Dahoukki

Dahoukki Dŭhoug
Pronounced:	Native: /də.hok/ Anglicized: /də.hoʊ̯k.kiː/
Timeline and Universe:	Alternate Earth
Species:	Human
Spoken:	Carnassus
Writing system:	Syllabary
Genealogy:	Language Isolate
Typology
Morphological type:	Agglutinative
Morphosyntactic alignment:	Nominative-Accusative
Basic word order:	SOV
Credits
Creator:	Thrice Xandvii | ✎
Created:	December 2015

Phonology

Dŭhoug has 13 consonants and 8 distinct vowels. Of the consonants, there is a significant portion that fall into two specific categories, and those are plosives and palatals. While there is only one consonant that is neither, all the rest fall into one category or the other, and none are both (unless the affricates are counted as though they are stops). There is also a significant distinction between voiced and voiceless consonant pairs. The vowel system in Dahoukki is basically a five vowel system with the a, e, i, o, u distinction that is prominent in many languages. However, there is also a set of "lax" vowels that has partially collapsed due to the high vowels both merging into schwa and the low vowel merging with its low lax counterpart. In addition, u is /ɯ/ rather than /u/. The vowel system was, at one time, one with five vowels and a length distinction.

Consonants

	Labial	Coronal	Palatal	Velar	Laryngeal
Plosive	p /p/	t /t/		k /k/	ʼ (q) /ʔ/
	b /b/	d /d/		g /g/
Fricative			c /ɕ/ ~ [s]
			z /ʑ/ ~ [z]
Affricate			ć /ʨ/
			ź /ʥ/
Approximant		r /ɺ/ ~ [ɾ; θ]	y /j/

Vowels

		Front	Central	Back
High	Plain	i /i/		u /ɯ/ ~ [u]
	Lax	ŭ /ə/
Middle	Plain	e /e/		o /o/
	Lax	ĕ /ɛ/		ŏ /ɔ/
Low		a /ä/

Romanization

The romanization is pretty straight forward. However, there are two small wrinkles:

1. The q is only used if the first letter of a word is a glottal stop, in all other cases the apostrophe is used instead.
2. There is an alternate system for romanizing the vowels that more closely approximates the use of Hŭcukda: a /ä/, e /ɛ/, ei /e/, i /i/, o /ɔ/, ou /o/, u /ə/, and uu /ɯ/.

Phonotactics

Dahoukki builds it syllables based on the following basic pattern: (C)(r)V(T). Where C is any consonant, V is any vowel, and T is any voiceless consonant. However, for successive syllables that follow a syllable with a coda consonant, the following pattern must be used: (D)(r)V(T), where D is any voiced consonant. This is due to the fact that should two consonants border each other, the first must always be voiceless and the second one is then voiced; this is referred to as "consonant voicing dissimilation."

Stress

At present, the stress system at play here has not been fully documented to a satisfactory level. It is unlikely to be a pitch accent system, however.

Allophony

• When u precedes or follows a labial consonant, it tends to be pronounced as [u].
• When in a cluster, r is tapped/flapped.
• A /ɺ/ that is the coda consonant must necessarily become voiceless. However, it is expressed as [θ~ʃ] not perhaps the more straight forward [ɺ̥] or [ɾ̥].

Script

The native script is called Hŭcukda (this term comes from 翡翠かな or *hisuikana, while this term doesn't exist in Japanese, the project itself has long had an association with jade — more specifically, nephrite — so, it became associated via Japanese with the written script). As is probably obvious, this script is substantially similar to Japanese's hiragana script with which it shares several characters. (However, not all of those shared characters have the same sound value as hŭcukda kŭda [*kana]).

	—	k	c	t	p	d*	h	b*	y	r	q	ć
a
i
ŭ
ĕ
ŏ
Ø

Only lax (or neutral) vowels are shown in the table above. This is because the "plain" vowels do not have a separate series of kana associated with them. Rather, one must add another (small) vowel sign following certain kana for the desired vowel sound to be understood. As etymologically, these are mainly from formerly long vowels, the method to write them follows the former paradigm as well. Namely: to arrive at Cu, one adds a small ŭ after a kana ending in "-ŭ"; for Ce, one adds a small i after a kana ending in "-ĕ"; and for Co, one adds a small ŭ after a kana ending in "-ŏ".

The letters marked in the above table with an asterisk (d and b) are noted as such since they are etymological in nature. As such, they are only used to spell words that came from a historical *n or *m, respectively. As such, any other time a d or b is required for spelling, a dakdi [*dakuten] must be added to the relevant kana with a voiceless initial. All voiceless kana can have a dakdi added to them, with the exception of hV kana. For źV, however, a dakdi must be added to the ki kana making it gi and then the normal small yV is added to it for the requisite vowel sound.

In addition, there is a series of small rV kana as well. These kana can be written after any kana ending in -ŭ. So, should the sequence gro be desired, one would need to write the following: kŭ + dakdi + small rŏ + small ŭ ().

Examples

The following are a series of words and phrases written in Dahoukki script.

• Dŭhoug:

• Hŭcukda:

• Argatu:

• Dakdi:

Grammar

Nouns

Nouns in Dahoukki can be in one of 12 declension classes depending on the form of the word's form in the ancestor language. As such, the following tables can be used to determine what class any Japanese noun is a part of.

There are two different "linking" or "thematic" vowels that can appear as the primary vowel between a noun's stem, and it's case suffix (these are listed as V₁ & V₂ in the following tables). These vowels alternate depending on which case is being appended to it. In some cases, there is a third situation in which the vowel changes yet again when it appears as the final vowel of a word (such as when there is no consonant to append from the case ending). In that last situation, the vowel that is used is listed after a slash under V₂.

Class Ancestor V₁ V₂ I *a a ŭ II *aː a a III *an Ø Ø / u IV *i, ai, ui Ø i V *iː, in i i VI *u, uː, un Ø u VII *e, en ĕ ĕ / e VIII *eː e e / i IX *o ŏ o X *oː, on o o /u XI *oi, enʼi Ø i XII *CiCi ŭ i

V₁ Ancestor Ending Use *wa (は) *ga (が) -ga nom *de (で) di inst / loc *to (と) t com V₂ Ancestor Ending Use を (*o) Ø acc に (*ni) di dat の (*no) r gen

The tables to the left can be used to put any noun into the desired case. For some examples, the Class IX word dĕko (*neko — cat) as well as the Class III word gŏhu (*gohan — food, cooked rice).

Nominative: dĕk + V₁ + ga → dĕkŏga Accusative: dĕk + V₂ + Ø → dĕko Dative: dĕk + V₂ + di → dĕkodi Instrumental: dĕk + V₁ + di → dĕkŏdi Genitive: dĕk + V₂ + r → dĕkor Comitative: dĕk + V₁ + t → dĕkŏt

Nominative: gŏh + V₁ + ga → gŏhga Accusative: gŏh + V₂ + Ø → gŏhu Dative: gŏh + V₂ + di → gŏhdi Instrumental: gŏh + V₁ + di → gŏhdi Genitive: gŏh + V₂ + r → gŏhŭr Comitative: gŏh + V₁ + t → gŏhŭt

Morphophonology

As is illustrated by the second example word, there are some things that the charts can't completely solve. For those issues where certain letter combinations appear at the end of the word, or to assure that the contrastive consonant voicing process takes place, there is a small set of other rules that come into play. These rules are morphophonological in nature, and are thus affectionately referred to as "Morfofo Rules." They are stated as sound change rules, but occur synchronically within the current language and not diachronically. They are as follows:

ʔ → Ø / _C
Ø → ə / C_C#
Ø → ɯ / C_CC
j → ɕ / _C
D → T / _C // D = A
{h ʔ} → g / T_
T → D / C_

Where C is any consonant, T and D are paired sets of voiceless and voiced consonants (respectively), and A is an approximant and all other letters are their IPA value.

Number

It is unclear how number will be treated in Dahoukki. Previously there was a somewhat inconvenient and obtuse system involving ablaut which is no longer in use. Likely, there might be some particle or other feature to indicate a singulative or possibly an "inverse" number. Nothing is set as of yet.

Lexicon

—For a full list of words in Dŭhoug, see: Lexicon.

Since almost all of the words in Dahoukki are derived directly from modern Japanese, any word can be created when needed by running the word through sound changes and making some accommodations for changes in meaning.

Sound Changes

See: Sound Changes for full list of sound changes from Japanese.

Creator Comments

This language began life as a sort of weird idea in which I set out to eliminate all nasal sounds (both as vowels and as consonants) from Modern Japanese through sound changes. The language presented above is the product of that somewhat bizarre starting place. It eventually morphed into a collaborative thread over on the CBB (this one to be specific). Forumites on that thread who happen to know a lot more about Japanese than I do contributed a great deal to the language's formation. In addition, they provided some valuable insight about sound changes that I didn't yet know. With that input, and so much more, I was able to get to what you see above (though it undoubtedly still needs a lot of further documentation). The noun classes that help determine the final form of words with their cases attached would never have come to me without the invaluable assistance of folks in that thread! With some luck and determination, I hope to be able to continue where they helped to lead me.

Of course, as is my way, the script for this language was also a huge contributing factor as I had discovered hentaigana and all kinds of other glorious beasts lurking in the annals of Japanese Past. I like what came out, such as it is. Hopefully, now that I've dedicated a page her to it... more development can continue to take place as I remember and expound on things.