Xanian (Vâka Xâkömarī) is the predominate language of the Xanian species, and the official language of the Xanian Empire. Xanian is spoken by well over n/a billion people, and has a history going back some twelve thousand years, with the first known speakers having originated within the Zanusano Plains. The language was created by Xanus for his children, the father of the Xanians, allowing them to communicate in an organized manner verbally. The language grew to incorporate terms that were largely influenced by warfare, which came to dominate the planet for thousands of years until the formation of the Xanian Empire.
The Xanian language is unique in that in the twelve thousand years of its existence, the language lacks descendants and ancestor languages, and has only two known dialects – Imperial and Feral – and has only been expanded to provide words and terms for new ideas and objects. Much of this is believed to be due to the flawed perception of a shared consciousness of the species, but few have ever cared to research this anomaly further. Xanian exhibits a relatively simplistic grammar and word order, with several roots used throughout the language, providing a level of order and understanding as opposed to the array of human languages once spoken across Earth, many with archaic word orders and words sharing similar meanings and but different pronunciations or vise versa.
Phonology and orthographyEdit
|D||d||[d]||Voiced alveolar stop||-|
|H||h||[h]||Voiceless glottal fricative||-|
|J||j||[dʒ]||Voiced palato-alveolar affricate||-|
|K||k||[k]||Voiceless velar stop||-|
|S||s||[s]||Voiceless alveolar sibilant||-|
|Š||š||[ʃ]||Voiceless palato-alveolar fricative||-|
|T||t||[t]||Voiceless alveolar plosive||-|
|V||v||[v]||Voiced labiodental fricative||-|
|X||x||[ʒ]||Voiced palato-alveolar sibilant||-|
|Z||z||[z]||Voiced alveolar fricative||-|
|A||a||[a]||Open front unrounded vowel||[a] becomes [ɐ] when in the first syllable|
|Â||â||[ɐ]||Near-open central vowel||-|
|E||e||[e]||Close-mid front unrounded vowel||[e] becomes [ɪ] at the end of a word|
|I||i||[i]||Close front unrounded vowel||-|
|Ī||ī||[ɪ]||Near-close near-front unrounded vowel||-|
|O||o||[o]||Close-mid back rounded vowel||-|
|Ö||ö||[ɵ]||Close-mid central rounded vowel||-|
|U||u||[u]||Close back rounded vowel||[u] becomes [ɵ] when the final phoneme in a word, except when the only vowel in the word|
Digraphs and trigraphsEdit
The Xanians have two written scripts, one which is a featural syllabic script, and the other which is an alphabetical script. The former script was utilized throughout much of Xanian history, though the latter alphabetical script has come to dominate most Xanian documentation out of bare simplicity. However, Xanians are still trained to use both scripts, with the alphabet learned during childhood, and the syllabic script learned during their teen years. Since both scripts use the same basic designs, cross-training is relatively quick and easy. The Xanian alphabet consists of 22 alphabets divided into seven vowels and fifteen consonants, with stressed letters appearing with diacritics.
The Xanian language has a simple phonological constraint system, in which either vowels or consonants may be placed at the start of a word. However, while any unstressed vowel may close the word, only four of the language's fifteen consonants may end a word if they are used.
Xanian is a highly stressed language, with emphasize on the first or second syllables of a short word, or first and middle syllables of a longer word, typically regarded as the norm. The stress on words with Xanian is often considered similar to the stressing of words in the English and Latin, though Xanian words will have diacritic marks to indicate when stress on a particular syllable is required, much as with the accents in Latin and Romance languages. With regards to rhythm, Xanian is a stress-timed language, with stressed and unstressed syllables carrying equal weight in a word though the stressed portion may be shorter than the unstressed portion in letter length, but longer when voiced.
- /z/ never comes before another stop consonant
- /j/ can never be placed next to another consonant
- /r/, /n/, /s/ and /k/ are the only consonants allowed next to one another
- /s/ may only come after /r/ and before /h/ at all times if placed next to one another
- In words with two or more /a/ vowels, stress is always placed on the second /a/
- /r/ is never permitted to sit next to another consonant due to the illegality liquids
- Stress is placed on the first /a/ if another vowel precedes it, or if /ʒ/ or /v/ directly precedes /a/
- /n/, /k/, and /r/ are the only consonants permitted to end a word
Violation of these rules are only rarely permitted, but avoided if at all possible.
There are five cases in the Xanian language:
Xanian has no gender, with all nouns using a strictly neuter form with the sole exception of titles.
|-n||-n (s) / -nī (p)||-n (s) / -nī (p)||-no (s) / -nokī (p)||-nu (s) / -nurī (p)||-na (s) / -nânī (p)|
|-r||-r (s) / -rī (p)||-r (s) / -rī (p)||-ro (s) / -rokī (p)||-ru (s) / -runī (p)||-ra (s) / -rânī (p)|
|-k||-k (s) / -kī (p)||-k (s) / -kī (p)||-ko (s) / -konī (p)||-ku (s) / -kurī (p)||-ka (s) / -kânī (p)|
|-s||-s (s) / -sī (p)||-s (s) / -sī (p)||-so (s) / -sonī (p)||-su (s) / -surī (p)||-sa (s) / -sânī (p)|
Diminutives and augmentativesEdit
Articles denoting definiteness and indefiniteness are both attached to their respective words as prefixes, separated from the word by a dash.
In Xanian, adjectives are placed before nouns at all times. Certain adjectives which are descriptions for verbs or nouns will be modified to agree with the word it is attached too. For instance, Vâka Xâkömarī literally means "signed" or "spoken Xanian", simply translated as "Xanian language". As "vâka" represents a verb or action, it does not decline based on the word it is attracted too. However, Tâzeno Xâkömâro, meaning "Imperial Xania", does decline, as "tâzeno" is a noun describing another noun, and therefore agrees with it.
The Xanian language lacks gender outside of titles, and does not differentiate between male, female, neuter, animate or inanimate objects. All genders are represented as the same pronoun. The lack of gender in the Xanian language can best be attributed to the Xanians overwhelmingly female population, but the vital role males play in their species, leading to the Xanians simply discarding the need for gender in their language. Instead, all objects are referred to equally, and without any regard to the gender of the individual unless their position or family name is brought up in the sentence. In these instances, only the title and the surname are given genders, with "o" for men and "a" for women, though the former only applies to surnames for men.
|Personal pronouns in Xanian|
Tenses and moodsEdit
The Xanians use a decimal, e.g. base-10 counting system within their language, basing it off of the countable appendages on their hands. Cardinal numbers, as with the other numbers, are unaffected by the Xanian case system.
- dī-mârok (a nation)
- nok mârokī (zero nations)
- âyn mârok (one nation)
- kor mârokī (nine nations)
- xi mârokī (ten nations)
- xidīn mârokī (a/one hundred nations)