High Kickish

General Information
Standard High Kickish (natively Qaisik /!ˀʌisikʰ/) is a language spoken by the Cittus (Sītul ya /siːtʰɯl jʌ/), insect-looking sapients from the planet Cittus-V (Gçēr /ᶢǂeːr/) and one of the founding species of the Allied Intelligences, who live above-ground in Kickland and associated states (Qaisixhuāl /!ˀʌisiǁʰɯʌːl/). SHK is the standard variety, taught in schools.

Pulmonic consonants

 * /l/ is devoiced before a voiceless consonant or at the end of an utterance.
 * /s/ and /ts/ are retracted to /ʃ/ and /tʃ/ before /j/.

Clicks
Due to the Cittus not possessing a uvula, all clicks are pronounced with the back articulation in the pharynx.

Vowels

 * Diphthongs: falling /ʌɪ/, /ɛɪ/, /ɯɪ/, rising /ɯʌ/, /ɯʌː/
 * Triphthong: /ɯʌɪ/

Phonotactics
(C)V(F)
 * C can be any consonant.
 * Vowels cannot be consecutive.
 * V can be any short or long vowel, or any diphthong or triphthong.
 * Word-finally F can be any stop, sibilant, or alveolar approximant.
 * Word-initial clusters are limited to: /tɹ/, /tʰɹ/, /kɹ/, /kʰɹ/, /tsɹ/, /sɹ/, /lɹ/, /tj/, /tʰj/, /kj/, /kʰj/, /tsj/, and /sj/.
 * Word-medial clusters are limited to: /ɹt/, /lt/, /ɹtʰ/, /ltʰ/, /ɹk/, /lk/, /ɹkʰ/, /lkʰ/, /ɹts/, /lts/, /kʰs/, /ɹs/, /ls/, /tɹ/, /tʰɹ/, /kɹ/, /kʰɹ/, /tsɹ/, /sɹ/, /lɹ/, /ɹl/, /tj/, /tʰj/, /kj/, /kʰj/, /tsj/, and /sj/.
 * Coda /ʔ/ and /ɹ/ don't occur after falling diphthongs.

Stress
To determine stress placement in High Kickish, one needs to learn about syllabic weight. A syllable containing a short monophthong and no syllable-final consonants is considered to be light (L), whereas a syllable containing any long vowel, diphthong, triphthong, or syllable-final consonant is considered to be heavy (H). Stressed vowels are of a high pitch on short monophthongs or a high-falling pitch on long monophthongs, diphthongs, and triphthongs. ex. near-minimal pair xhi'e [ˈǁʰɪ́ʔɛ] "spit" vs xī'e [ˈǁˀîːʔɛ] "bicapital worm".

Patterns:.
 * -HH, -LHL, penultimate is stressed. ex. Sītul "Cittus"
 * -HLL, -HHL, antepenultimate is stressed. ex. gqādare "antenna"
 * -LH, ultimate is stressed. ex. ceħetā "speaking"
 * -LLL, penultimate is stressed. ex.  'ale "you (sg. fem.)"

Basics
The native writing system of Kickish is an alphabet.

Diacritics
There are two diacritics in the alphabet.
 * the diacritic marked Vi: the falling diphthong diacritic. It is placed below the consonant following the vowel to be modified.
 * the diacritic marked VV: the vowel lengthener. It is placed below the vowel it modifies.

Punctuation
The punctuation marks in the grid are a full stop, hyphen, and colon/semicolon. There is no equivalents to quotation mark, exclamation point, question mark, or comma.

Writing direction
The Kickish alphabet is written in the same direction as the Latin alphabet, that is: horizontal lines from left to right, starting at the top.

Collation
The Kickish alphabet has some semblance of order. Vowels are first, then pulmonic consonants, then clicks.

i, e, a, u, ', g, r, t, ħ, d, l, y, ye, ya, k, h, s, c, j, q, qh, gq, x, xh, gx, ç, çh, gç

Parts of speech

 * Nouns
 * Articles
 * Pronouns
 * Verbs
 * Auxiliary verbs
 * Adverbial prefixes
 * Postpositions
 * Polar particles
 * Conjunctions

Gender and Number
Genders are three: Here is the regular declension, though some nouns break this pattern.
 * 1) Feminine: used for female Cittus and some inanimate objects. Shows singular, dual, and plural number.
 * 2) Masculine: used for male Cittus and some inanimate objects. Shows singular and plural number.
 * 3) Juvenile: used for juvenile Cittus who have not yet differentiated into male and female, and some inanimate objects. Shows singular and plural number.

Pronouns
Pronouns are a very recently closed subclass of nouns, inflecting for all of the same categories as nouns and even matching some nouns in form (e. g. the word for little one, "srā" is the ordinary 3s.juv pronoun). They are however also marked suppletively for three levels of deference.

Article
There is no indefinite article. The definite article inflects for gender and is placed after a noun. The article is not used with proper nouns.
 * The masculine definite article y attaches to the noun as a /j/, and in speech lengthens the typical masculine ending -i. If the y is bordered by consonants on both sides for any reason, it merges with the feminine article, ye. ex.  ' ergi y "the brother",  ' ergil ye gqi "with the brothers"
 * The definite article contracts to y- before a postposition beginning in a vowel. ex. tatāri y-ū "from the soul"

Verbs
Verbs have three conjugation classes and are a closed class of about 120. They conjugate according to four tenses (present, future, simple past, discontinuous past), two evidentialities (direct, indirect), two voices (active, passive), and deference to the listener(s).

Conjugation classes
Verbs may be one of three conjugation classes:
 * 1) u verbs: the largest class.
 * 2) ħ verbs: the verb stems can only end in a vowel or <'>.
 * 3) i verbs: the smallest class with the most irregular verbs.

Nonfinite forms
The citation form of verbs is the passive participle or gerund, which are identical (-ūd, -ħīd, -īd). There is also a supine used with auxiliary verbs and to mean "in order to verb" (-utā, -ħetā, -etā), and an active participle (-uis, -ħeis, -ais).

Deference
The deferential suffix is an important part of the honorific system of Kickish. It expresses respectful submission to the judgement or will of the listener(s), and is used in each of the registers of formality. Depending on region in Qaisixhuāl, the deferential suffix could be -eir, -ēr, or -ēy, among others. When traveling Qaisixhuāl, it is imperative that one uses the correct suffix for the region. The suffixes also differ depending on the relative age/genders of the speaker and listener.

Passive
The passive construction consists of taking the citation form of a verb and adding the universal passive endings (shown below).
 * ex. Rūle qharīdas. "I feel like we are being watched."

Regular verbs
Gūd [ˈkɯːt]: to give, gutā, guis Ceħīd [tsɛˈħiːt]: to speak, ceħetā, ceħeis Hēlīd [he̞ːˈliːt]: to arm, bring weapons, hēletā, hēlais

Irregular verbs
be, do, go, should, have

Adverbial prefixes
Adjectives and adverbs do not exist as separate words in Kickish. Instead, they can be translated as nouns, nominal phrases, or as a closed but rather large set of Adverbial prefixes.

Polar particles
Polarity is the truth value of a statement. In Kickish it is represented with the four polar particles. If modifying a part of speech they are always placed before and separated with a hyphen. If the following word begins in a vowel, then it will gain an initial glottal stop (except if following sik). They can also function as a standalone utterance.

Conjunctions
and (ut)

Syntax
Case is not marked, so word order is relatively strict. SVO is the norm.

Noun phrase

 * ex. Gçēr ū Sītul ya
 * Cittus.V-fem.sg ABL Cittus-pl DEF-juv
 * the Cittus of Cittus-V

Verb phrase
Serial verb constructions are not unheard of.
 * ex. ceħeis xhilalūdi
 * speak-act.part loud-birth-pass-dir.cont.pst
 * ... was born speaking loudly

Formality
There are three primary registers of speech.
 * 1) formal: used in professional situations.
 * 2) ordinary: the unmarked register, safe to use within the family.
 * 3) slang: used to signify familiarity to the listener, whether that be respect as friends or as sarcastic rudeness.

Vocabulary
Because of differences in anatomy and physiology, many categories of words are very different from their Earthly counterparts.

Numbers
The Cittus typically crawl on all six limbs, but they do use their first two pairs of limbs for manipulation. On each foot they have three clawed fingers, and the first pair each have a clawed thumb. Their counting base is twelve, achieved by counting the fingers of their manipulative limbs, not counting the thumbs.

Numerals are masculine gender when used as nouns, and take the place of the definite article when applied to nouns. Some numbers change form when counting and the numbers 2, 3, and 4 have different forms for different genders.
 * Though twelve is qhā, thirteen is tē kuā, literally one-twenty. This dozens-are-always-early pattern only appears in the dozens position.
 * Large numbers are the reverse of a typical English number, ex. 2812/3210 jūr lelā.
 * The gross (122) position is separated from any number 12 and below with ut "and", ex. tē ut cyār

Body Parts

 * body: j ārga
 * head: f dare
 * gnathal plates: m krehil
 * teeth: j  'īcal
 * eyes: f krīcus
 * antenna: f gqādarus
 * neck: m ja'uai
 * breathing tubes: j ħarsal
 * dermal armor: f xadeksel
 * armor ridges: f lartūl
 * underside: f  ' artē'ħe
 * back: f ħīre
 * appendage: f çheg
 * arm/first appendage: f çhegetē
 * middle appendage: f çhegekū
 * leg/last appendage: f çhegelē
 * wrist/ankle: m drēyui
 * finger/toe/claw: j tyua
 * thumb: j gairiltais a tyua

Introduction
The Cittus live around a star which spits out more light in the ultraviolet than our own. They have adapted to see a wider range of color than us, granting them not three dimensional color like us Humans, but four dimensional color. One of the odd consequences of this is that the Cittus can tell the difference between purple (red+blue) and violet (blue+UV).

Notation: colors are notated as a combination of 1s and 0s representing the presence or absence of a primary color in the order Red-Yellow-Blue-Ultraviolet. For example, 1010 is the combination of red and blue (purple) and 0101 is the combination of yellow and ultraviolet (negapurple).

All color words are nouns.

Simple colors
"Simple" colors are those formed by pure primary color combinations.

Complex colors
"Complex" colors are those that cannot be described in ones and zeros. Some complex colors have dedicated names, while most are combinations of words. Any simple color can be described as teħa "white, light" or rēd "black, dark", and combinations of colors can be described as more one color than others by adding that specific color before the general color, for example, cīldi "orange" with more  'akser "red" than yellow would be  'akser-cīldi "red-orange".

Directions
Gyejū
 * Also considered cardinal directions are up (ħīri) and down ('artē'ħi).

Example text
Lraigesel ye lalūdas līkerde ut 'akya gqi qharīd srāl a 'idigqal ut līkerdel. Srāl gūdas qaicisūd a 'ħūsel ut rajakasutā syas 'ergal ji te' ū hicel ye çhai.

intelligent-f.pl DEF-f birth-PASS-NDIR.PRES freedom-f.sg and equality-juv.sg COM regard-GER 3p.juv GEN dignity-juv.pl and freedom-f.pl / 3p.juv give-PASS-NDIR.PRES smart-think-GER GEN ability-f.pl and proper-act-SUP should-NDIR.PRES sibling-juv.pl FORM one ABL other-f.pl DEF-f BENE /

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." (Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)