidentiality (the categories differ per TAM/negation value)
- subordinate marking on verbs...at least 3 forms, plus infinitive and nominalized forms, and two different quotative constructions
- a vowel phoneme, /u/, that's only contrastive in one dialect, and only before coda nasals
- whistled consonants
- a 2-word-tone system with grammatical functions
- a defective orthography that marks only some tone...with the silent letter <s> at the end of a word
- scraggly cursive that not even the Amaians themselves can read
- worst of all, base-10 numbers!!!!!
I've sunken far enough down into Amaian that it actually makes sense to me. And presumably, the Amaians are several more levels down from me in this inferno of insanity. Enjoy your visit!
Sample of Amaian[view] Tentenin goco ne bazygon, ponos bak yjagos tyca tentenik i gäcin tentenik.
There are many types of eggs on sale, such as cage-free eggs and quail eggs.[view all texts]
There are many types of eggs on sale, such as cage-free eggs and quail eggs.[view all texts]
Sound samples in Amaian
Some sound samples of Amaian. Maximum of 6 shown. Click the links to see the full texts.
En, piciben tänäne, gago kagapa bokagybon i piciben ponyjon dezin tenisizwä swogdom. Kagzwyka ynavyg...
Oh little prince, bit by bit I came to understand the secrets of your sad little life. For a long ti...
Oh little prince, bit by bit I came to understand the secrets of your sad little life. For a long ti...
Language family relationships
Language treeAmaian
⤷ Proto-Amaian
⤷ Amaian-Zwazwan
⤷ Amaian
⤷ Proto-Amaian
⤷ Amaian-Zwazwan
⤷ Amaian
[view] About AmaianAmaian-Zwazwan, Najim-Babzy, Wamenan, and the Ziimen languages. An independent language family of southern Miraria.
Phonology
Consonants | Bilabial | Labio- dental | Alveolar | Velar | ||||
Nasal | m | n | ||||||
Plosive | p | b1 | t | d | k | g | ||
Fricative | s sᵝ | z zᵝ | ||||||
Affricate | t͡s | d͡z | ||||||
Lateral flap | ɺ2 | |||||||
Flap | ⱱ3 |
- seldom occurs non-initially
- seldom occurs initially
- never occurs initially; almost an allophone of /b/ in non-initial position
Vowels | Front | Back | ||
Close | i | ɯ | u1 | |
Close-mid | e | |||
Open-mid | ʌ | |||
Open | a | ɑ |
- only contrastive with /ɯ/ in the Eastern dialect
Orthography
Below is the orthography for Amaian. This includes all graphemes as defined in the language's phonology settings - excluding the non-distinct graphemes/polygraphs.
AmaianOrthography [edit] | |||||||||||
Ää Ää /a/ | Aa Aa /ɑ/ | Bb Bb /b/1 | Jj Cc /t͡s/ | Dd Dd /d/ | Ee Ee /e/ | Gg Gg /g/ | Ïï Ii /i/ | Ḑḑ Jj /d͡z/ | Kk Kk /k/ | Mm Mm /m/ | Nn Nn /n/ |
Oo Oo /ʌ/ | Pp Pp /p/ | Rr Rr /ɺ/2 | Ss Ss /s/ | SV sv SW sw /sᵝ/ | Tt Tt /t/ | Uu Uu /u/3 | Vv Vv /ⱱ/4 | Ii Yy /ɯ/ | Zz Zz /z/ | ZV zv ZW zw /zᵝ/ | |
✖ Unknown alphabetical order [change] |
- seldom occurs non-initially
- seldom occurs initially
- only contrastive with /ɯ/ in the Eastern dialect
- never occurs initially; almost an allophone of /b/ in non-initial position
Latest 8 related articles listed below.
Amaian and Zwazwan grammar
way too many subordinate verb forms
09-Jul-21 05:59LotM - Oct 19: Amaian 02-Oct-19 03:59