DELTA LANGUAGE (IGOSH XOMII O)

Kui dodoi! Xoi kamlezhum rarian go omo zhai [Igosh Xomii O]!
Kyokoshar xoio mo, laxoshar xush el, xoruoiu aba bele bele igosh nim sha, ga xoi mano lendian go ewo zhai gyo nim.

Welcome! Let me show you how the Delta language works!
Across my career, around 5 years, I've changed a lot about this language but I'm happy with how it is now.

Introduction

Delta is one of the most prevalent languages of Ogyon, spoken across the Xomii (native word for the Delta) and on the island of Nolgosh. As the Delta people's history has been built upon the Xomii that they call home, this language has traveled widely across the region. This also means that the language has quite a few seafaring idioms.

Linguistically, Delta is an inflectional, slightly fusional language that has nineteen consonants (four of those are palatalized stops), and six vowels. Verbs are inflected for tense and subject, and can be additionally marked for perfect tense, conditional, presumptive, and imperative mood. It has a generally VSO word order, postpositions, and commonly derives its adjectives from verbs. (It is also the language I know the best and have developed the most, all things considered!)

Phonology

The Delta language features nineteen consonants and six vowels. They are as follows:

Romanization

NOTES

• In most dialects, nasalization is common, especially in stressed syllables ending with nasals like the infinitive -ian.
• Especially in Nolgosh, Delta vowels become heavily nasalized when preceding a nasal consonant. Nolgosian Delta also observes /ã/ being pronounced as [ɐ̃].
• Velar crestrals appear in morpheme boundaries where /n/ comes before /g/.
• With casual speech, lenition may occur to the plosives /d/, /b/, and /g/ to [ð], [β], and [ɣ] respectively.
• Sometimes, /i/ will appear as an initial and could be shortened to [j], but is very often treated as a distinct [i] sound.
• Vowel œ is romanized here as oe and will be romanized as such throughout. This is also because there is no /oe/ diphthong in Delta.

There are also diphthongs such as ai, oi, ei, ui, uo that are commonly seen,

and triphthongs oii, oiu, oio, uoi that are commonly seen, especially in the verbs.

Delta originally used to be a five-vowel system, but used to distinguish vowels by length. The vowel oe exists due to a shift in the /o:/ sound, the diphthong ei came from /e:/, and the diphthong uo came from /u:/. There is also ii which came from /i:/, which is not treated as having length, but added stress in words, and takes up two morae. (More on that in a bit!)

Delta also puts stress on the penultimate syllable of a word, except for words that end in /n/, where the last syllable is stressed. Compare kazha KA-zha to kazhan ka-ZHAN. This penultimate pattern is also broken by some diphthongs depending on how many morae they are perceived to have.

Phonemically, there are some diphthongs that take one mora, and others that take more than one, due to the history with vowel length.

ONE MORA: ai, oi

TWO MORAE: io, ia, ie, iu, ei, uo, ui, oe, ii

Phonotactics

Syllable structure can be seen as CVM, as only some consonants can serve as the coda. It allows for no consonant clusters outside of syllable boundaries.

C = p, b, m, t, d, n, r, sh, zh, l, k, g, x, q, w, gy, ky, py, by

V = a, e, i, o, u, ai, ei, oi, ui, uo, oe

M = sh, zh, l, r, n, m

It's important to note that many consonant clusters can only be seen in morpheme boundaries, like in the word kamshunum, where the /mʃ/ cluster simply does not exist in a root word. Consonant clusters can exist on their own, such as in pampian and lendian, however.

Syntax

Delta's word order is mainly VSO, but OVS when there is a direct subject pronoun.

OH also, brackets are written on proper nouns, so I'm doing it here too.

EXAMPLE:

• Shomolu [Ipyo] [Murzhim]. "Ipyo saw Murzim."
• Loi shomolu [Ipyo]. "Ipyo saw it/zem."

Grammar

Delta has a long list of verb conjugations that mark for person, tense, and mood (indicative, conditional, presumptive). Due to this, Delta is pro-drop in a lot of examples. Using the pronoun puts more emphasis on that pronoun, however.

EXAMPLE:

• Loi shomoiu aba. "I saw it."
• Loi shomoiu xo aba. "It was I who saw it."

Delta also features a 4th person, marked "4" here. It is used in constructions to mention any sort of nondescript person or thing, much like how we'd use "one", or "someone", or "something" in English. The suffix used for 4th person derives from the word for "one", iwi.

EXAMPLE:

• Oi oliwelo loi tilian. "One shouldn't have to deal with that."
• Zhe pikiwe nazh, omowe shu ne? "If someone touches that, what happens?"

The verb conjugations are as follows:

Used for general facts, saying it how it is, most of daily conversation. It is the default mood, such that I'd often just not mark a suffix as .IND in glosses when the verb is indicative.

Subjunctive mood shows the intent or desire of the subject towards an action, combining saying that one "wants to do" and saying that one "would do" something.

EX: Shunoem kui gyol, xoi lezhumii ne? "I want to come with you, will you let me?" / "I would come with you, will you let me?"

This is the most common way to express desire, with the word zhemian which literally translates to "to want" more focused on more long-term desires or wishes, like in:

EX: Borum mandakian zhe zhemum zhol. "You can leave if you want to."

The subjunctive is also omitted if the person doing the wanting is not the subject.

EX: Zhemum kui parian Ipyo (al) ne? "Do you want Ipyo to help you?"

It can also be used to assume the desire of the subject.

EX: Qutoluom (e nazh pol). "Ze would have gone in." / "Ze wanted to go in."

Used to talk about information that is assumed or presumed to happen. It is also used to show that one has deduced the information they're talking about.

EXAMPLE:

• Qutoluwe aba (e nazh pol). "Ze must have gone in."
• Zhe qutoluwe aba e nazh pol, naizhowe zhol gyo nim. "If ze had gone in there, then ze is (should be) there now."

Here, the speaker believes that ze did go in somewhere, based on indirect evidence or something else. Essentially, presumptive is used when you can assume that something is true based on the context, but still shows at least a miniscule amount of uncertainty or indirectness.

It's also used in conditional statements that would be in the classic "if/then" style in English.

EX: Zhe zhotishiiwe e nim i, mishi shomoriiwe. "If we meet here, they'll see us."

Don't be scared! The conditional and presumptive moods can be seen as just the indicative forms with the suffixes om and we respectively, as these differences are simply changes as the suffixes started to glue to each other.