Oyster language

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See history for non-linguistic information.

Background

See Lenian_languages#Oyster.

A few FILTER people may have settled in baeba or southern Dreamland.

Some Oysters may have spoken Andanic_languages#Proto-Olati_.281300.29_to_Olati-A_.282672.29, from the South Andanic (Olati) branch. This family is very conservative, and shows many similarities with the languages of Atlam, even though Atlam is far away both geographically and genetically. West Andanic and Atla have lack of innovation in common, meaning that they resemble each other because they both still resemble their MRCA even after 2,000 years apart (long branch attraction). It is possible that the Oysters, so proud of their language, find kinship in Atlam even after they slaughtered thousands of soldiers in Lobexon and Kxesh (and perhaps even some in Atlam).

If the language is assumed to be identical to Olati-A (which it probably isnt), then the consonant inventory would be


Labials:     p   b   m   f   v       
Alveolars:   t   d   n   s       l
Palataloids: č   ǯ   ň   š       y
Velars:      k

And the vowel inventory would be /a e i o u/, on two tones, and a long series.

The Oysters likely meet up with a group of settlers speaking a Southwestern Tip language. This group is the furthest west in the tropics, but also settled one area of land further north in the desert.

Both languages had simple syllables and fairly small phoneme inventories, but there were many differences between the two inventories. Southwestern Tip may have had only four vowels, likely /a e i u/, meaning it was unbalanced. Also, Oyster had three tones while Southwestern Tip probably had only two. The consonant inventories were quite different as well: Southwestern Tip had /m̄ n̄ ŋ̄ ŋ g h w/, all unmatched in Oyster; there was also a /b̲/, but it may have still been /mb/ at the time. Meanwhile Oyster had /p f v s č ǯ ň š/ all unmatched in Southwestern Tip. Most of Tip's coronals were palatalized before /e i/, however, so they could count as /č ǯ ň/ for transcription purposes.

If a unified script appears, they may consider /v/ and /w/ to be the same sound, as well as writing the palatals as coronal + /i/.


Notes