Lazarus

Remilian language

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Remilian (romanized:kouma erzhnya, pronounced: [kɔma eɹʒnja]) is a Fuwic language belonging to the Ise-Fuwa family. It is the most widely spoken language in its family, and it is spoken in its homeland of Koumakan in Renea and acts as a literary language and lingua franca, being the country's primary official language. The majority of speakers are Reneans, though foreign interest in the language has remained consistent due to a large literary corpus.

Remilian is notable for its polysynthetic morphology, extensive cases, large phonemic inventory, and tonality. Alongside Makou and Hise, it is one of the few Ise-Fuwa languages to adopt a writing system, which is unique in being written boustrophedonically right-to-left.

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Classification

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Remilian is in the Ise-Fuwa language family and belongs to the Fuwic branch in the Makaic group. Its closest relatives include the Chirei and Fienic languages. It, alongside Makou, Koume, Hidasatori, Fiena, and Fierzhyan represent the only extant members of the Makaic group. As the Makaic group developed in isolation, its members have mostly become mutually unintelligble with the other Fuwic languages.

Remilian was thought to be a language isolate for an extensive period. Discovery of the Fienic languages lead to the establishment of the now-defunct Remilic language family, which also included the Chirei languages that had previously been unclassified. More analysis into the language alongside historical research into the movements of Makai's diaspora linked the Remilic family to the Makou language of Makai, and thereby placed it in the larger Ise-Fuwa language family.

Dialects

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Standard Remilian is largely based on the Koumakan dialect. Song Remilian, a dialect of Classical Remilian with a modified phonology to faciliate singing, is still regularly used, and is thought to have informed the development of modern Remilian, which no longer uses click consonants in newly created words and relies less on tone, both of which were features of Classical Remilian. Dialects in other Renean regions are mutually intelligible with the Koumakan dialect, and are generally only differentiated by features originating from the influence of regionally native languages.

History

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The oldest attested form of Remilian appears in some Classical Remilian texts dating to the reign of the Tone court, which document oral tales that demonstrate grammar atypical of later forms of the language. The oldest extant written text of Classical Remilian is Hieda No. 3, a compilation of historical entries for the court of Ine the Lesser. Later compilations starting from Hieda No. 7 backdate the invention of the Cuttlefish Script, which was the only script in use at the time, to 282 years prior to the penning of Hieda No. 3, attributing its invention to Tama the Younger. Although this is most likely fictitious, by the time of Hieda No.3 the script was near the end of its development and no earlier evidence exists.

Some scholars believe the script evolved from the Makou script, which is superficially similar in appearance due to using similar writing implements, but this is mostly disputed.

The written language remained in regular usage by all Renean courts after the Tone era until it was replaced by the new script. The Cuttlefish Script was mostly unchanged throughout its modern lifespan, with most characters remaining similar in number, type, and placement of strokes in their base forms, and only differed due to changing calligraphic styles. However, readings of these characters changed over time, often drastically, and while these characters would be intelligible by a modern speaker, the phonetic transcriptions differ greatly.

For example, Hieda No. 17, compiled for the Fuka court, the word for "The moon turned blood-red," in reference to a lunar eclipse, was phonetically written out as Futskhinya, while the Hiso-era Hieda No. 57 referenced a lunar eclipse and used the phonetic spelling Fuwltsukire in reference to an identical character cluster. The modern equivalent would be Fwitsukhire.

The period in which Classical Remilian was in common use by the laypeople saw many loanwords, particularly from Makou. The language flourished during the Renean Golden Age, which saw a cultural movement producing several thousands of original texts and a large body of scientific literature. This period lasted up until the Chirei War, which relegated Renea, and by extension its language and literary tradition, to a state of stagnation until contemporary history.

Standard modern Remilian is seen to have begun during the reign of Hanako the Decent, who established the Institute for the Remilian Language, though it developed over several centuries prior to its codification. The Cuttlefish Script was replaced during the ensuing period, and the first regulated dictionaries and grammar texts were published by the institute, codifying Standard Remilian.

Geographic Distribution

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Remilian is only spoken in Renea and Renean diaspora internationally. Non-Renean speakers comprise a negligible percent of the total speakers. Around 19% of the total number of speakers speak it natively; the rest generally learn it as a second language after the language of their ethnic group, due to Renea being comprised of many different minor states.

Official Status

Remilian is the co-official language of Renea, alongside English. Fluency in Remilian is mandatory in Renean schools. No other nations recognize Remilian as an official or minority language.

Phonology

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Vowels

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Remilian is notable among the Ise-Fuwa family (and most languages in general) for its massive vowel inventory. Vowels can be geminated like consonants, producing a normal and geminated variant of each vowel. Combined with its tone system, a Remilian syllable can have any of 216 distinct vowels. The 18 base vowels is the largest of all Ise-Fuwa vowel inventories, surpassing the 8.4 vowel average, though is more regular when compared to the Fuwic branch's average 14 vowels.

Consonants

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SEE ROMANIZATION TABLE TO THE RIGHT

Grammar

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Morphology and Morphophonology

Remilian is generally considered a polysynthetic language. Morphemes may be attached to a root as suffixes, prefixes, or infixes (with circumfixes being rare) to build complex words with meanings that would take several words in synthetic and analytic languages such as English. Remilian has hundreds of suffixes across 5 classes of verbs, with each class having its own rules, but the language is highly regular despite highly conditional rules related to phonotactical restrictions. Words exhibit polypersonal agreement, noun incorporation, and head-marking.

Syncope is a regular phenomenon in words, and sounds frequently merge. This can lead to great confusion and ambiguity due to the small size of Remilian verbs. For example, the word Fuwldtzsetskhenaru can mean both "The moderately-sized animal might run (and I would be unsurprised)," or "The long horse might be kicking you, but I am unsure." This is because the verbal root, d (to kick), is absorbed into the adjective da (moderately-sized), which itself morphs into de before being broken by the infix cluster tzs. As the root of the word was entirely deleted, a more obvious interpretation would be to take tskh (to run) as the verbal root, even though it is actually part of the incorporated noun tskhena (horse; lit. running animal). These shifts affect how the other affixes are read. Both interpretations are wrong; the correct interpretation is "The moderately-sized horse might kick you for (In.Obj) (and I would be unsurprised)." This largely occurs in spoken language; the correct meaning is obvious in written form.

Sentence Structure

Remilian has free word order. It is topic-prominent as opposed to subject-prominent, and most sentences follow a topic-comment structure. Remilian grammar favors brevity, and the subject and object of a sentence can generally be omitted if they can be inferred. The topic of a group of sentences can also generally be omitted if it can be inferred or otherwise was mentioned once, as word agreement surpasses sentence boundaries. For example, take the three one word sentences from the poem Fiu Hghl'ire:

Fwie q'k'ts'mne, hanak'fiime, hareprts'k'vne. (The blacksmith drowned it. A sword was wrought from it for them. Endowed with it, the heart was bled and peeled.)

The "it" in the translation refers to the topic of the sentence cluster, which is entirely unmentioned, but every word has a morpheme which agrees with the topic of the sentence (in context, the preceding sentences had mentioned the topic). They also agree with other words within the cluster; q'k'ts'mne is in the agentive case and uses an accusative case agreement morpheme to agree with the topic, hanak'fiime uses another accusative case agreement morpheme to agree with Fwie (blacksmith), and hareprts'k'vne agrees with both hana, the incorporated noun of the preceding sentence, and the topic through a single accusative agreement morpheme.

Remilian does not distinguish between active and passive voice, but most sentences are translated in the passive voice due to subjects and topics transcending sentence boundaries. For example, the phrase "Fwitsukhi szietskheimne. Pfk'tskhenaru", meaning "The sky will have to be run around by the moon soon. I heard a horse will have been killed by it." In this example, the moon is the topic, but the subject of its clause is the sky, because it is the noun that was incorporated into the verb to run. In the second sentence, pfk'tskhenaru agrees with fwitsukhi despite being in a different sentence; in this case, the horse is the only noun in its sentence and is the de facto subject.

Pronouns

Unlike pronouns in most languages, Remilian pronouns function identically to regular nouns. For example, in English, the sentence "The amazed he will probably run" is grammatically incorrect, as pronouns cannot take on adjectives, but in Remilian, the same sentence, "Fuwltskhe," is grammatically correct because Remilian pronouns can take on any modifiers a noun might and can be inflected. Remilian is a pro-drop language and pronouns are almost never used, as the function of pronouns can generally be replaced by noun cases and verb conjugation. For example, "Maghre, literally meaning "gave," means "(I) gave (it) (to them)," and constitutes a complete sentence. Adjectives can also form the predicate of a sentence, and thus adjectives can form complete sentences on their own; for example, "Mizu!", a complete sentence, means "(I am) envious (of it)!"

Although Remilian pronouns are technically genderless, in vernacular usage it is typical that the regular form of the pronoun implies a male subject, and to imply a female subject a diminuitive is attached to it. For example, te becomes teko, wa becomes wake, hi becomes hikyu, etc.

Inflection and Conjugation

Remilian nouns lack grammatical gender and there are no articles; k'yo could mean "dog," "a dog" or "the dog." There are 48 noun cases in Remilian, divided among 7 spatial locotive cases, 3 spacial motion cases, 2 instrumental motion cases, 6 temporal motion cases, 4 morphosyntactic cases, 14 relational cases, 2 semantic cases, and 10 state cases.

Verbs form the root of most words. Due to noun incorporation, a verbal root typically takes on the inflections of its incorporated nouns. At the core of a word, the verbal root generally conjugates for (roughly) tense-aspect-mood (screeves), person, and agreements to its agent, patient, instrument, and indirect objects (polypersonalism). For example:

mizu fuwette fukaidetteszne.
"I (agent) neutralized the acid (patient) with the base (instrument) for them (indirect object)."

Verbs can also be negated by one of several affixes.

Interrogatives are marked with the question particle -ka. For example, ii atenyhe ("You are cordial") becomes ii atenyhe-ka ("Are you cordial?"). The suffix -na can be added to show personal interest in a question. For example, ii atenyhe-ka-no means "I am interested in whether or not you are cordial."

Adjectives agree in case and number with their nouns. Compare:

fuyukai k'yo (Both agentive singular; no changes to morphology)
"The unpleasant dog."
ifuyukai-i mik'yoni (Both ornative plural)
"Endowed with the unpleasant dogs"
t'fuyukai heik'yo (Both instrumental singular)
"With the unpleasant dog."

In practice, the adjective generally gets incorporated into the noun and remains in its basic form when inflected. For example:

fuyukaik'yo
"The unpleasant dog."
fuyukaimik'yoni
"Endowed with the unpleasant dog."
fuyukaiheik'yo
"With the unpleasant dog."

To exemplify the full extent of Remilian inflection and conjugation, take the following word:

fuuwldtzsremiseq'k'aiineka
"I am unsurprised that I asked that they please drink the red water for me (but actually they have not)"

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Politeness

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Orthography

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Remilian is primarily written in FBK, or natively called Fubunette, shortened form of Fuwitskon Bunbunaya Kubunette, translating to "Fox-Tailed Systemic Writing." It supplanted the earlier Cuttlefish Script, the primary script of Classical Remilian which had been the de facto script of modern Remilian for around 800 years. Its name refers to the trailing serifs which resembling a fox's tail, especially when using a large brush as the script was originally intended for, though this feature has largely disappeared due to the widespread use of mono-width writing implements. It is logogrammic, and uses preexisting characters as syllabary when dealing with words of unknown characters. The Institute for the Remilian Language has a list of 1728 characters that it deems essential to functional literacy in Remilian. There are an additional 2,000 or so characters in regular usage.

The script is unique for its reading direction. It is written right-to-left boustrophedonically and leading from the top, meaning that a reader begins at the top-right-most character, reads downwards, and then reads the next line to the left from the bottom to the top, alternating between the top-down and bottom-up directions with every line. The right-to-left direction originated from the use of scrolls, where a scribe would write vertically with their right hand and unfurl a scroll as needed with their left hand, expanding the scroll leftwards but never rightwards. The boustrophedon originated in the first cursive scripts, where scribes would quickly write a line and immediately begin writing the next line backwards without lifting their brush and moving back to the top. The language was originally written left-to-right, top-to-bottom without alternating its reading direction due to being kept in books instead of scrolls, but this practice was quickly dropped.

Alternative writing systems include FBM, natively called Fwifumu, shortened form of Fwishikiji Bunayafuumi Maru and translated as "Fish-Made Ripple Calligraphic Writing Circle," which is a calligraphic script that utilizes an alphabetic system to write words, with the letters arranged in a circular pattern resembling ripples. It is a derivative of Cuttlefish Script and preserves the cuttlefish eye patterns characteristic of it. It remains in use for art, though literacy in the system has been declining.

Numerals and Mathematics

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Vocabulary

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Examples (Spoken)

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Examples (Written)

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