ʔulili

General information
ʔulili is a language or small language family spoken by the indigenous inhabitants of the island group today known as Sumpa Hulil in the dominant dialect of Ddiktas Ddammay. Called Hikddakatddazmi ("those who do not have names" or "those who do not exist") or simply Hulilwus ("people from Hulil") by the kaddikuwus (the speakers of Ddiktas, who more often refer to themselves simply as nu, "people"), the speakers of  ʔ ulili were the only (near-)human inhabitants of the archipelago of Sumpa Ddammay prior to the arrival of Ddiktas speakers from across the western ocean, living in small, semi-permanent villages as stone-age fishers and gatherers.

The islands of Sumpa Hulil are the largest known in Sumpa Ddammay, and were swiftly claimed by Ddiktas-speaking agriculturalists after their migration across the sea, relegating the Hulilwus to peripheral lands in the rugged island interiors and a few of the smaller outlying islands. The history of interaction between the two peoples has been largely antagonistic, but over the centuries there has been some exchange of goods and ideas between the two as well.

Most significantly, the inland Hulilwus, unable to practice their traditional maritime lifestyle, long ago adopted agricultural practices and technologies, as well as metalworking techniques and other advanced crafts, from the Ddiktas-speaking invaders. These practices and tools came accompanied with a sizable body of new vocabulary, and the introduction of foreign words, phonemes, and constructions from Ddiktas has left a noticeable mark on  ʔ ulili.

ʔ ulili has had an influence on at least some of the insular varieties of Ddiktas as well, albeit a subtler one. For instance, the prestige "Ddammay" dialect first arose in Sumpa Hulil, and the distinctive deletion of word-final nasal consonants in that dialect may show the influence of  ʔ ulili words, which for the most part consist of only open syllables and therefore invariably end in a vowel.

Alphabet
ʔ ulili phonology shows a number of similarities with that of   Ddiktas, though some are likely to be coincidental. Most strikingly, both languages share an unusually small vowel quality inventory, though 'ulili recognizes vowel length as phonemic, giving it a somewhat more diverse vowel system overall. On the other hand,  ʔ ulili's aspirated and ejective plosives and affricates are quite distinctive and unfamiliar to  Ddiktas speakers.

The Latin orthography for  ʔ ulili  mostly follows the IPA standard, though /j/ is represented as "y" as in English. Aspirated consonants are indicated by the addition of a final "h" to the corresponding "plain" letter or digraph, while ejective consonants are marked with an apostrophe ('). Long vowels are indicated by doubling the corresponding letter;  ʔ ulili phonotactics do not allow vowel sequences, so a series of two vowels is always pronounced as a single long vowel sound.

Allophones in complementary distribution are always written as the "primary" allophone. / ɕ/   appears only  between front vowels (long or short /i/ or /a/)  as  an allophone of /s/ and is therefore written as "s." / t͡s/ and / t͡ɕ/ both contrast with /t/, but the former occurs only medially before front vowels and the latter occurs only initially before close vowels (long or short /i/ or /u/), so they are considered to be in complementary distribution with eachother and are both written "ts."

Phonotactics
ʔ ulili phonotactics are highly restrictive, allowing only syllables of the form "CV," though it has a series of aspirated and ejective plosives and affricates that could be viewed as glottal stops and fricatives co-articulated with other consonants.

In loan words from  Ddiktas that include syllable codas,  ʔ ulili typically inserts an additional short vowel to break up the resulting consonant cluster, though the quality of these epenthetic vowels varies somewhat unpredictably depending on the dialect and the particular word, and in some cases consonants are simply dropped, particlarly in word final position or in clusters of identical consonants. For instance, "standard"  ʔ ulili represents the  Ddiktas  place name  Sumpa Ddammay as S uumapa Lamayu (/s uːmapa lamaju/), and the word  Ddiktas itself as  Likutasa (/likuta ɕa/).