Harish language

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Harish language
Harle Tally
EthnicityHarish people
Native speakers38,000,000  (no date)
Language family
Tzulhonic
  • Central-Tzulhon
    • Harish language
Early forms:
Old Harish
CWS codexbf

The Harish language is a language spoken in Tzulhon by the Harish people, it is the de facto official language of Tzulhon.

Classification

Harish language belongs to the Central Tzulhon branch of Tzulhonic language family.

History

Prehistory

The Tzulhonic family of languages, of which Harish is a member, are hypothesized to derive from a single ancestor language termed Proto-Tzulhonic, spoken sometime between 5,000 and 1,000 BCE (estimates vary). Over time, Proto-Tzulhonic split into various daughter languages, which themselves continued to change and diverge, yielding yet more descendants. One of these descendants is the reconstructed Proto-Central-Tzulhon, from which the Central Tzulhon languages developed around 1000 BCE-1 CE. Current models assume that some Proto-Central-Tzulhon dialects evolved during the first millennium BCE.

Old and Middle Harish

The earliest extant text in Harish is from the 6th century. The Harish language spoken in the period from the earliest record up to around 1100s is referred to as Old Harish. The Harish language spoken in the period from around 1100s up to the 16th century is referred to as Middle Harish. Following a period of unification, the Harish of the 16th to the 17th centuries is sometimes referred to as Classical Harish, although many linguists simply refer to Harish language from the 17th century to today as Modern Harish.

Throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era, the most important influences on the Harish lexicon came from Ngerupic languages. Harish borrowed a considerable number of words from Ngerupic languages, especially from Middle Kwang, as well as a minor influence from other Tzulhonic languages spoken in other areas of Tzulhon.

The Kwang Logography was used as the working language of science, literature, law, and administration in the Republic of Tzulkeyo and later the Republic of Hareland during the middle ages; however, many lower class Harish people were illiterate due to fundamental differences between the Harish and Kwang languages, which greatly impeded the spread of knowledge and the understanding of laws and governmental orders among the commoners. To solve this problem, the Mani Abugida was introduced by merchants in the 8th century to write documents in Harish, and the Mani Abugida used among Harish speakers eventually evolved into the Onzo Alphabet. The name Onzo is from the Old Harish adjective omso, which is derived from the Old Harish word omi "people" and means "popular, of people" in Old Harish.

Modernization

Phonology

Phonemes

Labial Dental Alveolar Post-alveolar and Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasals m n
Plosives and Affricates p t͡s t t͡ʃ k
Fricatives f v s ʃ h
Sonorants r l j
Front Central Back
Close i u
Mid e o
Open a

Diphthongs: /ai/ /au/ /ei/ /eu/ /oi/ /ou/

Phonotactics

The syllable structure is relatively simple, the maximum possible syllable is (C)V(C)

Only vowels or coronal consonants may end a word, and most words end in a consonant end in coronal sonorants /n/, /r/ and /l/.

Harish is a syllable-timed language, there are no obvious distinctions between stressed and unstressed syllables. The primary stress usually falls on the penultimate syllable of a word.

Morphology and syntax

Morpholopgy

The morphology of Harish is mostly analytic; however, traces of inflections remain.

Nouns

Nouns don't decline for case or gender, but decline for number and definiteness.

Below is the decline for nouns:

o-nouns:

  • indefinite singular: -o
  • indefinite plural: -i(older -io)
  • definite singular: -ato
  • definite plural: -azi(older -(a)zio)

yo-nouns:

  • indefinite singular: -yo
  • indefinite plural: -si(older -sio)
  • definite singular: -to
  • definite plural: -zi(older -(a)zio)

consonant-nouns:

  • indefinite singular: -Ø
  • indefinite plural: -i(older -io)
  • definite singular: -(a)to
  • definite plural: -(a)zi(older -(a)zio)

There are relics of the older genitive case, but the genitive case only appears in some set phrases or in some formal writings before 1950.

Adjectives

Adjectives agree with nouns in number.

Adjectives in Harish can be used as nouns directly, when an adjective is used as nouns, it means "someone/something that is ADJ" or "someone/something that has the characteristic of ADJ-ness".

Verbs

Verbs conjugate for tense-aspect-mood, the personal agreements in older stages of Harish have been lost.

The conjugation of verbs are listed below:

  • Infinitive: -er
  • Present: -e
  • Past: -a
  • Future: -o
  • Subjunctive: -u
  • Imperative: -i
  • Prohibitive: -in
  • Adverbial: -an

The subjunctive mood is used for counterfactual speech, and also used for the negation of a sentence in the past tense.

Most verbs are regular, there are only few irregular verbs, namely evo "to be(copula)".

Derivational morphology

Derivational affixes

While the Harish language is mostly analytic, several derivational affixes exist, and derivational affixes play an important role in creating new words.

Compounds

Most compounds in Harish are noun + noun compounds. In compound words, the final -o of a noun or an adjective is usually replaced with -a.

When verbs are used in compounds as an modifier, the gerund form is always used.

Syntax

Word Order

The word order features are listed below:

  • Basic Word Order: Subject-Object-Verb(SOV)
  • Adpositions are postpositions
  • Conjuctions are in the initial position of the clause
  • Negations directly precede the word they negate.
  • Demonstratives, articles, numerals, possessors precede the noun they modify; Adjectives may precede or follow the noun they modify; Relative clauses follow the noun they modify.

Negations

Possessions

To form noun-noun possession, the postposition i is used.

Alternatively, the 3rd person possessive pronouns are inserted between the possessor and possessee.

When the possessor is a personal pronoun, the possessive pronouns are used, and the possessive pronoun precede the possessee. Below are the possessive pronouns:

  • 1st singular possessive(my): ane
  • 2nd singular possessive(your): eme
  • 3rd singular possessive(his/her/its): ye
  • 1st plural possessive(our): nise
  • 2nd plural possessive(your): mise
  • 3rd plural possessive(their): ise

Subordinating Clauses

One way to form the relative clause, the relative clause if placed before the head noun, without the use of linking words or specific inflections. The subject of the relative clause of a transitive verb, when it is not relativized, might be in the genitive form.

When forming a noun clause, the word nin "matter" is used.

Verb framing

The Harish language is a satellite-framed language, that is, the motion path is typically encoded by prepositions and adverbs, and its verbs usually show manner of motion.

Vocabulary

Most words of the Harish language are inherited from Old Harish; however, there are a significant amount of words that can have their origins be traced back to Ngerupic languages, especially Mani and Kwang languages. Ngerupic loanwords have form a large amount of the vocabulary. Most of the Ngerupic words are borrowed before the modern era.

Writing and literature

The Harish language is written in the revised Onzo Alphabet, the revised Onzo Alphabet was created in 1950 by the Linguistic institute of the Kuulist government.

Historically Harish was also written in the Kwang Logogram, but the use of the Kwang Logogram has declined steadily since the late 19th century, but it is still occasionally used.