Gandan

Gandan is the official language of the Gandana people, and one of three major languages commonly spoken in Khalumaka. It is estimated there are over 6 million people who speak Gandan, with about 4.5 million native speakers.

Classification and Dialects
There are currently two officially recognized dialects in Gandan: Traditional Gandan and Modern Gandan.

Consonants
1. the /r/ phoneme is realized as a single tap [ɾ] by most speakers.

2. [tθ] exists in free variation with [θ] as allophones of /th/. [tθ] is the more common pronunciation, especially in Traditional Gandan.

3. [th] was the original phone for the /th/ phoneme, and [θ] did not exist. The latter was later adopted into the language (along with a few others) as a result of influence from neighboring cultures and borrowing of words. Currently, in both Modern and Traditional Gandan, [th] now appears mostly as an allophone of the /t/ phoneme.

Vowels
/i/ and /o/ are pronounced [ɪ] and [o], respectively, after prenasalized consonants and when the vowel is word-initial. Inconsistently, they may also be pronounced as such on unstressed syllables. They are [i] and [ɔ] otherwise.

Phonotactics
Gandan syllables are canonically (N)C(w)V, and words must end with a vowel. Consonant clusters consist of any consonant, optionally preceded by a homorganic nasal consonant, and optionally followed by the consonant /w/. Vowel clusters are not possible, but stressed and accented syllables may be subject to lengthening.

Stress always falls on the first or second syllable of a word, and every other syllable after it. Three-syllable words are always stressed on the second syllable. Two-syllable words are always stressed on the first syllable.

Pitch-Accents
Gandan is a pitch-accent language. It uses a basic pattern of high and low tones, although some words are unaccented.

Writing System
Gandan is written using the standard Latin alphabet. However, the pronunciation of some of the letters is different than for English. Additional phonemes are written with multiple letters.

Noun Classes
Gandan groups nouns into classes, analogous to genders in other languages. Unlike most other languages of its family, the prefixes for each class are not a fixed part of the word (this is not consistent; some words have the gender prefix as part of the word), and nouns can function in a sentence without their respective prefixes (this is rare to find in everyday speech though). This feature came about as a result of some words functioning as both a noun and a verb.

Below is a list of the noun classes in Gandan. Note that the prefixes are universally singular, and there is not a separate plural form of these prefixes (more info below.) Historically, Gandan had five additional noun classes for a total of ten: While still commonly used in neighboring languages, Gandan has essentially dropped the use of these additional noun classes, and the nouns that otherwise would belong to them have been re-classified into one of the first five noun classes. However, the subject and object concords for these noun classes still exist, and are still used for their respective nouns.
 * Class 1 is for human nouns, including family relationships, jobs, etc. The prefix is thu-. Example: thuma "person".
 * An obsolete prefix for Class 1 is sa-, derived from sani "person". It still survives in some modern words, such as sangoma "person of the drum".
 * Class 2 is for non-human/animate nouns, such as animals. The prefix is zi-. Example: ziyamvo "lion".
 * Class 3 is for inanimate nouns. This includes distinguishing the living form of a noun from its non-living form, and distinguishing man-made objects from objects found in nature. The prefix is he-. Example: hebokwu "book".
 * Class 4 is for physical/material nouns. This differs from Class 3 in that it includes things that are not solid, or can't be seen, but are still physically experienced, such as sounds or emotions. The prefix is da-. Example: dazanzi "water".
 * Class 5 is for immaterial/abstract nouns. This is anything that cannot be physically experienced, like concepts, or the experience is limited to the individual, such as dreams. The prefix is u-. Example: umutho "spirit".
 * Class 6 is for body parts, culture/ethnicity and kinds of people. The prefix is ma-.
 * Class 7 is for man-made things, such as tools. The prefix is khu-.
 * Class 8 is for names of fruit and collectives. The prefix is pi-.
 * Class 9 is for infinitive verbs. The prefix is nu-.
 * Class 10 is a locative class for indicating place in relation to a noun. The prefix is o-.

The reason the gender prefixes are all singular is because Gandan has a universal pluralization prefix, aba-. This prefix always comes first, before the gender prefixes. When not succeeded by other prefixes, this prefix may have the effect of taking the place of the first consonant, if it is word-initial. This only occurs if the first vowel is the phoneme /a/. Otherwise, the prefix is simply attached to the word. 1. The word "thuma" has the gender prefix as a fixed part of the word; therefore, it does not have a prefixed form.

Pronouns
Personal pronouns in Gandan come in two forms; as independent words, and as a stem that is used in combination with words like sizi "with, to have". Note that sex/gender is not distinguished, and the 3rd person singular can mean either "he" or "she". However, these pronouns are restricted to animate nouns, so it generally does not mean "it". The genitive -sazi does not have this restriction, and can mean either "his", "hers", or "its", depending on context.

Gandan is a pro-drop language. As the verb usually includes prefixes for the subject and object, the personal pronouns are not explicitly needed, and are mostly used for emphasis. Exceptions to this are when the pronoun is needed (e.g Amithi kwa "I am"), and when the verb form cannot take subject prefixes.

Articles
There are no articles in Gandan. A word such as hebokwu "book" can be taken to mean either "a book" or "the book" depending on context. When the distinction must be made, adjectives and demonstratives are used to impart this.

Demonstratives
Demonstratives in Gandan appear as standalone words, like pronouns. They always come after the noun they modify.

There are four types of demonstratives:
 * Proximal - referring to something near the speaker. It is formed by suffixing the verbal concord with -lV, where V is the same vowel as the concord.
 * Medial - referring to something near the addressee. It is formed by suffixing the verbal concord with -wa.
 * Distal - referring to something far from both the speaker and addressee. It is formed by suffixing the verbal concord with -ye.
 * Referential - "aforementioned"; referring to something previously talked about. It is formed by suffixing the verbal concord with -sha.

Tense
Morphologically, verbs in Gandan only have a present tense. Past and future tense are inflected via pitch accents. A high-low tone pattern inflects past tense, and a low-high tone pattern inflects future tense. To leave the verb in its present form, it is simply unaccented. While this can appear to create a lot of ambiguity for the words with definitions as both verbs and nouns, this feature only applies if it is being used as a verb, with its respective prefixes; if the word appears with the plural prefix aba-, its gender prefix, or no prefix at all, it is being used as a noun.

Subject and Object Concord
Both the subject and object of a sentence are indicated by prefixes or concords attached to the verb. When a noun is the subject or object, the concord must agree in gender. Certain nouns in classes 1-4 may take other prefixes, if they formerly belonged to classes 6-10.

There is a negative and positive form of the subject, but only a positive form of the object. It is formed by appending the negative prefix na(kh)- to the concord, with a few exceptions (class 5 unwa-, class 8 pina-, class 4 nda-).

Aspect and Mood
Gandan has a rich array of inflections for aspect and mood. Although the aspect inflections have largely disappeared with the absence of tense, they are still inflected through other means.

Below is a list of TAM forms in Gandan. Note that while the basic tenses past, present, and future have TAM forms in this chart, they are not explicitly used except in informal speech, and in tandem with their respective relative forms, but only when needed for clarity.