Gandan

Gandan is the official language of the Gandana people, and one of three major languages commonly spoken in Khalumaka. It is estimated there are over 850,000 native speakers of Gandan.

Classification and Dialects
There are currently two officially recognized dialects in Gandan: Traditional Gandan and Modern Gandan.

Consonants
1. the /r/ phoneme is realized as a single tap [ɾ] by most speakers.

2. [tθ] exists in free variation with [θ] as allophones of /th/. [tθ] tends to occur more often, though.

3. [th] was the original phone for the /th/ phoneme, and [θ] did not exist. The latter was later adopted into the language (along with a few others) as a result of influence from neighboring cultures and borrowing of words. Currently, in both Modern and Traditional Gandan, [th] now appears mostly as an allophone of the /t/ phoneme.

Vowels
/i/ and /o/ are pronounced [ɪ] and [o], respectively, after prenasalized consonants and when the vowel is word-initial. Inconsistently, they may also be pronounced as such on unstressed syllables. They are [i] and [ɔ] otherwise.

Phonotactics
Gandan syllables are canonically (N)C(w)V, and words must end with a vowel. Consonant clusters consist of any consonant, optionally preceded by a homorganic nasal consonant, and optionally followed by the consonant /w/. Vowel clusters are not possible, but stressed and accented syllables may be subject to lengthening.

Stress always falls on the first or second syllable of a word, and every other syllable after it. Three-syllable words are always stressed on the second syllable. Two-syllable words are always stressed on the first syllable.

Pitch-Accents
Gandan is a pitch-accent language. It uses a basic pattern of high and low tones, although some words are unaccented.

Writing System
Gandan is written using the standard Latin alphabet. However, the pronunciation of some of the letters is different than for English. Additional phonemes are written with multiple letters.

Noun Classes
Gandan groups nouns into classes, analogous to genders in other languages. Unlike most other languages of its family, the prefixes for each noun class are not a fixed part of the word (this is not consistent; some words have the noun prefix as part of the word), and nouns can function in a sentence without their respective prefixes. This feature came about as a result of some words functioning as both a noun and a verb with only a change in tone pattern.

Below is a list of the noun classes in Gandan. Note that the prefixes are universally singular, and there is not a separate plural form of these prefixes (more info below.) The reason the prefixes are all singular is because Gandan has a universal pluralization prefix, aba-. This prefix always comes first, before the gender prefixes. When not succeeded by other prefixes, this prefix may have the effect of taking the place of the first consonant, if it is word-initial. This only occurs if the first vowel is the phoneme /a/. Otherwise, the prefix is simply attached to the word. 1. The word "thuma" has the gender prefix as a fixed part of the word; therefore, it does not have a prefixed form.
 * Class 1 is for human nouns, including family relationships, jobs, etc. The prefix is thu-. Example: thuma "person".
 * An obsolete prefix for Class 1 is sa-, derived from sani "person". It still survives in some modern words, such as sangoma "person of the drum".
 * Class 2 is for non-human/animate nouns, such as animals. The prefix is zi-. Example: ziyamvo "lion".
 * Class 3 is for inanimate nouns. This includes distinguishing the living form of a noun from its non-living form. The prefix is he-. Example: hebitsho "arrow".
 * Class 4 is for physical/material nouns. This differs from Class 3 in that it includes things that are not solid, or can't be seen, but are still physically experienced, such as sounds or emotions. The prefix is da-. Example: dazanzi "water".
 * Class 5 is for immaterial/abstract nouns. This is anything that cannot be physically experienced, like concepts, or the experience is limited to the individual, such as dreams. The prefix is u-. Example: umutho "spirit".

Tense
Morphologically, verbs in Gandan only have a present tense. Past and future tense are inflected via pitch accents. A high-low tone pattern inflects past tense, and a low-high tone pattern inflects future tense. To leave the verb in its present form, it is simply unaccented.

Aspect and Mood
Gandan has a rich array of inflections for aspect and mood. Although the aspect inflections have largely disappeared with the absence of tense, they are still inflected through other means.