Šokazan

Šokazan Teinzenzā Raišen, Mei Teinzenzā
Pronounced:	ˌʃokaˈzan
Timeline and Universe:	Čenzai
Species:	Near-human
Spoken:	Šokaza
Total speakers:	c. 3 million
Writing system:	Šokazan syllabary/Script of Gimerī
Genealogy:	Valley Language Family  Forest Languages  Šokazan   Dīzzen   Langaran  Teryat
Typology
Morphological type:	Fusional
Morphosyntactic alignment:	Ergative (split-s)
Basic word order:	SVO
Credits
Creator:	Brel
Created:	2001

Šokazan was the language spoken by the inhabitants of the country of Šokaza. It was a predominately fusional language, though it gained more isolating elements over time. Šokazan had an SVO word order and was a split-S language.

Name

"Šokazan" is of course an Anglicism of the language's actual name, based on the final name of the land in which it was spoken, Šokaza. The language's real name was Teinzenzā Raišen, "Language of All", or merely Mei Teinzenzā, "The Language". The Šokazans used such general terms because they believed their tongue to be the archetype of all human languages. All others were either pale imitations or debasements of it. The Šokazans did give Peliumeryum considerably more respect, but always found their own tongue ultimately superior.

History

Šokazan became differentiated from the other languages of the Valley Family when the ancestors of the Šokazans migrated, probably due to a population increase that caused them to look for place that could yield more food, from the inland forests to a rich land between the mountains and the sea. The original inhabitants were either destroyed, fled with those Šokazans not willing to stay in the new land (who continued migrating and were the progenitors of the Teryat), or were assimilated into the Šokazan people. The Šokazans devised their own writing system at this time, the Šokazan syllabary, and with it came the first attestations of Old Šokazan.

The next three and a half centuries were mostly uneventful for Šokazan, but with the invention of large ships, its speakers were able to reach new lands about 220 years after the founding of their nation. One of the places they found was Peliumeryum, a nation which was to have a large part in Šokaza's history, as well as that of its language. The Peliumeryum were far more advanced than the Šokazans, and profited from trading with them enough to be willing to teach them some of their knowledge. In the three hundred fifty second year from the beginning of Šokaza, the Honorable Gimerī, who had already learned all that Šokazan schools had to offer about his native language, traveled to Peliumeryum to learn theirs. When he returned nearly two decades later, he brought extensive writings and a proposal to the King with him: an offer to completely reform Šokaza's writing system. He, along with many other scribes employed by the aristocracy, argued that the current syllabary was inadequate for the needs of the language, especially since it had changed so much from the time when it was devised. With the things he had learned, Gimerī said, he could make a far better writing system for his people. The King agreed, and over the years the script of Gimerī replaced the old system. It continued to be utilized until Šokaza's end, and variants of it were used by the Langarans and Okuðaians later.

Contact with the Peliumeryum of course also led to a phenomenon which altered the Šokazan language greatly: loanwords. Some more conservative linguists (and common people) objected to the importing of Peliumeryum words, but it was an ineluctable process. By the time of Šokaza's fall some twenty percent or more of its words came directly from Peliumeryum. The new script of Gimerī, combined with the sudden influx of Peliumeryum words, was the landmark that divided Middle Šokazan from Old Šokazan.

Several more centuries went by, in which many sound and semantic changes that obscured Gimerī's finely detailed script took place. As tension mounted between the erstwhile allies of Šokaza and and Peliumeryum, loanwords came to be seen as despicable, and many were replaced by "authentic" Šokazan forms. When the colony of Čaikaza was founded, its people devised new words to describe natural features not found in their motherland, but these did not generally make their way into the language as a whole.

Soon after the eight hundredth year from Šokaza's founding, a massive natural disaster, graven in the memory of its survivors with the name Great Tumult took place, in which the Šokazan civilization was utterly destroyed and few of its people even survived. This catastrophic downfall was considered to be the end of Classical Šokazan as such, but the language did not fully die out: it was survived by its direct descendants Dīzzen and Langaran, among others.

Related Languages

The "barbarians" to the south and west of Šokaza, who still lived in the same places from which the Šokazans had migrated centuries before, of course spoke languages related to that of the Šokazans. They were, however, never written down before the Great Tumult, so knowledge of them is scant. The Teryat languages were also related to Šokazan, and some of these were studied and written down by Šokazan linguists, who of course used it as an opportunity to show that other languages were mere imitations of their own.

Daughter Languages

The disastrous Great Tumult was considered to be the end of Šokazan as such. The few survivors on the mainland either assimilated into the tribes to the south and west of their former country (people whom only shortly before they had discounted as "barbarians") or managed to find other Šokazans and found tiny city-states. One of these city-states, Okuðai, managed to grow strong and reunify most of the others; its people spoke a language called Dīzzen, which they considered to be the purest form of Šokazan in the "Dim Days" (as they called them). The other city-states had their own languages, each a daughter of Šokazan, but they had few scribes among them, and wrote down little.

The other main daughter language was Langaran. Though its speakers had spoken very dialectal Šokazan while their mother country stood, they best preserved the language after the Great Tumult because Langara still had most of the realm's ancient records, which were lost to everyone else. Even so, Langaran itself underwent no fewer changes after the Tumult than its relatives on the mainland did. But among the noblest and those in the highest echelons of the priesthood, Šokazan was itself preserved and used in rituals and other formal occasions.

Dialects

The form of Šokazan described in this article is the Classical Šokazan of Tłončečī, the capital city, and its vicinity. The major cities of Šokaza each had their own dialect, but rural areas were less divergent. Records tell us of four major rural dialects, each covering a broad swath of the country: the Southwestern, Northeastern, Central, and Čaikazan forms of Šokazan. Southwestern and Northeastern can be seen as occupying two extremes on a continuum of differing linguistic features, while Central was at a point halfway between them (though it possessed unique aspects of its own). Čaikazan was the dialect that was spoken in Čaikaza, and was thus the direct ancestor to Langaran.

See Also

• Šokaza
• Šokazans
• Gimerī