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.

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]	y /j/

Vowels

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

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.

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

• Note: The letters marked with an asterisk (d and b) above are noted as such since they are etymological. As such, they are only used to spell words that came from an *n or an *m, respectively.
• A dakdi (*dakuten) can be added to any kana with a voiceless consonant to make it voiced instead.
• Likewise, the "long" vowels are achieved by adding a small i, or ŭ after the relevant kana. So 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".

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

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.

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 just the product of that somewhat bizarre starting place. It eventually morphed into a collaborative thread over on the CBB (this one to be specific). There people far more interested (and talented) about Japanese and sound changes, and seemingly everything else contributed muchly to the development of this project. Were it not for them, I wouldn't have 11 wonderful noun classes and a sure to be ginormous dumpster fire of verb stuff happening.

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.