Merar
- Not to be confused with Meromo.
Merar was a nation of people who had immigrated from Paba to Subumpam during the late stages of the Vegetable War after they had pushed the battlefronts westward out of Paba. After the war they stayed in Subumpam and married Subumpamese women. THey set up a new government stating that only military officers were allowed to hold government posts.
Some Tarpabaps may have also spoken Paleo-Pabappa.
Language
The Merar language was also known as Tarpabappa. It was identical to standard Pabappa at the time of the war; the language had not yet dropped the intervocalic non-labial voiced fricatives /ð z g/, which meant that the number of syllables in Merar words was usually the same as their ancestral forms in the Gold language. After the split, Pabappa underwent this change and Merar did not, leading to an unusually early loss of mutual intelligibility between the two languages. Thus, what became of Merar resembled later Pabappa very little.
Common Central Subumpamese (i.e. Bipabumese) remained the common language of the Subumpamese people after the conquest. Later on, many Merar people learned Khulls, Pabappa, or both; and thus Tarpabappa monolinguality came to be associated only with people who were ethnically Merar but locked out of access to the ruling class and its power.
Phonology
Consonants
Merar had a fairly large consonant inventory, but was unusual in that it lacked both /l/ and /r/ sounds. However, there was a distinction between a true /w/ and a pharyngealized rounded approximant, often spelled ʕʷ, but which in foreign words is often transliterated r. However, this sound had begun to lose both its rounding and its pharyngealization early on, and some speakers did not distinguish it from the otherwise rare sound /v/.
PLAIN Bilabials: p ṗ m f v w Alveolars: t d n s z dʰ Rounded alveolars: tʷ dʷ nʷ Palataloids: š ž y Velars: k ḳ ŋ h g Postvelars: ħ ʕ
The unusual voiced aspirate dʰ arises from the consonant cluster /hd/ in the Gold language; there was no corresponding bʰ or ġʰ because in the Gold language, both of those stops were restricted to word-initial position and to unstressed syllables directly following a long vowel, which meant that there could not be an /h/.
The voiced stop d was pronounced as a fricative, [ ð], between vowels. The vowel system was the same as Gold.
The language divides into East and West branches, with the East branch covering occupied Thaoa and the West branch Subumpam. The Subumpamese adult male population was almost eliminated, so the surviving Subumpamese language was the speech of women. Since both the Tarpabaps and the Subumpamese had been primarily male-led, Subumpamese fell out of use. Thaoa's population survived mostly intact, but their language was also suppressed in its homeland and survived only as Palli and Sakhi, both spoken outside Thaoa;s original honme territory/.
Proto-Merar (2674 AD) to Western Tarpabappa
Bilabials: p ṗ m f v w Alveolars: t d n s z dʰ Rounded alveolars: tʷ dʷ nʷ Palataloids: š ž y Velars: k ḳ ŋ h g Postvelars: ħ ʕ
- The labialized alveolars tʷ dʷ nʷ shifted to kʷ ġʷ m.
- The voiced alveolar stop d shifted to ð between vowels. Then dʰ became d.
- The ejectives ṗ ḳ shifted to b q.
Proto-Merar (2674 AD) to Eastern Tarpabappa
This language is the superstratum of Thaoa.
Bilabials: p ṗ m f v w Alveolars: t d n s z dʰ Rounded alveolars: tʷ dʷ nʷ Palataloids: š ž y Velars: k ḳ ŋ h g Postvelars: ħ ʕ
- The voiced stop d shifted to l. Then dʰ shifted to d. ?
- The velar fricative h came to be spelled x.
History
- see here.
Thaoa's consoinant inventory in 2674 AD was
Labials: pʰ p b m f v w Alveolars: tʰ t d n s z l Palataloids: č ǯ ň y Velars: kʰ k ŋ x g Postvelars: qʰ q h
Eastern SUbumpamese was
Bilabials: p b m f Alveolars: t d n s l c ʒ Palataloids: č ǯ ň š ž y Velars: k ŋ Postvelars: q h
