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 (kengep n tharun 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 known to be considerably complicated and 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 (Kimaita Sengyan 王成寅) 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.

Orthography
Below is the Kitonese alphabet:

Vowels: a e i o u

Onset consonants: b, by, ch, d, f, g, gw, h, j, k, kw, l, m, n, ng, ny, p, py, r, s, sh, t, w, y

Coda consonants: k, n

Vowels
The standard uses five vowels for writing, although there are actually over 10 of vowels used in the Akelaksa dialect of Kitonese:
 * a; a
 * ai; ahi, aei
 * au; ahu
 * e; e, ae, ei
 * ae; ai
 * i; i
 * iu; iu, ieu
 * io; aeo, io
 * o; o, ou
 * oi (err-ee, not in English); oi
 * or; au, eo, 
 * oi (as in boy); aeoi, aeui, eoi
 * u; u

Intro
The lexical form of verbs end in -e. This the form found in dictionaries. Kitonese syntax dictates that verbs be placed at the end of a sentence. Take the informal sentence, nga kanafu m nyawi 吳 食嚼, "I am eating food". Notice how "food", kanafu 食 is derived from the verb kanahe; nyawe 嚼 also becomes nyawi. These will be discussed later on.
 * tarahe 行 cross
 * kanahe 食 eat ''f.
 * nyawe 嚼 eat ''inf.
 * aukele 去 or 格至 go

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

Verbs follow a pattern of -i -a -e in conjugation. Aukele 格至 is part of a class of irregular verbs which are few in number and will be discussed later.

Nouns
Nouns such in Kitonese are not marked for definiteness but are marked for case. The nominative, accusative and genitive A case do not have any case markers in the written language although standard practice dictates that the subject of a sentence be followed by a space.
 * Nominative: 天 saurata
 * Accusative: 天 saurata
 * Genitive A: 天 - n saurata
 * Genitive B: 奚天 - saurata ngun
 * Genitive C: 矣天 - saurata gi
 * Dative: 至天 saurata ya
 * Locative: 於天 saurata i
 * Instrumental: 以天 saurata hoi
 * Ablative: 自天 saurata eoi
 * Vocative Formal: 咨天 saurata yane
 * Vocative Colloquial: 兮天 he saurata

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 suyang "sun" cf. Sans. surya "sun", samujang "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.