Ogili

Ogili is a family of Khulls languages spoken in the area around the imperial capital of the Khulls Empire. The early name for the city was Ogili, derived from earlier Oḳilî. All five languiages resemble each other very much, as proto-Ogili changed very rapidly while developing from Khulls but fairly slowly after it split apart, as it had reached a much more stable setup.

See also Ogili II, a writeup with an alternative series of sound changes that produces a similar result.

Phonology

Proto-Ogili is a "P-Khulls" language, in the sense that Khulls' labialized consonants became pure bilabial consonants in Ogili. This led to massive phonological collision, because bilabial consonants had already been very common, and Ogili did not touch these at all. Thus Khulls /b bʷ ṗ ṗʷ ḳʷ ġʷ gʷ/ all merged unconditionally as /b/, and /p pʷ kʷ xʷ/ all merged unconditionally as /p/. The loss of labialization led to a splitting of the vowel system into plain and "post-labialized" vowels. Unlike most of its neighbors, in Ogili, vowels were primarily affected by labial consonants occuring after the vowel, rather than before. The post-labialized vowels at first could only occur before labial consonants because of their origin, but this soon ended because final consonants were deleted.

Thus Ogili had only 14 consonants, far less than the 35-40 possessed by Khulls: /p b m f v t d n s z l k g h/. In this case, /g/ varies allophonically between a voiced stop and a voiced fricative. Some Ogili languages have even fewer consonants, the most extreme example being Nókʷ with eight: /p m s l k r t n/.

Though heavily CV, Ogili resembles in many ways Pabappa with tones. Both placenames and common words lose diversity and resemble reduplications, like Khulls xʷupʷīpe becoming Ogili pipípe "snow", and ḳʷagʷā "pine city" (a place name) becoming Babá.

Ogili languages provide most of the toponymy for cities in the nation of Safiz, which is presently Moonshine territory because the Ogili speakers grew more slowly than Moonshines and became outnumbered over a period of 1500 years.

Vowels

Proto-Ogili had /a e i ɔ o u ø y ɨ/. The commonest vowels are /a e i o/. /e/ went from being the least common to one of the most common simply by being immune to all sound changes; there were actually no sound changes that produced any new /e/. All vowels became unrounded ewarly on; a late sound change of /ə/ > /o/ brought /o/ back into the top row from earlier being as rare as /u/ and /y/. (/u/ > /ɨ/, but even this /ɨ/ changes to /i/ in nearly all positoons, making it even rarer.)

table

Phonology

Khulls	pʷ	p	k	kʷ
Ogili	p	p	k	p
Moonshine	p	p	č	k
Rabbit	p	f	č	k
Poswa	pʷ	p	k	kʷ
Pabappa	p	p	p	p

Poswa and Pabappa are not Khulls languages, but they were in close contact with speakers of Khulls-descendant languages and often shared sound changes with them. Poswa and Moonshine are especially close. Also note that these are not unconditional changes, but merely the most common outcomes. In Moonshine for example /k/ can even be reflected as /z/. However the Ogili reflexes are unconditional at least for non-final consonants, and Pabappa's are unconditional except for intervocalic consonants, where /p/ and /pʷ/ are sometimes reflected as /b/.

Ogili occasionally changed pure /k g/ into /p b/, when occurring in words that had grammatically inflected forms with /kʷ gʷ/. Actually, this shift was very common, but since these consonants could only occur finally, they were usually ironed out anyway. The exceptions are just a few fossilized forms, mostly in compounds, where the final consonant was protected. Others include /gahi/ ~ /gapi/ "sword", from ḳăxi, where both forms survived.

Cuklture

See Goga_Ethnographical_Questionnaire.

Unique is that Ogili has multiple groupos of "native" people, unlike most nations with have a majoirity and a ninoiruiy. Ther are e.,g. GOga people in GOga, Moonshines in Safiz, the mythical "Laban" people in some other weilderneress areas, Andanese in Xema (Xema is claimed by Gogas)etc

The most eocnomically powerful styate is known as Amade; it is the driving force behind the Warm Land Project, an effort to make Amade as warm as possible by pushing its way into thr teopics. Thus they want to move the cpaital of their own nation to Baeba, even though it is geographically isolated, because in their plans the colder parts of the empire will all be slaves.

Most areas of Ogili are male-dominated societies with men reliably taller than women. Despite embracing liberal pacifist politics early on, the society is fairly violent at low levels, in part because of the moral looseness associated with Moonshine and Poswob people extending into Ogili. For example, it is a lot more socially acceptable for a man to hit a woman in Moonshine, where women are much taller than men, than in the southwestern desert cultures which have been male-dominated for 20000 years. In Ogili, men are also taller than women, but the peopel are desensitized to male-on-female violence and even to some extent rape by the presence of other peoples living nearby in which it is not nearly such a problem.

Thus despite Ogili being the wealthiest society on the planet it is also one of the least peaceful. However, there are many other reasons for this, such as the very wealth itself, and its concentration along the coast, leaving many poor areas inland.