Languages of Tarwas

Tarwas is a nation founded in the year 2144 by Tarpabap people who had immigrated through Paba. For more than 5000 years, it had resisted being swallowed up by the empires around it, until finally voluntarily joining The Poswob Empire around the year 7700. For the next thousand years after that, it used its strategic location (just east of Blop, the imperial capital) to present itself as an alternate way of life for Poswobs wishing to escape the poor living conditions in Blop and other Poswob cities. The Poswob Empire refers to its divisions as states, not nations, but most people in Tarwas still consider Tarwas to be an independent nation that merely has signed a mutual assistance pact with the Poswobs.

Language

Evolution from 1700AD to 3100AD

The Tarwasta people changed their language many times. During the peak of their power, they spoke a language of the Gold family. It was of the same branch as Babakiam, and despite breaking off early (around 2144 AD) it shared the change of /l/ > /w/ that led to Babakiam having no liquid phonemes and beginning Babakiam's transformation into a language that sounded like baby talk. This also removed the dative case from the lanuggae, since the resulting suffix of /w/ interfered with many other changes.

However, Tarwas also shared many sound changes with Khulls. These were independent developments, as the Gold language's vowel system happened to be unstable in such a way that a certain series of vowel changes occurred independently in the two languages with only minor differences in detail. The changes involved included /u ū/ > /o ō/, /ə/ > /u/, /ai əi/ > /ē e/, /au əu/ > /ō ū/. One minor difference with Khulls is in that Tarwa /aa/ > /ā/ rather than remaining distinct.

NOTE, IT IS POSSIBLE THAT əu could be /o/ since there are more diphthongs ending in /u/ than there were in Khulls, due to the /l/ > /w/ shift. For example, a common diphthong was /iw/, which never existed in Khulls. /iw/ would almost certainly have changed to /ū/, leaving əu free to change into /o/ (despite /u/ also changing to /o/).

The labialized conosnants became pure labials, also as in Babakiam. However, these were rare, since this sound change affected only true labialized conosnants, not the far more common sequences of /kw/, etc, that arose when Baba and Khulls both shifted srquences of /kua/, etc, to /kʷa/.

Tarwa also shared with Khulls the shift of /b d ġ/ > /ʕʷ r g/, though the /ʕʷ/ phoneme came to be spelled as /v/. This, again, was an independent development, not related to areal transmission from Khulls speakers. Nor was it related to Baba's similar shift, which, on the other hand, soon moved on to complete deletion of all but the labial. That is, Khulls and Tarwa shifted /b d ġ/ to /v r g/ (allowing for spelling difference), whereas Babakiam shifted /b d ġ/ > /v ð g/ and then on to /v 0 0/, losing all but the labial. By this time, the language had already become toneless, unlike Baba.

Further sound changes included the creation of voiced stops from intervocalic weakening of nasal+stop clusters. The voiceless ejective /ḳ/ came to be spelled /q/, but its voiced version was simply /ġ/, merging with that of the plain /k/.Tones did not affect voicing, however.

Thus, by 3100 AD, the Tarwa language had the consonants

Labials: /p b m f v w/

Coronals: /t d n s r/

Dorsals: /k ġ x g ḳ ʕ/

And the vowels /a e i o u ā ē ī ō ū/ (The local alphabet used a i u e o as its vowel order, however, due to Andanese influence.)

High tones caused following fricatives to become affricates; the resulting /kx/ shifted quickly on to /k/, thus filling a gap (*/ki/) that had been in the language for several thousand years. Probably also /pf bv/ > /p b/.

Note that in general, more than half of all nouns had high tone onf the first syllable, so this will lead to a lot of geminates, many of which must be pushed back out.

Note that final -k (aspirated) changed to -š and then on to -s because the high tone sound change had caused the inherited final -s to become -ts, which soon became -t.

Examples of sound changes from Gold to Old Tarwa

• tìsi "cotton" ---> titsi
• kùsa "marble (stone)" ---> šotsa
• ʕătu "boil (skin)" ---> hato
• ġassa (name of a league; see Ikassa) ---> žattsa
• kidən "to bend over" ---> širun
• pàna "snail, slug" ---> panna
• nĭgʷu "fruit, vegetable" ---> nivo
• duk "flower, blossom" ---> ros
• tək "gem, crystal" ---> tus
• maʕin "soap" ---> main (thus, vowel sequences such as /ai/ reappear)
• ṁaġin "pattern" ---> bažin (tentative; assumes all syllabic nasals changed into sequences such as /bm/)
• lăgi "backpack, toolbox" ---> waži
• piḳlagi "purse" ---> pipaži (assumes kw > kʷ > p; this /kw/ could only occur over morpheme boundaries. Note that Babakiam did *not* participate in this shift, and that Tarwa and Baba were connected at the time. If Tarwa also does not participate, the word remains pikwaži.)
• kùgi "paper" ---> šoži

The use of the phoneme /r/ came to be associated with Tarwas and its physically distinct people; however, Tarwas soon shifted /r/ to /l/, to match its neighbors.

Interaction with Babakiam

The Babakiam language at this time had a larger consonant inventory than Tarwa, but many of Babakiam's consonants were rare and found mostly intervocalically. As Babakiam's phonology shrank, it became smaller than Tarwa's. Tarwa at this time had /d v r h/, four phonemes which were present in Babakiam in 3100AD but soon disappeared from Babakiam. (However, the /r/ was not really present in Babakiam unless it is considered to somehow be /ð/).

Evolution from 3100AD to 4200AD

The year 3100 was roughly at a dividing point for the civilizations of both the Tarwastas and the Pabaps: see Lantern_Empire#Relations_with_Tarwas. This is the period of time when the light-skinned Lantern people began to colonize the land of the dark-skinned Tarwastas to their east, even as they themselves were being colonized by a league of dark-skinned tribes to their west, the Crystals. Note that despite their historical connection to Paba, only a subset of the Lantern people spoke Pabappa (then called Babakiam); most had instead adopted the Khulls language from the Crystals.

Tarwa was a fairly soft spoken lanuggae in 3100AD, but over the next thousand years it became even softer. The vowel system changed little during this time; like that of Khulls and Thaoa, it had become stable. (By contrast, Babakiam had left the parent language's vowel system mostly intact.) The (aspirated) voiceless stop /k/ shifted to /š/ in most positions, leaving the ejective voiceless stop /ḳ/ free to shift to a plain /k/. However, the old aspirate remained as /k/ in some positions, particularly clusters in which it was never possible to distinguish the two sounds to begin with. For example, the cessative aspect infix remained -okt- rather than shifting to *-ošt-.

At about the same time, the voiced stop /ġ/ merged with the voiced fricative /g/ and both shifted to /ž/ in most positions, leaving the language with no voiced velar fricative. Then, /ʕ/ disappeared or became voiceless, meaning that the lanugage now had a contrast between /x/ and /h/. There was still no /l/.

Climate and geography

Tarwas has a very simple climate regime. The main state of Tarwas stretches from 30°N to 35°N and has no perceptible differences in temperature from the north end to the south end. The average temperature in winter is 0°C, in summer it is 20°C, and year-round the average is 10°C. This is because the expected temperature gain towards the south is exactly compensated for by the smooth upward slope of the land. The same thing occurs to the west in Nama.

Since temperature variation is insignificant from one end of the region to the other, the wildlife and plant life is also similar. However, the southern end of Tarwas experiences a moderate dry season during the summer, whereas towards the north it is wet all year round.