Kiɓ̰ubu

Setting
Spoken by the strange hunter-gatherer tribes of the northern coasts, Kiɓ̰ubu has always been a dying language. The land is harsh, and people scarce, so the number of Kiɓ̰ubu speakers has always been slim. The language has suffered persecution at the hands of Emedonian colonial authorities, who scornfully categorize it as one of the "savage Barbic tongues" and have repeatedly tried, with moderate success, to eradicate it and "educate" its speakers in Emedonian civilization. However, despite its borrowings from Barbic languages, recent studies have shown that Kiɓ̰ubu is a language isolate.

Word Order
Kiɓ̰ubu is OVS, or Object-Verb-Subject. Quirkily, adjectives follow the nouns in the ergative case and precede those in the absolutive case. Adverbs tend to follow the word being modified (unless modifying an absolutive adjective, in which case they precede). Direct objects will precede indirect objects. Because it is head-initial, dependent clauses follow the verb.

Consonants
Kiɓ̰ubu consonants are by and large rather simple. Perhaps the most difficult to produce are the implosives /ɓ̰/ and /ɗ̰̪/. These two sounds are made when air is forced inwards rather than out. As such, when they are present in a word they tend to have a dominating influence, assimilating other consonants and causing shifts. See the Pronunciation section for more details.

Vowels
Kiɓ̰ubu uses a simple 5-vowel system, as follows:

Pronunciation
Kiɓ̰ubu has two implosives, /ɓ̰/ and /ɗ̰̪/. These consonants, by virtue of their pronunciation, can and will change other letter pronunciations in a word to make it simpler to pronounce.

The change of /n/ to [r̃] will always result in creaky voice, in both consonants and vowels, as can the dropping of post-implosive stops. However, the presence of [r̃] can trigger the change of fricatives, usually /s/ and /z/, to become {r}; it also can cause the change of the stops /p/ or /b/ to /ɓ̰/ and /t/ or /d/ to /ɗ̰̪/. An example would be the pronunciation of /doanɓ̰ar/ as [ɗ̰o̰a̰r̰̃ɓ̰a̰r̰].

Another set of pronunciation changes, sandhi, can be found in Kiɓ̰ubu. When an unvoiced consonant and a voiced consonant occur next to one another, the unvoiced consonant is transformed into its voiced equivalent, if possible. Similarly, if the approximants /ɹ/ or /l/ occur next to the trill /r/, the /r/ will assimilate. If the nasals /n/ or /m/ occur next to /ŋ/, they will assimilate as well.

Orthographic Pronunciation
The appearance of double letters in the orthography of Kiɓ̰ubu means slightly different things depending on whether the doubled letters are consonants or vowels and the dialect of the speaker. Traditionally, doubled consonants and vowels referred to gemination and vowel lengthening, respectively. Thusly, /bb/ wass pronounced [bː] or [bb] and /aa/ was pronounced [aː]. However, in some dialects, especially those of the most isolated islands, doubled vowels were pronounced as two distinct but conjoined instances of the same vowel. There would be a tonal difference between the two vowels, often accompanied by a sort of glide between the two. The double consonants would be pronounced as two seperate consonants with minimal space between. Within the past 150 years, these pronunciations have largely faded into obscurity in lieu of the more classical pronunciation.

Phonotactics
Kiɓ̰ubu can allow for syllables of the following form:

(C)V(C)

Usually, at least one consonant will be present in any Kiɓ̰ubu syllablle with the exception of certain "short words" or words beginning or ending with two adjacent vowels.

Nasals

 * Nasals can precede any stop, but in general they will follow stops located at their own point of articulation.
 * Nasals can precede approximants, a trill, or each other.
 * Nasals can only precede fricatives located at their own point of articulation, and even then only rarely.

Stops

 * Stops can precede nasals, a trill, fricatives, and each other.
 * Stops will almost never be seen preceding approximants.

Fricatives

 * Can appear before stops, approximates, and other fricatives.
 * The antipathy between nasals and fricatives is seen again; the two are rarely adjacent.
 * There are few words which place a trill after a fricative, but it is possible.

Trill

 * Can appear before approximants, stops, and sibilants.
 * Cannot appear before a nasal, except in writing. The pronunciation change will transform it into the approximant /ɹ/

Approximants

 * Approximants can only appear before a stop or a nasal.

Overview

 * Kiɓ̰ubu is an ergative-absolutive language, but it uses an ancillary prepositional case to distinguish such words from those in the default absolutive.
 * Gender distinguishes based on animacy and, to a lesser extent, by familiarity with the speaker. It is intrinsic to nouns and must be indicated in verbs.

Nouns
All nouns have an implicit gender, either animate or inanimate. In the past, there were many more of these "genders", but, with the exception of a few words, mostly abstractions from the extinct "intangible" gender, they have by and large disappeared. Inanimate nouns are a bit unusual because, traditionally, they could never function as the subject of an active transitive verb. Therefore, they would only be seen in the absolutive case when acting as the subject of a passive or deponent transitive verb. As with most languages, however, Kiɓ̰ubu changes over time, and this custom is often eschewed; speakers will either ignore the rule, or, if feeling fastidious, will add an affix for animacy.