Kekish

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Kekish
Kekish, also known as the Kekistani Language (English pronunciation: /kɛkɪʃ/, /kɛkɪstæni/; Kekish: Keks Avvah [kɛ̝ks.ä̝vːˈɑh]) is an Eastern Iranian language, though it shares many traits with the Western Iranian languages, largely due to historical proximity. It is spoken by the Kekistani people and is the native language of Kekistan. Though the grammar retains many distinct features of Old Iranian, most of its lexicon has been supplanted with terms of varying origin by the latent powers of Meme Magic. Due to the historic and present, ongoing oppression of the people of the Kekistani people, Kekish has largely fallen out of use, but has seen intense revitalization efforts in recent days.

Author's Note:
Kekish, as seen here, is as historically accurate and etymologically justified as my knowledge of the Eastern Iranian Languages will allow. The majority of vocabulary is based directly on Proto-Iranian and its modern descendants; sound changes are consistent, depending on whether a term evolved from an earlier form or borrowed more recently from Persian or Pashto or the like. I will eventually get around to creating a table of the historical sound changes, but that is of a lower priority to building the lexicon and creating a solid grammatical framework- inflection, syntax, and so on. Also, what you see on this page may not be the full extent of progress I've made; I do most of my work on paper and update here when I have a sizable or worthwhile amount. If there are any questions about terms or grammar, or if you'd like specific words or phrases translated, you can contact me on the talk page of either this page or here, or contact me on Twitter @bishop_church.

{This article uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to transcribe the sounds of Kekish}

Classification and Dialects
The suppression of both the Kekistani culture and language by the Normies has led to significant division in spoken and written varieties of Kekish; there is no standardized form, though this article will be using assumed common vocabulary and grammar. In addition to wide dialectal variations, there is also a considerable latitude in terms of personal choice when speaking, that is, one person might use a word order or pronunciation inconsistent with more widely accepted Kekish forms, but will still be understood by and intelligible to other Kekish speakers.

Consonants
All consonants, other than voiced plosives and /ŋ/, are subject to gemination; spelled using a double of the consonant, geminate consonants are held out for twice as long as the plain consonant (eg. saveniy /sav'ɛnij/ "potential"; savvenke /sav:'ɛnkɛ/ "to declare")

* Some speakers will realize /k, g, χ, ʁ/ as palatals when articulated adjacent to /i/ or /j/.

Vowels
The realization of /a/ can vary from front [a] to far back and pharyngealized [ɑˤ] depending on the exact phonetic environment and speaker.

Phonotactics
The syllable structure of Kekish is as follows:

(C(C))(G)V(G)(C(C))

Where C is a consonant, G is a glide (/j/ or /w/), and V is an obligatory vowel.

Orthography
The original Kekish Alphabet is no longer in use by the average Kekistani, instead being substituted by variants of the Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, or (rarely) Armenian scripts. This article uses the Latin script.

Spelling Conventions
The following rules denote common and significant conventions, in addition to some important restriction:
 * Kekish has no long vowels and thus has no double vowels in spelling, except across morpheme boundaries.
 * {y} represents a voiced palatal approximant /j/, never a vowel.
 * Kekish does not utilize diacritics other than the grave accent above {e} to denote schwa /ə/.
 * Geminate varients of {th, dh, sh, zh, gh, ch, ts, dz} are spelled {tth, ddh, ssh, zzh, kkh, ggh, cch, tts, ddz} respectively.

Nouns
Kekish has two nouns genders. All Kekish nouns fall under one of the two genders; masculine and feminine, and five declensions: Declension Table: Ergative-Absolutive marking is only used to create the progressive aspect.
 * 1) Closed, Masculine
 * 2) Closed, Feminine
 * 3) Open, Masculine
 * 4) Open, Feminine
 * 5) -iy, (all nouns with -iy nominative endings are masculine) (Includes diy "the")

Pronouns
Kekish pronouns are quite regular, though they follow their own declension pattern. The genitive form of each pronoun can be used as a possessive determiner.

Adjectives and Determiners
Adjectives occur after the noun they modify and must agree with the noun in number and case. Determiners also decline in accordance to the nouns with which they are used, but they proceed the noun; this includes quantifiers, numbers, articles, and demonstratives. Determiners and adjectives share declensional patterns; which declension to use is determined by the adjective/determiner's ending (i.e. whether the adjective/determiner ends in a vowel or a consonant). The adjective/determiner does not have grammatical gender, and does not need to be declined to agree with the gender of its associated noun. Adjectives/determiners are declined in the accusative case when used with Ergative-Absolutive case nouns. Comparatives are formed by adding the suffix -tam; superlatives by adding the suffix -darb. Comparatives and superlatives both decline according to the consonant ending declension pattern.

Adpositions
All Kekish adpositions invoke the prepositional case of their associated noun phrase. Though normally preceding their compliment, in certain circumstances, especially when used with pronouns, adpositions can occur postpositionally, such as in the phrase eta-vay wed' Kek "goodbye; farewell"; such cases are orthographically indicated with a hyphen {-}.

Verbs
Except for a few exceptions, Kekish verbs are highly regular. There is only one conjugation and all forms can easily be made by knowing the infinitive. The main irregular verbs, whose forms must be memorized independently, are wede "to be"; zhude "to go"; ghezde "to want"; and shikhde "to make, do". Verbs in Kekish are conjugated for three persons and two numbers (singular and plural). Kekish makes use of the following tenses: simple present, present progressive, present perfect, simple past (preterite), past progressive, past perfect, imperfect, simple future, future progressive and ''future perfect. ''There are no independent forms for the progressive tenses; these are constructed using Ergative-Absolutive cases with the simple tense form. Additionally, all verbs have two subjunctive moods (plain and perfect) that are used in much the same way as the Persian subjunctive - often used where English would use an infinitive in catanative verb strings.

Participles
Kekish verbs have two participle forms- present and perfect. Both participles are used as verbal adjectives, in which cases the perfect inherently invokes the past and the present is always active.

The perfect participle is used to form the perfect tenses. It is passive when used with wede and active when used with shikhde. The perfect is formed by dropping the infinitive -e ending and adding -anè. The present participle is formed by dropping the infinitive -e ending, adding the suffix -adh, and adding the prefix ''in'. ''When used in isolation, the present participle can be used as an agent noun. A verbal adverb can be constructed by adding the suffix -i to the present participle.
 * shadile "to fight" > shadilanè "fought"
 * wede "to be" > wedanè "been"
 * re "to see" > ranè "seen"
 * shadile > in'shadiladh "fighting, fighter"
 * wede > in'wedadh "being"
 * re > in'radh "seeing, seer"

Conjugation
Conjugation is relatively quite simple and very consistent in comparison to other Iranian languages. The Imperfect is formed by reduplication of the final syllable before the personal ending. To form the present perfect, past perfect, or future perfect, the perfect participle is used in conjunction with either the present, past, or future form of the verb shikhde "to make, do" (eg. Shim [mim] danè "I have given").

The following tables are a template for all regular verbs with de "to give" as the example verb:

Irregular Conjugations
The following four table sets are the full conjugations for the four irregular Kekish verbs: wede "to be"; zhude "to go"; ghezde "to want"; and shikhde "to make, do". Note that the imperfect appears to be formed as if it were the present tense of a regular verb.

Syntax
Word order in Kekish is largely VSO, with prepositional phrases coming before the direct object or at the beginning of the IP. Adjectives come after the nouns they modify; adverbs can be used either directly before or directly after the verbs they modify.

Lexicon
Dictionary