Pihaki
The Pihaki languages are spoken in Seligam, one of the eight continents of Melin. The people speaking the protolanguage called themselves Pighaki or Seli and their land Seli-ghama, "home of the Seli". Among the modern languages are Pigaic and Ubnadck, which are closely related, and the various Eastern Seligamine dialects, including Menolian and standard Eastern Seligamine.
Proto-Pihaki and most of its descendants are inflecting, with nouns having singular, plural, and several cases, and verbs inflecting for three persons, two numbers, and several tenses. Verbs generally had three consonants, with vowels indicating tense, but modern languages have lost the three-consonant pattern.
tazaʔa "to give birth" | Singular | Plural |
1 | tazaʔit | tazaʔitit |
2 | tazaʔub | tazaʔubub |
3 | tazaʔa | tazaʔana |
The Pighaki appear not to have had any words for numbers over three. Their reconstructed number words are lebha, sibhina, tesekla, well attested in all branches of the family. Daughter languages, however, use different words after that, and don't even use the same base: Pigaic and Ubnadck use centered base 9, or base 9 with subtraction, while other languages use base 10.