Sasat

General information
Sasat is a language isolate spoken in northern regions of Mexico and in scattered pockets throughout the southwest United States. The Southern dialect of Sasat is considered to be the most "correct" form of the language and will be the focus of this page. Sasat has been proposed to be a member of the Uto-Aztecan language family, based on lexical similarities, but these declarations have not been substantiated. Furthermore, the excessive use of articles and the infix- and consonant-based morphological peculiarities are traits not common of any local language families. The correlating series of nasals and plosives have caused some linguists to suggest a distant relation to certain Australian languages, though grammatical differences bring heavy doubt to these claims. Other linguists have suggested the possibility that Sasat is a remnant of a larger super-language family, linking the language families of northern Mexico to the languages of the Amazon. These claims are largely due to the dialectal, voiceless nasalized glottal approximant, an extremely rare phone found in parts of the western Amazon, namely within the Mura language branch. Disappointingly, the highly agglutinative nature and tonality of the Mura language branch, in addition to its whistled speech, make any relation to Sasat highly unlikely. Finally, despite any logical contact, claims have been made that Sasat is Basque's -- another language isolate's -- closest relative. Though there are many similarities, the distance between the two languages makes any relation between the two languages unbelievable. Evidence of similar phonologies and reliance on articles has been brought forth, but Sasat's system of articles is so much more extensive that the claims are hardly warranted. The lexicons of the two languages also share few, if any, similarities. For now, most linguists accept that Sasat is simply a language isolate.

Phonology
 Dialects 

'''There are four main dialects of Sasat: Northeastern, Northern, Central, and Southern. The Southern dialect is the most "normal," having no additional phones. The Central dialect is more strongly nasalized, having the voiceless, nasal glottal approximant as well as phonemic nasalization on all front and central vowels immediately following a nasal consonant. The Northeastern, Northern, and Southern dialects all have allophonic nasalization on all front and central vowels immediately following a nasal consonant, and they do not differentiate between the two glottal consonants. Also, the Central dialect pronounces the close-mid back vowel as the close back vowel. The Northern and Northeastern dialects are both very similar to the "correct," Southern dialect, with the exception of a few lexical items and the pronunciation of vowels. '''

Consonants
The above graph represents the phonemes found across all four major dialects of Sasat. The phone in brackets is found only in the Central dialect of Sasat. For comprehension purposes, the IPA symbols are used.

Southern Dialect The above graph shows the standard, Latin-script orthography of all phonemes within the Southern dialect of the Sasat language. Both /th/ and /sc/ represent a voiceless, interdental fricative, while both /ng/ and /g/ represent a voiced, velar nasal.

Vowels
===In the Central dialect of Sasat, all front and central vowels following a nasal consonant are phonemically nasalized. This nasalization is marked by a tilde over the vowel. Additionally, the open-mid central vowel is not recognized within the Central dialect, and all instances of the vowel are instead written and pronounced as the open-mid front vowel.===

Alphabet
tha 1 /th, sc/ English " th igh"

se 2 /s/ English " s it"

ro 3 /r/ Alveolar Approximant

tca 4 /tc/ Dental " t "

he 5 /h/ English " h ello"

pa 6 /p/ English " p each"

ɛ 7 / ɛ/ English "p e n"

ne 8 /n/ English " n ext"

ma 9 /m/ English " m uffin"

lo 10 /l/ English " l ake," but further back

a 20 /a/ English "f a ther"

nga 30 /ng/ English "si n g"

ka 40 /k/ English " k ing"

c ɛ 50 /c/ Palatalized "k;"  ky et

fa 60 /f/ English " f ire"

lj ɛ 70 /lj/ Slovenian " lj ub lj ana"

i 80 /i/ English " ea t"

te 90 /t/ English

arra 100 /rr/ Spanish "pe rr o"

jɛ 200 /j/ English " y et"

e 300 /e/ English "m a te"

<span style="font-family:ArialUnicodeMS,LucidaSansUnicode;line-height:19px;text-align:center;">nca 400 /nc/ Dental " n "

<span style="font-family:ArialUnicodeMS,LucidaSansUnicode;line-height:19px;text-align:center;">u 500 /u/ English "b oo t"

<span style="font-family:ArialUnicodeMS,LucidaSansUnicode;line-height:19px;text-align:center;">nj <span style="font-family:ArialUnicodeMS,LucidaSansUnicode;line-height:19px;text-align:center;">ɛ 600 /nj/ Spanish "ni <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19px;">ñ  <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19px;">a"

<span style="font-family:ArialUnicodeMS,LucidaSansUnicode;line-height:19px;text-align:center;">o 700 /o/ <span style="font-family:ArialUnicodeMS,LucidaSansUnicode;line-height:19px;text-align:center;">Combination of the /e/ in "p <u style="font-family:ArialUnicodeMS,LucidaSansUnicode;line-height:19px;text-align:center;">e <span style="font-family:ArialUnicodeMS,LucidaSansUnicode;line-height:19px;text-align:center;">n" and the /u/ in "h <u style="font-family:ArialUnicodeMS,LucidaSansUnicode;line-height:19px;text-align:center;">u <span style="font-family:ArialUnicodeMS,LucidaSansUnicode;line-height:19px;text-align:center;">t"

Phonotactics
All words must contain at least a vowel.

(C)V(V)(C)(C)(V)(V)(C)...

Though nonsense words and onamatopoeias have as many as four vowels in a row, no standard words contain more than two vowels in a sequence, and having only one vowel in a row is most common. The same vowel may not appear twice in a row, and vowel length is allophonic. Palatals, lateral approximants, and the trill may only appear at the beginning of a syllable, and trills may not appear word-initially. Word-final /h/ is allophonically epiglottal.

Sound Change

Syllable-final nasals and plosives have no audible release. Both vowels and consonants have very irregular and complex rules for sound change as a result of morphological changes. Consonants, especially, are liable to undergo lenition as a result of morphological change.

Gemination is another popular feature in Sasat. Two adjacent consonants that are the same will form a geminated version of the consonant. All geminated consonants are held slightly longer than the non-geminated consonants. Plosives and glottals, especially, become highly aspirated and very breathy during gemination. Gemination also exists across word boundaries, even after morphological changes have taken place. In these instances, the final consonant remains ungeminated, while the beginning of the subsequent word becomes geminated. Due to the fact that some words begin with a geminated consonant, it is possible for triple-gemination to occur. As in regular gemination, the final consonat of the primary word remains ungeminated, and the first consonant of the secondary word becomes geminated. However, in these rare instances, vowels following the "triple-geminated" phoneme become more front and open. /i/ and /u/ become /e/; / o / becomes /<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:'ArialUnicodeMS','LucidaSansUnicode';line-height:19px;text-align:center;">ɛ /; and /<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:'ArialUnicodeMS','LucidaSansUnicode';line-height:19px;text-align:center;">ɛ / and /a/ become a fully front and open vowel: a more fronted /a/. This vowel shift is not marked in the word but merely pronounced.