The Tim Ar needed a foil; this is their tongue. It is striking how different and yet how similar the current state of the language is from how it began. XTC is an exercise in the limits of mutual intelligibility; the dialects are incredibly divergent, but, much as with Vietnamese or the various Chinese lects, they all are unified by a written, codified standard. I will also say I had way too much fun with the romanization; it is horrendous, and for that reason I love it.
Xı̋xǒcq Tlar Canà (XTC) is the language of the Canà, who are about as opposite from the Tim Ar as you can get. Residing in the continent of Tethír, the Canà are a fiercely matriarchal society, par for the course for denizens of the lands below the Messerini line. Much of the continent is subject to the Gnár Tőlër Canà (GTC), one of the three superpowers on Íröd.
Ostensibly, there is a standard language that unifies the polity. In practice, the various regional dialects have taken over and dominate daily life. Which one you treat as a prestige dialect depends on who you are, where you come from, and to whom you'd like to ingratiate yourself. There are various dialects and developments thereof; the three most salient are those spoken in Mjüy Bǎong (MB), Gùynâ (Gu), and Gnîcúhȧr (Gn).
Standard XTC had the following initial consonant phonemes:
| LABIAL | ALVEOLAR | PALATAL | VELAR | GLOTTAL | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NASAL | m | n | ɲ gn | ŋ g | |
| STOP | p b | t d | c ɟ j | k | |
| FRICATIVE | ɸ f β v | s x z | ʃ s ʒ gj | h | |
| RESONANT | l |
h is only ever word-initial; internally it's used as a syllable separator, signifying a null onset.
There are also a handful of permitted initial clusters with their own idiosyncratic notations:
It should be noted that there are gender differences in speech: Males devoice tl- to [tɬ-], whereas female speech preserves this cluster as-is.
Only three finals other than the null final were permitted: /ɹ/ (written -r, considered an allophone of l in the coda), /c/ (written -c), and /k/ (written -cq).
Standard XTC features the usual seven-monophthong system:
| FRONT | CENTRAL | BACK | |
|---|---|---|---|
| HIGH | i ı | u | |
| MID-HIGH | e | o | |
| MID-LOW | ɛ ae | ɔ ao | |
| LOW | a |
Base orthographic i is rendered ı as the single overdot is the marker of tone D1 (q.v.).
There are two permissible diphthongs:
The onglides j and w can occur before any nucleus unless they are homorganic (i.e., the sequences ji and wu are disallowed), and are written i (with the overdot) and u.
Vowels can also be nasalized. This is indicated in one of several ways depending on the presence and nature of the final.
Tone in XTC is, for historical reasons, grouped into two registers of four apiece. The exact realization of the tones is not clear as sound recordings from that era are scarce; the dialects realize them differently from each other (and in any event do not distinguish all eight).
| A1 a | B1 ǎ | C1 á | D1 ȧ |
|---|---|---|---|
| A2 à | B2 â | C2 a̋ | D2 ä |
In case of a digraph, only the first element of the nucleus (i.e., the a) takes the diacritic: âe, ào.