Old Kulashian

Old Kulashian (natively Kullaštū [ku'ɫaʃ.tu:]) is an extinct language. Sad. The variety described in this page is Minkullaštū, a "standardized" form based on the dialect of Erghāssa.

note: while the south was richer and, well, more distinctively and purely Kulashian both culturally and linguistically by the time Minkullaštū was codified, the original homeland of Kulashians was hypothesized to be to the north. So the priests who were sent to look for "the truest form of Kulashian" immediately went to the biggest town in the north, since that had to be the original capital of Kullaš and therefore had to have the most archaic dialect and all. So Erghāssištū, while still rather conservative because it hasn't diverged that long ago, had already developed some peculiar characteristics of its own, like a reduced consonant inventory and an ergative and largely simplified morphology. And, of course, the simplification, as well as the fact Erghāssištū couldn't be fully understood by the priests from Māēta, was taken as a sign of linguistic purity. And that's why we can't have nice things.

Consonants
/m n (ŋ)/ 

/p t k b d g/

/s z ʃ ʒ x ɣ ɦ/ 

/ts dz tʃ dʒ/ 

/ʋ ɾ r l ɫ j/

Vowels
/a ɛ i o u e:/ 

Long vowels are marked by macrons: <ā ē ī ō ū> /a: ɛ: i: o: u:/. /e:/ is already long enough, no need to further lengthen it.

Consonants
Nasals and fricatives can be lengthened, this is marked in writing by doubling the letter.

All non-palatal consonants (except /ɫ/ and /l/, the latter is usually already palatalized) can be palatalized, this is marked by placing  after the "target" consonant.

/e:/ and /i:/ palatalize all preceding consonants except /ɫ/.

/ɦ/ and /ɣ/ both palatalize to [ʝ].

/ʋ/ is labial and is realized as [w] after /j/, /ɦ/ and velar consonants.

Vowels
/i/ is realized as [ɪ] after postalveolar consonants and /ɫ/, as well as when unstressed, and as [ɨ] after /ɫ/ in a stressed syllable, but is always pronounced as [i] word-finally regardless of stress, unless preceded by /ɫ/ or a postalveolar consonant, in which case it's pronounced as [ɪ].

/i:/ and /e:/ are realized as [ɨ:] and [ɛ:] after /ɫ/.

/ɛ/ is lowered when stressed.

Cluster simplification
Both a historical sound change and an assimilation process.


 * *ks always becomes ss, so *miksō becomes mìssō "book" and *ūk-s becomes ūss "by a cow".
 * Similarly, *kš always becomes šš. (No example yet.)
 * *lF (where F is any consonant that is not a plosive) becomes ll syllable-finally, so *sdal-s becomes sdall "by a horse".
 * *lm and *lX (where X is any velar consonant or /ɦ/) always become ll, so *Almikanti (Almikant-i) becomes Allkàntj (Allkant-j) "Almikanti/Allkantj" through *Almikàntj and *Allikàntj.
 * *tt becomes št, so *Allkant-t-ū becomes allkànštū, "Almikantian".
 * *rs and *rrs both become š at the end of a syllable, so *jūrr-s becomes jūš "by a hand, manually".
 * Naturally, *rss always becomes šš.

The cluster simplification in Minkullaštū happens from the end of a word to its beginning - so *irks "by a finger" becomes first *irss and then išš.

Stress
Stress in Minkullaštū is highly irregular and changes a lot during grammatical processes, so for the sake of convenience, stressed short vowels will be marked by a grave accent (e.g. <à>) and stressed long vowels will be marked by a circumflex (e.g. <â>) in this article.

Note: in newer Kulashian dialects and varieties of Minkullaštū, unstressed syllables alternate with stressed ones.

Pronouns
Note: a common relative pronoun is il(k)-.

Possessives
Kulashian nouns don't have a true genitive or possessive case. Instead, possessives are formed with help of clitics: enclitics i (masc./neut.), is (fem.) and mi (plural), derived from 3rd person possessive pronouns, (e.g. neghvà i sdal [nɛ'ɣwaj.zdal] "(the) count's horse", svàrkō is sdal ['sʋaɾ.ko:j.stal] "(the) cunt's horse" and sîmam mi xàdžvo ['si:.ma.m:i 'xa.dʒʋo] "cat food") and the proclitic lli, most frequently used to mean "by", "from" and "made of", (e.g. mìssō lli Ukvànti ['mɪ.s:o: ɫu'kwan.ti] "(a) book by Ukvanti").

The clitics are often reduced: i [i] and is [is] are reduced to [j] and [js] respectively after vowels, and lli [ɫɨ] is reduced to [ɫ] before vowels.

Ablaut
Ablaut in Kulashian is usually triggered by back vowels, most notably <ō>, which typically "closes" the root vowel. Older and nonstandard forms were rife with ablaut, but all that's left of it in Minkullaštū is a few ablauted nouns, most of which denote male and female animals and people (usually workers) (e.g. sdìla and sdìlō from sdal) or are personal names (e.g. the theonym Skûma from skômū "tongue"). Bizarrely enough, it rarely occurs in words with polysyllabic roots.

A strange case is the word svìrka "mage, enchanter, sorcerer", which has two feminine forms with different meanings: the regular svìrkō, which means "sorceress", and the (bizarrely) ablauted svàrkō, which originally meant "witch" or "hag", but has devolved to a common swear word that can mean anything from, well, "witch" to "ill-tempered woman" to "damn!".

Syntax
notes:
 * the subject and the direct object are always grouped together.
 * the indirect object always comes before the verb.
 * the adverbial always comes after the verb.

Writing system
Note: originally the Kulashian alphabet was pretty straightforward with a bit of ambiguity (a bit like the runes), but then some broke-ass scribescientistkindafellow decided that it'd be nice to invent some letters for consonant clusters, but only the ones that can occur in one syllable, because, you know, parchment is freaking pricy, but this isn't a KSL. That's all so far. And the romanization I created to be both more or less logical and aesthetically pleasing to me. Though it's not a direct transliteration: see  for /ɣ/ and all other digraphs (they're single letters in the Kulashian alphabet) and  for palatalization (natively it's denoted by a tiny irk, the Kulashian , over the "target" letter, so it'd be logical to palatalize using  , but nope,  is prettier and more versatile. never mind that they used to be the same letter).

Appendices

 * /Examples/
 * /Notes/
 * /Vocabulary/