Khusqaian

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This page is about the Khusqaian language. The word 'Khusqaian' may also refer to Khusqaikama or an inhabitant of that country.

Khusqaian is the language spoken in Khusqaikama. In Khusqaian, the name for the language is 鴈語 or Ӄйаӈкўоу (Qĭaŋkŭou).

Khusqaian is generally considered a language isolate, but is sometimes classified or described as an Altaic language with an Austronesian substrate and a partially Chinese vocabulary.

There are two forms of Khusqaian, literary and vernacular. Differences are phonological, phonotactical, grammatical, and lexical, but most differences are minor. Literary Khusqaian is the official language of Khusqaikama, and unless explicitly stated otherwise, what the term 'Khusqaian' refers to.


Khusqaian (鴈語)
language spoken in Khusqaikama
Total speakers: 900,000

Genealogical classification:
isolate (Altaic with Austronesian substrate)


Basic word order: SOV
Morphological type: aglutinative
Morphosyntactic alignment: Austronesian

history of Khusqaian

Referencearrow.png Main Article: History of Khusqaian

(to be added)

See also:

phonology and phonotactics

Referencearrow.png Main Article: Phonology of Khusqaian

Khusqaian has 13 'basic consonants' plus a few variants that occur in specific situations. There are 10 vowels (9 of which can be short or long), two non-syllabic vowels or semi-vowels, and a number of diphthongs. Because of vowel harmony the number of different vowels (and diphthongs) that can occur in one word is considerably lower, however. The most peculiar sound in the language is /əɻ/ or /ɞɻ/ (which according to some linguists consists of one phoneme and according to others of two), although a somewhat similar sound occurs in Mandarin Chinese from which Khusqaian borrowed many words and sounds (and characters).

Khusqaian has relatively simple rules for syllable formation, but when syllables are combined into multi-syllabic words (including cases in which a mono-syllabic word is lengthened by suffixing) vowel harmony and sandhi lead to various changes, which is the source of most phonotactical complexity.

grammar

Referencearrow.png Main Article: Grammar of Khusqaian

Khusqaian is an agglutinative language with a few remarkable grammatical phenomena. Firstly, it has a trigger case system, which prior to genetic evidence, was the main evidence for the (Proto-) Austronesian roots of some of the first settlers of the islands. Secondly, it has topic - comment structure (like Chinese and Japanese) rather than subject - predicate structure. Thirdly (like those same languages) it routinely eliminates arguments that are already clear given the context (but sometimes reintroduced them by means of topic marking).

writing

Referencearrow.png Main Article: Khusqaian Writing Systems

The first writing system introduced into Khusqaikama was Chinese, for various (phonotactical and grammatical) reasons that writing system was never successfully adapted to the language, however. It was widely used by bureaucrats, but the language they used it for was classical Chinese, not Khusqaian. Nevertheless, it became common practice (later even law) to write names in Chinese characters, and that practice lives on until today.

The second writing system that was introduced was Gupta script used for writing Sanskrit from the 4th to approximately 7nd centuries, brought back from India by two visiting monks (who visited China first - more about them to be added later). Gupta was more easily adapted to Khusqaian phonology and became - after some time, and mixed with Chinese characters for imported Chinese words and names - the standard for written Khusqaian. The bureaucracy, however, for a long timed continued using classical Chinese as its official language.

At the end of the 19th century Cyrillic script was introduced, but this became important only after the Second World War when it was enforced as the official script for the language. Nevertheless, the Khusqaian Cyrillic alphabet deviates significantly from the Russian 'standard'.

At the end of the 20th century an official romanization (of the Cyrillic) was created (see Khusqaian Alphabet, but at the same time, the Gupta-derived traditional script regained popularity. Right now, most educated people in their 20s or 30s can read Cyrillic, traditional script, about a thousand Chinese characters, and Latin script, and many can also read some Japanese and/or Korean. The same is true for the more highly educated of the generation above them, but among that generation the Cyrillic remains the dominant standard.

Both the Cyrillic and the traditional Gupta-derived script have a largely phonemic orthography, although both deviate from that at some points. Most important deviation can be found in the Gupta-derived script that writes all vowels of a group only one of which can occur in a morpheme because of vowel harmony with the same diacritical mark.

vernacular Khusqaian

Referencearrow.png Main Article: Vernacular Khusqaian

Vernacular Khusqaian differs from literary Khusqaian in a number of respects, but the most conspicuous is the lack of (word-level) vowel harmony. Additionally, there are also small grammatical differences, and lexical differences (less Chinese loanwords, more Russian and English loanwords).

Virtually all written Khusqaian is literary Khusqaian, but recently a number of publications by and for young people have been using the vernacular language, and a few writers argue for an official status of the vernacular language. The spoken language is more often the vernacular form than the official literary language, at least in ordinary daily usage, and because of regional differences in the vernacular language, on TV vernacular speakers are always subtitled in the literary language.