Semitic Korean
| Semitic Korean Hallusan | |
| Spoken in: | Korea |
| Conworld: | alternate world |
| Total speakers: | 25 million |
| Genealogical classification: | Afro-Asiatic
|
| Basic word order: | SOV |
| Morphological type: | mixed |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | Nominative-Accusative |
| Writing system: | |
| Created by: | |
| Robert Marshall Murphy | 2013 A.D. |
After inexplicably acquiring gunpowder, Queen Gudit Zagwe of the Ethiopian Empire turned her attention to the non-Christian East. Allegedly, she paid to have Taizu of Song assassinated, and quickly gained control of China. The reign of Semitic people's in Asia went on for hundreds of years. Halfway through that period, in a small independent peninsula, the Korean people invented their own script, which better suited their language. Today, Hangtav serves Korean people as their primary writing system, alongside the more ancient, logographic, Semitic-Chinese pictograms.
Phonology
Consonants
| Consonants | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labial | Alveolar | Post-Alv. | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||||||||||
| Nasal | m | n | *ŋ | |||||||||||||
| Stop | unvoiced | p⁽ʰ⁾ | t⁽ʰ⁾ | k⁽ʰ⁾ | ||||||||||||
| voiced | b | d | g | |||||||||||||
| ejective | p' | t' | k' | |||||||||||||
| Sibilant | unvoiced | s | tʃ⁽ʰ⁾ | |||||||||||||
| voiced | z | dʒ | ||||||||||||||
| ejective | tʃ' | |||||||||||||||
| Fricative | unvoiced | (f⁽ʰ⁾) | (θ⁽ʰ⁾) | (ʃ⁽ʰ⁾) | (xʰ) | h | ||||||||||
| voiced | (b) | (ð) | (ʒ) | (ɣ) | ||||||||||||
| Approximant | w | j | ||||||||||||||
| Liquid | l ɾ | |||||||||||||||
Hallusan consonants have a number of things that come in three's. There are three nasals: m, n, and ŋ (though ŋ may only come in the coda of a syllable or in the middle of a word). There are three sets of three stops: labial, alveolar, and velar. Each of these comes in voiced, unvoiced, and ejective varieties (i.e. b, p, p', d, t, t', g, k, k'). There are three post-alveolar sibilants, which correspond to the English ch, j, and the ejective ch'.
There are also a number of things with come in two's. There are two approximants: w, and j. There are two liquids: l and ɾ (the "Asian-R", found in the middle of the English word 'water'). There are only two alveolar sibilants: s and z (i.e there is no ejective s'). The voiced and unvoiced two-thirds of every triple has a fricative version that occurs utterance-initially and -finally. ɾ only occurs in syllable onsets, while l only occurs in the coda or geminated.
h is the only glottal consonant.
w and j only occur in certain situations described under Writing System.
Vowels
| PAH Vowels | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Central | Back | ||||||||
| High | i | u | ||||||||
| High-mid | e | ə | o | |||||||
| Low-mid | ɛ | ʌ | ||||||||
| Near-low | a | |||||||||
Vowel length is no longer contrastive.
Writing System
In 1446, after considerable linguistic investigation, Korean thinkers constructed a writing system perfectly suited to their phonemic inventory.
| Consonants | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labial | Alveolar | Post-Alv. | Velar | Glottal | ||||||||||||
| Nasal | ㅁ | ㄴ | ㅇ | |||||||||||||
| Stop | unvoiced | ㅂ | ㄷ | ㄱ | ||||||||||||
| voiced | ㅃ | ㄸ | ㄲ | |||||||||||||
| ejective | ㅍ | ㅌ | ㅋ | |||||||||||||
| Sibilant | unvoiced | ㅅ | ㅈ | |||||||||||||
| voiced | ㅆ | ㅉ | ||||||||||||||
| ejective | ㅊ | |||||||||||||||
| Approximant | ㅎ | |||||||||||||||
| Liquid | ㄹ | |||||||||||||||
| PAH Vowels | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Central | Back | ||||||||
| High | 이 | 우 | ||||||||
| High-mid | 에 | 으 | 오 | |||||||
| Low-mid | 얘 | 어 | ||||||||
| Near-low | 아 | |||||||||
ㅇ does double-duty as Ø in the syllable onset and ŋ in the syllable coda. The chart to the right uses it as a place-holder, to make the vowels most clear.
Diphthongs
Not all diphthongs are possible in Semitic Korean. The following chart shows no initial consonant (for clarity's sake), but any consonant can precede any legal diphthong.
| 아 | 어 | 이 | 에 | 얘 | 오 | 우 | 으 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /j/ | 야 | 여 | No | 예 | 얘 | 요 | 유 | No |
| /w/ | 와 | 워 | 위 | 웨 | 왜 | No | No | 의 |
Logograms
During the long reign of the Semitic people in China, the logograms of the country were co-opted to represent the sounds of the Ge'ez language. These characters were used in Korea for a long time, where the sound was corrupted again. As the Prestige Language, Semitic Chinese became an additional layer on top of the native Korean words. For example
- 頭 represents the Sino-Ge'ez sound 톱/t'ov and the indigenous Korean word 머리 - "head".
- 國 represents the Sino-Ge'ez sound 꾜/gyo and the indigenous Korean word 나라 - "nation".
- 人 represents the Sino-Ge'ez sound 담/tam and the indigenous Korean word 사람 - "human".
To add to the complexity, there are traditions throughout Far East Asia, where certain names were chosen for foreign words because of sounds or associations. Hence, America is called 톱꾜/t'ov-gyo and an American person is a 톱꾜담/t'ov-gyo-tam. This can be written in Korean characters, but in newspapers and other elitist publications, it is not uncommon to encounter the logograms 頭國人 instead.
