Arkihanakh language

Arkihanakh
arMikikxan, Ŧarmosahit arKikxanax
Flag of Arkihan
Pronunciation	[ɐː.mɪ.kɪ.kxɐn]
Ethnicity	Arkihanakh
Native speakers	~30 million  (2019)
Language family	Ekuo-Lahiri Adzo-Neviric Adzamic Arkihanakh
Early forms:	Old Adzamian Arkihanakh
Writing system	Adzo-Neviric
Official status
Official language in	Arkihan, Povania
CWS code	KIKX

Arkihanakh is a language spoken in Arkihan by approximately 30 million people, of which approximately 25 million are native speakers.

Classification

Arkihanakh is a member of the Adzamic branch of the Adzo-Neviric language family, itself a branch of the Ekuo-Lahiri language family.

History

Arkihanakh arose after speakers of Old Adzamian settled the region, and the Neviran conquest separated Arkihan from Tabiqa.

Phonology

Phonemes

	Bilabial	Dental	Coronal	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m		n
Plosive	p b		t d t͡s	k g k͡x
Fricative	f v	θ ð	s z ʃ ʒ	ɕ ʑ	x	h ɦ
Liquid			r	j

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i: ĩ: ɪ ɪ: ɪ̃	ɨ	u: ũ: ʊ ʊ: ʊ̃
Mid	e: ẽ: ɛ ɛ: ɛ̃		o: õ: ʌ ʌ: ʌ̃
Open		ɐ ɐ: ɐ̃	ɑ: ɑ̃:

Phonotactics

• /r/ isn't allowed after vowels.
• Long vowels can only occur in stressed syllables.
• Stress is not phonemic and only occurs in the initial syllable.
• The language is (C)(C)V(C)(C), and /n/ can occur instead of a vowel.

Morphology and syntax

Arkihanakh is highly fusional, with many of the agglutinative affixes of Old Adzamian having fused into a large number of affixes that convey very specific meanings.

Pronouns

There is 159 pronouns in Arkihanakh that mark case, class, number, and for first person plural pronouns, clusivity. On top of that, there are 17 interrogative pronouns, one of which surfaces as a prefix. There are also 15 obviative pronouns which suffix onto their respective verbs.

Nouns

Nouns are marked for case and number. The singular class suffix in Old Adzamian merged with the root noun, so in modern Arkihanakh it is impossible to tell a noun's class from its root alone.

Verbs

Verbs are inflected for location, tense, aspect and mood. Some verbal morphology includes circumfixes.

Syntax

Sentences are either SOV or OSV depending on noun class. More animate nouns come first, and they get more inanimate the further through the sentence you go. The verb always comes last.

Writing and literature

Arkihanakh is written in the Adzo-Neviric script. Spelling is phonemic.