Ukikū

General information
​Ukikū 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.

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

Phonotactics
Ukikū only knows three very simple syllable structures. They are CVC, CV and VC. The most frequent of those types is CV. Syllables of the type VC and CVC can just end with the consonants /k/, /t/, /m/ and /n/.

There are no diphtongs and no consonant combinations in one syllable.

Tones


There are four tones in Ukikū: The first tone Atyum (Engl.: neutral), the second tone Tagán (Engl.: rising), the third tone Konbā (Engl.: high) and the fourth tone Sumzâyu (Engl.: rising and falling). Only vocals can carry the tones; so they are trans cripted like a (Atyum tone), á (Tagán tone), ā (Konbā tone) and â (Sumzâyu tone).

Grammar
As an strict agglutinative language, Ukikū uses particles to show person, gender and so on only. Conjugations and declensions are shown this way, too.

Nouns
Nouns do not know any gender but some of them can be recognized as words which belong to a kind of category by their infixes. Their are three of these categories: Things, humans/animals and abstract words. Only words with up to three syllables have these 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 forth 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 person's suffix particle 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 an noun (or pronoun ending) then.

Ex.: "Toksalin" means "You wish go" what does not make any sense. It only does by adding a noun or pronoun: "Toksalinsa" means, translated word by word, "You wish you go" (so actually "you wish you would go"). Or, with a noun: "Toksalin tahatya", that means "You wish the/a deer would go".

Subjunctive
There are two types of subjunctives, simply called subjunctive I and II.

Subjunctive I is used to express something that probably happens. You use the person's verb suffix particle and addionally the particle -pu.

Subjunctive II is used to express something that probably does not happen. You use the person's verb suffix particle and the particle -hi.

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

Negative
The negative is created with the particle -run.

Cases
There are active and passive. The passive is created with -wan. If a medium shall be added, 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 the 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, the second one 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:

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 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 system. The numbers from 0 to eighteen are mostly irregular. All others are created with the first syllable of the Amkutínta (multiplicator 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