AVDIO VIDEO DISCO

Classical Khaya

META

The Khaya languages' raison d'être is that I wanted to make another logographic script--but not just any logographic script: I wanted to make something in the vein of Classical Mayan. It also provides another substrate for the Tim Ar-O languages to pull from.

Believe it or not, the similarity of "Khaya" to "Maya" was coïncidental. I didn't mean to model the Khaya's name off the Maya's.

IN-UNIVERSE

Classical Khaya (CK) was originally spoken from roughly 1750 BC - 1200 BC in an area centered around the Khaya Plateau in Matanhír.

Phonology

Consonants

CK had the following set of consonant phonemes:

 LABIAL  CORONAL  DORSAL  RADICAL 
 NASAL  m  n  ŋg ĝ  ɴɢ ǧ 
 PLOSIVE  p ph ph p’ b  t th th t’ d  k kh kh k’ g  q qh qh q’ ɢ ġ 
 FRICATIVE  f  s  h 
 LIQUID  w  l  j y 

Vowels

There were just three vowels in CK: a, i, and u. There was no length, quality, tonal, or phonation distinction in these vowels.

Syllable structure

The CK syllable was of the form (C)V(R/F), where:

  • C is any consonant,
  • V is any vowel,
  • R is any resonant, that is to say, any nasal or liquid, and
  • F is any fricative.

Allophony

Some allophony can be observed to have occurred in CK:

  • When adjacent to /w/, /u/ became [o]. Similarly, when adjacent to /j/, /i/ became [e]; these altered vowels are written as such. This only occurred with the vowels' respective semivowels; the sequences /wi/ and /ju/ remained as such.

  • Nasals assimilated in place to a following consonant.

  • A sequence of two unlike semivowels became a geminate of the second; i.e. the sequences /wj jw/ became [jj ww].

  • Front and back velars displayed regressive assimilation.

  • Voiced or prenasalized plosives became devoiced when standing immediately before a fricative.

  • Original /a/ fronted to [æ] when standing before /j/.

Numbers

CK counted in base-twelve. The numbers from one to twelve are:

 fiĝ  'one'  ǧul  'seven' 
 liǧu  'two'  ya  'eight' 
 p'af  'three'  ǧafa  'nine' 
 at'u  'four'  fi  'ten' 
 k'in  'five'  thul  'eleven' 
 gi  'six'  wiqhu  'twelve' 

A few higher-order numerals are known; 144 (122) was t'im, 123 was p'owlu, 124 was thuy, and 125 was phuim.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

CK featured the following set of personal pronouns:

 ahi  1SG   qu  2SG.M   qu may  2SG.F   ga  3SG 
 ĝu  1DL.INCL   qilu  2DL.M   qilu may  2DL.F   ey  3DL 
 t'aǧ  1DL.EXCL 
 mu  1PL.INCL   qal  2PL.M   iqim  2PL.F   q'uh  3PL 
 nil  1PL.EXCL 

Dialectally, the forms ga may and ey may are found for female third-person singular or dual referents. The third-person plural feminine is variously recorded as uk'um, ik'im, and k'uh may. All the aforesaid forms were considered nonstandard, however, by the scribal class.