Vingdagese

Vingdagese Vưng-Ḍác Tǫ
Pronounced:	Native: /vɪŋ.ɗaːg tõ/ Anglicized: /vɪŋ.dəg.iːz/
Timeline and Universe:	Alternate Earth
Species:	Human
Spoken:	Carnassus
Writing system:	"Logography"
Genealogy:	Language Isolate
Typology
Morphological type:	Isolating
Morphosyntactic alignment:	Direct Inverse
Basic word order:	SVO; Head-Initial
Credits
Creator:	Thrice Xandvii | ✎
Created:	September 2017

Phonology

Vưng-Ḍác Tǫ (File:VDT-tox.png) has 17 distinct consonants in its inventory (with a bit of allophony) and has 14 vowel phonemes. The vowel space is divided into 3 groups, namely: the a-group, i-group, o-group. This gives Vưng Ḍác Tǫ a rather large range of possible syllables despite the fact that clusters are limited and most words are only one syllable in length with a smattering of two syllable compounds.

Consonants

		Labial	Coronal	Dorsal	Laryngeal
Nasal	Short	m [m]	n [n]	ng [ŋ]
	Long	mm [mː]	nn [nː]	nng [ŋː]
Plosive		p [p ~ b]	t [t ~ d]	c [k ~ g ~ q]	Ø / ʼ [ʔ ~ q]
Implosive		ḅ [ɓ]	ḍ [ɗ]	ġ [ɠ]
Fricative		v [v ~ w]	dh [ð]	j [ʝ]
Rhotic			r [ɾ ~ r]

Vowels

	Plain	Lax	Long	Nasal	Diphthong
A-Group	a [a]	e [ɛ]	á [aː]	ą [ã]	ay [ɑɪ̯]
I-Group	i [i]	ư [ɪ]	é [eː]	į [ĩ]
O-Group	o [o]	ơ [ɔ]	ú [uː]	ǫ [õ]	oy [ɔɪ̯ ~ oɪ̯]

Phonotactics

The general description of the syllable unit in Vưng-Ḍác Tǫ is the following: (C)(r, w)V(P, N, F). There are, of course, some provisos that go along with that generic description. Many of the constraints and other changes to that basic structure are described in the following section on allophony.

Allophony

Some general allophonic rules (as well as mentions of orhography in the romanization):

• If /k/ appears in a syllable before a vowel belonging to the o-group, it becomes /q/ (and is written as such).
• If a glottal stop ends a syllable, it becomes /q/ and is written as such.
  • Therefore, if a syllable ends in q it came from a glottal stop, however if it begins a syllable it came from /k/.
• Long nasal consonants cannot form clusters, nor can they occur in the coda of a syllable.
• Implosive consonants cannot form clusters.
• When initial, the rhotic is trilled, when it appears in consonant clusters it is tapped.
• If a vowel would begin a syllable, it instead begins with /ʔ/, which is unwritten.
• If a glottal stop begins the second syllable in a two syllable compound, the consonant is written as an apostrophe.
• Stops that appear in the coda of a syllable are voiced, however the spelling isn't changed (the /ʔ/ → /q/ situation being an exception).
• The o-group's diphthong's two realizations are in free variation and depend on the speaker.

Another allophonic variation occurs in two-syllable compound words (such as the language's name). Whenever an implosive appears second in one of these two-syllable compounds, it laxes the vowel in the first position of the compound if it is a plain vowel.

Grammar

Description of grammar to come... some time. In the meantime, here's an example, I guess.

Example One:

File:VDT-tox.pngFile:VDT-tox.pngFile:VDT-cvo'c.pngFile:VDT-prax.pngFile:VDT-cvo'c.png

Ḍúj-ca

/ɗuːʝ.ka

ḍúj-ca

neg-int

tǫtǫ-ġa

tõ.tõ.ɠa

tǫ~tǫ-ġa

to speak~freq-imp

cvơc

kwɔɡ

cvơc

1SG

ni

ni

ni

or

prą

pɾã

prą

son

cvơc-tre.

kwɔɡ.tɾɛ/

cvơc-tre

1SG-gen

Don't (keep) speak(ing) to me or my son (again)!

Script & Characters

Vingdagese/Script

Lexicon

—For a partial list of words in Vưng-Ḍác Tǫ, see: Lexicon.

Commentary and discussion of words in the language will go here.

Creator Comments

Vưng-Ḍác Tǫ is a language whose script is inspired by the real-world design of Tangut. This language is spoken by peoples living on the world of Carnassus. It too is believed to be an isolate, like the majority of the languages spoken on Carnassus.

This language began life with working with the Tangut script. Obviously, as this type of thing so often does, it inspired me to want to make a language to match. The obstacle, however, was how does one use such a complex stroke-heavy written script like Tangut in such a way that it begins to look unique, yet keeps the aesthetic? This is still a problem as the script and language develop, however it is not an insurmountable one. At present, I have ripped apart many Tangut characters into some base parts and components and have begun to stitch them back together again. Generally, this consists of the creation of two parts that are composed of chunks of the 3-part Tangut characters and then placed back together in such a way as to create a 2-part character. As is clear in the above chart, each character has a pretty distinct left- and right-half. As to what those will mean or how the script will ultimately function is still somewhat debatable. I am beginning to think that one aspect will have to do with the meaning in some way, while the other the sound, but this would take a great deal of coordination and logical organization of the constituent pieces. Maybe this will begin to develop as characters are chosen for disparate meanings and then later I can glue things together logically to make this system look more cohesive as it goes. Another key feature was the addition of some pieced together elements to make it look just a bit more "Chinese." One of the aspects of that aim is the "square" as well as the "hat" glyph form.