Ihhai

Ihhai is a nation to the north of Paba that survived for around 21000 years. Historically it was part of Nama, but today it is part of the Moonshine Crown, which itself part of Pusapom but is self-gvoerning. Thus ity could be said thatIhhai is more independent today than it was at the apex of its power as one of the major nations of Nama. However, that was around the year 2700 AD when the rest of the world was erupting with so much war that even Ihhai at its best could barely hold on to its own territory.

Culture

Paba began as a fishing colony in Tamusur Bay in the year 633 AD and worked its way northward, killing many aboriigns as they went. They stopped at Ihhai and did not try to advance into Ihhai territory. The Ihhai people did not threaten Paba, and at the same time, Ihhai people seemed to be much more powerful than the aboriginal coimmunities that Paba had dealth with in the past. Paba thus admired Ihhai and wanted to form an alliance. Thaoa did likewise.

The Ihhai were largely enemies of Paba's old aboriginal Ahekuqhi people anyway, and even though Ihhai was very strong it was a pacifist nation and did not want to fight a war against even a weak, insect-like nation such as Ahekuqhi. Paba's soldiers had cleared out the Ahekuqhi people, save for a few Ahekuqhi who chose to convert to Yiibam, the Pabap religion, and mostly marry into Pabap families. Paba was now friendly to Ihhai, which meant that Ihhai for the first time in 21000 years had an ouutlet to the south coast, and could be enriched by trade with not only Paba, but the rest of the world.

Ihhai-Paba relations

Many Ihhai people moved into Paba in the 1900s, figuring trade with the tropics would be easier if Ihhai could put its people directly on the coast and not have to deal with moving everything through Paba. After all, much of what they bought from tropical nations like Taryte was moved on to other nations anywa rathe than staying in Ihhai. The Ihhai also used their move to the south to help out the Pabaps already living there, who previously had not dervied any of the benefits of Ihhai-Paba trade routes since they mostly went through rivers.

The Ihhai in Paba soon learned that Paba's long standing weakness was its people's anatomical differences from the peoples around them. Pabaps (especially one of their subtribes, the Andanese) were the world's smallest people, and they had happened to settle in a part of the world where most of the people around them were unusually tall. of these, the Ihhai were among the tallest of all, but unlike the other peoples neaby such as the Nik, the Tarpabaps, and the western Subumpamese, the Ihhai women were actually taller than their men, quite dramatically so. Pabap men quivered in fear when they saw the armies of their rival nations towering over their heads, but female immigrants from Ihhai wandering around Paba's city streets were a much more comforting sight to look up to. Ihhai men were still taller than Pabap men, but they were very peaceful, as they faithfully obeyed their women and stayed largely indoors. Until the 1900s many of these tribes of tall people had moved into Pabap territory seeing as Paba was a very open and welcoming society, but the Ihhai had largely stayed confined to the mountains because their culture told them not to travel. The immigration into Paba was an exception and was only accomplished with Paba's invitation and diplomats visiting Ihhai to convince the Ihhai people that moving to Paba would help out both nations.

Ihhai-Thaoa relations

Thaoa early on saw Paba's curious relationship with Ihhai and hoped that Thaoa, too, would be able to take part in it. They had never heard of a nation sending diplomats to another nation convincing its people to move in, promising that they would be granted superior status to the natives, and seemingly getting nothing out of the deal for their own. Thaoa was similar to Paba in many ways but did not surround themselves with tall people and their cities were almost 100% Thaoans. They realized Paba must have invited the Ihhai in for a good reason and wanted to do so themselves. Some Thaoans actually claimed that Thaoa itself was Ihhai, even though Thaoa had gotten its start by massacring thousands of people of tribes closely related to the IHhai. Ihhai rejected Thaoa, however, and began concentrating its foreign policy efforts on Paba (they were still officially part of Nama at this time, so relations with the rest of Nama's empire were not seen as foreign).

Language

Phonology

Phonology is similar to Babakiam at its classical stage. In some ways, it could be said that Ihhai made Babakiam what it was. That is, Ihhai is a toneless language that killed the tones of the Gold language and its descendnats in a graident from east to west. Only Khulls remaind tonal. Ihhai resembles Thaoa all in all.

Consonants

/p b m t s n l r č š ž k ŋ x q ħ ʔ h/ 

Note that /b/ and /ž/ persist, as the only voiced non-sonorants, as in both Thaoa (except Palli dialect) and early Babakiam. However, these can be explained as being simply more forcefully pronounced variants of /w/ and /j/, since those sounds are both missing in Thaoa (but reappeared in Baba).

Vowels

/a e i o u/ No diphthongs, which is common for this area. Thaoa actually has diphthongs, meaning it resisted the pressure of Ihhai and its neigfhbors. the diphonthons of Ihhai and Baba are better analyzed as vowel sequences, whereas those of Thaoa cannot be.

Doubled consonants are common, as are clusters of nasal+stop, but there are few consonant clusters other than that. Thus Ihhai could be said to sound a lot like modern Japanese, except that it lacks eve nthe pitch accentof Japanese and has simply word-initial stress unconditionally.

The phonology is thus almoset exactly that of Thaoa, except that Thaoa has phonemic aspiration and allows more consonant clutsrers. Also, Ihhai has /r/ whereas Thaoa retained its parent language's /r/-lessness, borrowing in all Ihhai words with /r/ as being with /l/.