Ukikū

General information
​Ukikū (or Ukiku, in English often called "Basic Speak", in German "Basissprache") is one of the 28th World's proto languages. It was spoken hundreds of years ago. All other languages spoken in that world, except Radän and Proto-Dondorhin, are based on Ukikū in different ways.

It also is the only language in all worlds that is not learnt by listening and speaking. The whole vocabulary, grammar and so on are in your mind when you are born in 28th World, even if it is passive at first. Ukikū becomes active by speaking or writing it.

For that reason, it seemed impossible for the language to evolve. Every generation was put the same vocabulary etc. in their minds. The only way Ukikū could evolve was when the Ukikū speaking people met the Dondorhin who spoke Proto-Dondorhin. This two languages mixed, and after ten or twenty years the "magic" that put vocabularies in the people's minds, disappeared. In this way the languages Tongeb, Yesdril and Jatgul could be developed.

This may sound mad, but it is exactly what is written in the tradition.

But Ukikū is not dead. It is still spoken in a small province in Naburia where people try to keep it alive.

Vowels
Note: As you can see, Ukikū has a rather small phoneme inventory, so you have to pronounce every phoneme precisely.

Phonotactics
Ukikū syllables can be of one of three types: CVC, CV and VC. The most frequent of those types is CV. Only /k/, /t/, /m/ and /n/ are permitted as final consonants.

A syllable can't contain any diphthongs or consonant clusters.

Tones


There are four tones in Ukikū: Atyum (Engl.: neutral), Tagán (Engl.: rising), Konbā (Engl.: high) and Sumzâyu (Engl.: rising and falling). They are written like: a (Atyum), á (Tagán), ā (Konbā) and â (Sumzâyu).

Grammar
Being an agglutinative language, Ukikū uses affixes to show inflections.

Nouns
The nouns are divided into classes using infixes. There are three noun classes: abstract, inanimate and animate. Only words with up to three syllables can have class infixes.

Abstract words' infixes (abgónde): -gón-, -kâm-, -suk-, -tēm-, -yan-

Things' infixes (somrēke): -rēk-, -dôn-, -yim-, -zut-, -sōn-, -tan-

Humans' and animals' infixes (yufuma): -fum-, -bōm-, -hat-, -zúm-, -tūn-

Numbers
There are three numbers: Singular, Dual and Plural.

Cases
There are six to seven cases.

Titles Titles are suffix particles which mostly appear at the end of a name. Here is a list of the most used titles:

Agglutination order
The particles that can be added to a noun have a certain order that looks like this:

Pronouns
There are four pronouns in Ukikū. They never appear as nominative but as any other case. Pronouns cannot declense into inessive but vocative instead. The first person is the same as English "I" and the second one "you" (singular). The third and fourth person have genders: common (third) and neuter (forth).

Verbs
Ukikū verbs can be intransitive, transitive and ditransitive.

Nearly all verbs end with a consonant. There are only few which do not. In this case, the suffix particle -e changes to -de.

Verbs can be conjugated into mood, person and case. Tenses have to be shown by adverbs.

Indicative
To create an indicative verb, you just have to put the personal suffix to the verb's root.

Imperative
To create the imperative, the person particle has to be added at first, after that, the imperative suffix particle -go. There are two imperatives: The neutral one, which is created like already explained and the polite one. To create the polite one you have to use the particle -zi instead of -go.

Optative
The optative is used to express wishes.

It is created the same way as the imperative. The only difference is that you have to use -lin instead of -go or -zi. The polite optative is created with -lun. But this construct only makes sense if you add a noun or a pronoun ending.

Ex.: *toksalin is incorrect, and literally means "You wish go". It only does by adding a noun or pronoun: "Toksalinsa" literally means "You wish you go" (so actually "you wish you would go"). Or, with a noun: "Toksalin tahatya", that means "You wish that the/a deer would go".

Subjunctive
The subjunctive in Ukikū is used to express something that probably happens. It has a distinct negative form.

To create a plain subjunctive, you use the personal verb suffix and the suffix -pu.

To create a negative subjunctive, you use the personal verb suffix and the suffix -hi.

Ex.: "Toksahi" means "You probably do not go". "Toksapu" means "You probably go."

Negative
The negative is created with the particle -run.

Voices
There are 3 voices: active, medium and passive. The passive is created with -wan. To make medium voice, take the passive verb and add pá- plus a noun or pronoun.

Ex.: "Tatkansawan" means "You are hit". "Tatkansawan pádi" means "You are hit by me".

Agglutination order
The agglutination order is following:

Adjectives
Adjectives always are circumflexing a noun (or a verb as an adverb). So every adjective has to have two or more syllables and a "-" in it, example: si-yút ("small"). The first part of an adjective or adverb is called Gunâtso, and the second one is called Lanâtso.

Adjectives and adverbs have three comparisons. Examples: An adjective with a noun looks like this: wî-tána-ka "high mountain/hill" or wî-tána-kam if the noun is accusative

If there are two or more adjectives referring to the same noun, they are not longer written or spoken as circumflexes but as common words. For instance: wîka sômdot tána means "high, green mountain/hill". If the noun is not nominative, all of these adjectives carry the case particle. That looks like wîkam sômdotam tána if it is accusative.

In the same way, a row of adverbs belonging to the same verb is created. The only difference is that the adverbs do not carry the case particle but the person particle instead.

Agglutination order
Just like nouns and verbs, adjectives and adverbs possess an agglutination order depending on whether they appear as single or as two or more.

A single adverb/adjective looks like this: A row looks like this:

Adverbs
As already mentioned, there have to be different adverbs to express the tense and the aspect. They all can be easily devided from adjectives because they do not circumfigate them but appear in front of the verb they refer to. Here is a list of those which are used the most. (coming soon)

Syntax
Ukikū has mainly a POS syntax but it is also based on the verb's transitivity and on the sentence's main clause.

Ex.: "The man eats an apple" (stress on (an) apple) means that the man eats an apple but nothing else. In Ukikū this meaning cannot be expressed with stress but with word order and sometimes with the particle -tâm.

In the following table, short forms will be used. Here is an explanation: S = subject, A = accusative, D = dative, P = predicate and T is the particle -tâm.

Questions
To create a question that can be answered with yes or no, simply put the word "támna" in front of the sentence.

If you want to ask for something certain, make a sentence and replace the word you ask for with a question word. These are: If the clause you ask for has not appeared in the sentence yet put the question word where the syntax allows it.

Numbers
Ukikū uses a decimal number system. The numbers from 0 to eighteen are mostly irregular. All others are created with the first syllable of the Amkutínta (multiplier of ten) and the number particles (if none, it is 0). Ordinals are created by replacing the Atyum tone of the second syllable with a Tagán tone.

Word formation
(will be added soon)

Writing system
Ukikū uses its own writing system which is mostly used like a syllabary. It is called Yomkéta or, in English, Ukikū characters.

Yomkéta combinates each consonant with every vowel, so the easiest characters represent CV syllables. Addionally every vowel is combinated with every tone.

You can show bare vowels by adding a small sign (Kutûban) at a /h/ character. So "ha" turns into "a" and "hé" turns to "é" and so on. To show a only-consonant, add a Kutûban to a syllable which ends in "u". So "t" is shown as "tu*" with the Kutûban.

There are different types of Kutûbani: The one that turns syllables into only-vowels or only-consonants is called Gungáta and is represented with a *. Kutubâni that turn two syllables into own are called Fakûnya which are shown with a '. And at least, Kutûban that make consonants hard, are known as Īnita and shown with a ~.

That may seem like the character inventory has to be huge but there are a few rules which make it smaller: The phonemes /p/, /t/, /k/, /s/ and /f/ are only known as hard types of /b/, /d/, /g/, /z/ and /v/ so there exist no "own" characters for them. If you want to use a syllable including /p/ for instance, there is a small sign added to the /b/ character which makes it hard. So "ba" (or "be" etc.) turns to "pa" ("pe" etc.) by simply adding a sign. Simple CV syllables are called Yatāba.

There are also ways for expressing VC and CVC syllables. At first, VC syllables (Antána). They are created with two characters: First, a only-vowel character has to be created. Then, to add the consonant, create a only-consonant character and add a special Kutûban that says that both only-consonant and only-vowel belong to one syllable. Ex.: "ân" is created this way: hâ* + nu*'.

To create CVC syllables (Gôntanu), you have to add a only-consonant to a common CV character and add a Fakûnya ('). Ex.: rum = ru + mu'.

So, all in all, the character inventory is 240 characters large (12 consonants x 5 vowels x 4 tones) if this ones with added signs are not count.

More examples: Yatāba = ya + dâ~ + ba, Antána = Ha* + tá~*' + na, Gôntanu = gô + nu*' + da~ + nu