Tuhia
Tuhia is the official language of the City of Tuhia (a city-state on the southern coast of Tèmxa contitent). It is also spoken in the surrounding area along with many other related dialects and languages. However, because of the location of these dialects & languages, they do not have offical recognition compared to standard Tuhia. It is estimated that about 6-7 million people speak Tuhia natively, but it is spoken much more widely as a trade language due to the historical and modern trade status of the city and the other southern city-states in the region (all of which speak similar languages). It is written with a mixed alphabet-syllabary system. This system has some persistent historical spelling and occianal abbreviations/ligatures. Tuhia is generally considered to be a relatively easy language to learn as it is low on grammatical complexity but has a large number of irregularities. A brief description is provied below:
Phonology
Consonants:
| Labial | Laminal Alveolar | Apical Alveolar | Post-Alveolar | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ||||
| Stop/Plosive | p b | t̻ (c) d̻ (j) | t̺ (t) d̺ (d) | k g | ʔ (h) | |
| Affricate | [t̻͡s̻ (cz) d̻͡z̻ (jz)] | [t̺͡s̺ (ts) d̺͡z̺ (ds)] | [t͡ʃ (tsh) d͡ʒ (dzh)] | |||
| Fricative | [β (v)] | [ð̻ (jh)] s̻ (z) | [ð̺ (dh)] s̺ (s) | [ʃ̻ (zh) ʃ̺ (sh)] | [ɣ (gh)] | |
| Liquids | ɾ (r) l j | w | ||||
Items in parenthesis indicate orthography, brackets allophones.
Note: all* consonants can be geminated (indicated by doubling of letter) *except for intervocallic allophones as palatalization occurs first
The table shows the behavior of phonemes in the intervocalic position
| Isolated form | Intervocalic form |
|---|---|
| b bb p pp | v b b p |
| d dd t tt | dh d d t |
| j jj c cc | jh j j c |
| g gg k kk | gh g g k |
| tsh dzh | dzh ssh |
| ts ds cz jz | ds ss jz zz |
[t̻͡s̻], [d̻͡z̻], [t̺͡s̺], [d̺͡z̺], [t͡ʃ], [d͡ʒ], [ʃ̻], [ʃ̺] are palatalization allophones of c, j, t, d, k, g, z, s respectively
Geminated consonants generally have unique
The vowels that trigger palatalization are i*, äi, e, ii (i* sometimes, depends on historical vowel)
Vowels:
| "Short" Vowels: | Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | ɨ~ə (ä) | u |
| Mid | e œ (ë) | ʌ (ö) o | |
| Low | æ (á) | ä (a) | ɒ (ó) |
| "Long" Vowels: | Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| "High" | əi (äi) əy (äí) | əɯ (äú) əu (äu) | |
| "Mid" | iː (ii) ie y (í) | ɯ (ú) uː (uu) uo | |
| "Low | ɛ (é) | aː (aa) |
While not shown in writing or in formal speech, it is common to merge /a/ with /æ/ & for v and gh to eliminate while dh and jh to h.
Writing
The writing system for Tuhian is a mixture of alphabet and syllabary where syllables with stops are represented via syllabic characters and the rest are done with an alphabet. The syllabary forms are shown first with the alphabetic characters shown below.The primary writing direction is right to left in rows and so in-line examples will be written as [example] to indicate the change in direction.
(It should be noted that the current font being used has not been fully kerned and spaced properly which will cause some strange character intersections or spacing. This will be resolved eventually as this is the more time consuming part of font creation.)
| Lone Vowel |
Long Vowel |
Small Vowel |
p - b | t - d | c - j | k - g | h | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| i | I | ï | i | P B | T D | C J | K G | H |
| é | E | ë | e | ¶ £ | þ ð | ç ¢ | @ & | ß |
| y | Y | ÿ | y | π β | τ δ | χ ζ | κ γ | ι |
| a | A | ä | a | φ ρ | θ λ | σ ψ | ο ω | α |
| u | U | ü | u | Π Β | Τ Δ | Ξ Ζ | Κ Γ | Ι |
| ó | O | ö | o | Φ Ρ | Θ Λ | Σ Ψ | Ο Ω | Α |
| Small Consonant | p b | t d | c j | k g | h | |||
| Lone Form |
Small Form |
Short Vowel |
Long Vowel |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| m | M | m | í | í | Í |
| n | N | n | e | é | η |
| s | S | s | ä | à | À |
| z | Z | z | á | á | Á |
| r | r | ú | ú | Ú | |
| l | l | o | ó | Ó | |
| y /j/ | V | v | ö | ø | Ø |
| w | W | w | ë | è | ε |
The vowels listed for the characters above are based on the historial value to avoid confusion as during the intermediate period many vowels merged causing a significant amount of historical spelling. There as a recent writing reform which enabled more clear spellings for uncommon and foreign words but kept a notable amount of historical forms. For example the word for "and" is /wi/ which is written as [úW] as it was pronounced wú in the past. Due to how intervocalic sounds changed the geminated voiced versions of the stops are rarely written as the voiceless is simpler. To indicate gemination, the small consonant character for h,[h], is used in front of the character in question.
Grammar
Under Construction