Kitonese

The Kitonese language (officially Ki Ngok 俟言; Keoi Ki 言俟 also used) is an Austronesian language spoken by around 680,000 people, primarily in Kiton (Kiton 俟東) where it is the national language. Since 63BC, Kitonese has been written with Chinese characters, Kekwefu (kekwefu n tayun 文鄣, lit. "Chinese writing"), though its vocabulary consists of a low percentage of Chinese words in favour of adapted Sankrit terms. The language is highly stratified between sociolects; topolects vary considerably little.

History
The history of Kitonese is largely unknown to historical linguists. While Kiton lies in the region of Austronesia in the Pacific (located near Taiwan and the Philipines), it does not belong to the Malayo-Polynesian language family. It displays some peculiar features not common to the linguistic area, such as case declensions, verb conjugations and a SOV word order, leading some to classify it as an Indo-European language, a move which has caused much controversy.

The language uses Chinese characters, but does not use much modern Chinese vocabulary. This is probably due to Chinese contact in the 5th century BCE during the end Zhou period, leading to the absorption of Chinese characters as a new form of writing, although the Chinese characters they did accept were an archaic and dialectal form of Ancient Chinese. This explains, for example, the word 社會 (lit. gathering of shrines) does not mean "society" unlike most Sinoxenic languages, as link was not drawn during the brief period of Chinese contact.

The language known today as Kitonese was the local dialect of Akelaksa (keoi n ake laksa 言域焦), the ancient capital of Kiton. When King Sengyan (Sengyan e Kimaita 成寅王) moved his capital to Akelaksa, he declared the local dialect as the national language. To this day, Kitonese is widely used and universally understood in the Kingdom. While Kitonese is the official language in all constituent kingdoms of Kiton, the State Union of Ailongeng'ai uses the indigenous Sari'iki language as the official state language, which is part of the Tongic group of the Austronesian language family.

Nouns
Although nouns are not declined according to grammatical number, gender or definitiveness, they are declined for grammatical case by prepositions known as karakah 字仔. (IMPORTANT: Karakah precede the noun in writing; they follow the noun in speech. This is to keep in line with Classical Chinese convention.) Case refers to the grammatical function of the noun in a phrase or sentence.

The cases, direct translations of their Sanskrit counterparts, are:
 * 1) Nominative: Sekeyana/Karta 為者 "agent"
 * 2) Ablative: Safungkesu/Apadana 離予 "taking off"
 * 3) Genetive: Sarukwahisu/Sambhanda 舉髻 "attachment"
 * 4) Dative: Sarupakesu/Sampradana 舉高予 "bestowal"
 * 5) Instrumental: Soseki/Karana 所為 "instrument"
 * 6) Locative: Hejisoseki/Adhikarana 首所為 "location"
 * 7) Accusative: Seku/Karman 為 "deed"
 * 8) Vocative: Yaneh/- 嗚呼 "Oh!"

Sekeyana
The nominative case marks the subject of a sentence, as implied by the Kitonese name. It has no karakah and is marked by a space in Kekwefu orthography. Let's look at an example: Chirifu walks. The name Chirifu 持 means "upholding" and is a direct translation of the term "dharma" and is a common Kitonese name. Here the agent (Chirifu) is the one performing the action (walking). This would be translated as: Chirifu pasiheh. 持 走 Note that Kitonese has no full stops. The only punctuations are the comma and semicolon, explained later.

Seku
The accusative case marks the direct object of a verb. Its karakah is ahi, with no equivalent in Kekwefu. Another example: Hitikaya kicked the ball. To translate this, we need to know that verbs always finish a clause. The translated sentence is: Hitikaya paopoi ahi tarahate. 柱子 蹴鞠踢

Sarukwahisu
The genitive form of a word carries the meaning of the word "of". If we give Hitikaya another ball: Hitikaya kicked Chirifu's ball. The genitive noun (Chirifu) goes after the "ball": Hitikaya paopoi ahi Chirifugi rihekate. 柱子 蹴鞠矣持踢 The karakah gi 矣 is part of three genitive prepositions. It implies that the genitive noun owns the object. The second genitive, nguh 由, implies the genitive noun is lower in position to the object, such that it is inappropriate to say that the genitive noun "owns" it: Injeh's god is Hiohoi. (lit. Injeh worships Hiohoi.) Arula Injeh nguh nai Hiohoi taheteh. 神由音戒 乃孝亥是也

Intro
The lexical form of verbs end in -eh. This the form found in dictionaries. Kitonese syntax dictates that verbs be placed at the end of a sentence. Take the informal sentence, ngeneh kanafu ahi nyawi 吳 食嚼, "I am eating food". Notice how "food", kanafu 食 is derived from the verb kanataheh; nyaweh 嚼 also becomes nyawi. These will be discussed later on.
 * taraheh 行 cross
 * kanataheh 食有 dine f.
 * nyaweh 嚼 eat inf.
 * aukeleh 去 or 格至 go

Present tense
The present tense is unique that it conjugates with respect to person.

Verbs follow the above pattern in conjugation. Aukeleh 格至 is part of a class of irregular verbs which are few in number and will be discussed later.

Sanskrit and Chinese influences
The whole of Kitonese culture is a unique mix of ancient Indic and Sinitic influences on the native Ki tradition. The obvious influences of Chinese is the Kengep n Tharun, the Chinese writing system brought by the early Chinese immigrant tribe of Shichi 矢子 in 2300BC as per tradition. (Shichi was the ancestor of many noble families in Kiton, including the present ruling house of Kangtaga 庚德.) The Chinese influences seen in Kitonese culture are markedly different from modern Chinese due to lack of contact for centuries since the mid-Shang dynasty and this helps us paint a clearer picture of the formative years of Chinese civilization. These influences tend to be kept to the noble tiers of society and longstanding tradition, such as royal naming customs and noble clan names. Indic culture, on the other hand, seems to be more widespread and pervasive throughout the common people. It was the language of literacy, religion and science for many centuries. Its prolific use meant the adaption of many Sanskrit words, changed to adapt to Kitonese pronunciations. Clear examples include suyah/Suyeh "sun/sun-god" cf. Sans. surya "sun", samujah "sea" cf. Sans. samudra "ocean", and tarahe 'to cross" cf. Sans. tarati "to cross". Words such as Sans. vrksha "birch" evolved to wangasang "tree"; vrksha -> urksha -> urngsa -> wangsa -> wangasang.