Nunik (language)

Nowaton Akenakik, otherwise known as Nunik, is the most common language spoken among the people of The Niriad. Typically, Nunik is a secondary language to a more regional local language or dialect; it is taught across all Sanctums, but is very rarely an individual's first language. It is used as the primary language in The Niriad's continental affairs such as leadership and academia.

Nunik developed organically as a common tongue that could be used between all Sanctums in The Niriad. Linguistic anthropologists have identified it as a creole; the language is a mixture of multiple lost, ancient languages spoken during the wild days of the Niriad that amalgamated together as inter-sanctum trade routes were established.

Etymology
Nowaton Akenakik is believed to have originally meant 'tongue of the traveler'. The language's name has evolved over the years; beginning as Nowaton Akenakik, then N'aton'akik or Noton'akik, until abbreviating itself to Nonakik and finally Nunik.

The phenomenon of the name being shortened is attributed to the way that the language was originally recorded and taught. Like most languages in The Niriad, Nunik began as a spoken language, and the alphabet was later applied. As a result, scribes/compilers didn't always perfectly spell words and would simply try to capture the general movement of the words (especially if they didn't believe others would read their works). Once the words were translated from spoken to written and back a few times, only the essential sounds were kept, and so Nowaton Akenakik became Nunik.

History
According to historians focused on the years predating the First Siege of Ketaro, the early forms of Nowaton Akenakik sprung up as early as 3000 years pre-1st Siege.

Earliest forms of Nunik were oral-only, and so any instance of it has been lost, but experts believe that Nunik originated as a pidgin between an ancient form of the Udrik language Donaverkik and the lost Teranik language of Erantu. This theory lends itself to the syllabic nature of words and sentence structure similarities between the modern day deepwoods languages and the similarity between basic verbs simplified verb tenses found in Erantu-rooted Arlan languages. Linguists and etymologists generally study southern Arlan languages and deepwoods Udrik dialects as a glimpse into what early forms may have sounded like, but words, intonation, and other key features of the language have been pulled from all over The Niriad.

The first recorded form of the language appeared in a junior archiver's account of their discoveries along the southeastern trade passage. The words were not written in the archiver's hand; leading analysts to conclude that the figure collected a sample from a fluent speaker/writer.

"For Agarik, in a year when learn to read this, they do. A fool you are! And a cheat at cards!"The fundamentals of Nunik have not changed since its early iterations. It would be relatively easy for a modern speaker of the language to understand an ancient speaker of Nunik. However, the introduction of Kirellik and Arlan influence in more recent ages has leant to a rise in linguistic 'flourishes' which were not previously used in every day use.

Alphabet
Like many languages across The Niriad, Nunik utilizes its eponymic alphabet. The Nunik alphabet consists of 10 joining sounds (vowels), 14 anchor sounds (consonants), and 5 complex anchor sounds (compound consonants), including variations that account for regional differences (for example, S and Z, F and V, and the various uses of an R sound. The Nunik alphabet is universal, with the exemption of Kirellik; which means that the characters started out for specifically the Nunik spoken language, but has since adapted to fit the needs of most spoken languages in The Niriad. This aids in matters of translation and transcription but has also resulted in the addition of character variants; most notably the three distinctive "R" anchor sounds, and almost all the complex anchor sounds except for the velar "ng" sound.



Phonology
The main phonemes of the Nunik creole is designed to be the most commonly used sounds across the continent's language. This means These sounds are categorized either as anchor sounds (consonants) and joining sounds (vowels).

Anchor runes and their sounds
Anchor sounds are named as such because they are the base sound that a syllable is created with. Joining sounds are then added to an anchor, which changes how the syllable is formed.

There is one special case rune; the symbol most associated with the English 'H' can be used interchangeably with two different phenomes. The alphabetic character can be used to identify either a glottal or uvular fricative depending on the spoken language being transcribed.

Complex anchor runes
Complex anchors are singular symbols that represent common combinations of sounds that don't follow Nunik natural phonotactics. The spoken Nunik language follows a predictable Anchor-joining-anchor pattern which other spoken languages in The Niriad do not follow. In most cases, this will result in a 'Nunik' translation of the word - which involves adding in joining sounds (usually "ah") in order to link consonants together (ie: Earth in english would be written as ee-r-ah-d). However, some sounds fall outside of the standard Nunik alphabet's ability to describe the sound.

"Ng" was the only complex anchor to appear in the alphabet from the beginning of Nunik's written language. The transition between the nasal alveolar 'Nn' to the velar stop 'Gg' was too fluid in the spoken language to attribute a joining letter between the two. Additionally, the sound in traditional grammar marked something as past tense, and so it had a contextual importance as well.

"Th", "Sh" and "Ch" were the next complex anchors to appear in the alphabet. These compound sounds were first notated as the basic characters for an alveolar stop and alveolar fricative, with an added "ee" and a floating "ih" sound hanging before the next anchor. The doubling-up of joining sounds back-to-back is highly irregular, and eventually the two joining sounds were combined together in the sideways 'T' symbol. This symbol is technically referred to as a wind mark. The "Zsh" sound is frequently used in Kirellik, and the character for it is a simplified version of the Kirellik notation for the phoneme.

Joining runes and their sounds
Joining sounds in Nunik are generally thought of as vowels in the English language. There are ten joining sounds in Nunik in total.



Phonotactics
Nunik words and sounds all follow a very simple anchor-joining-anchor-joining pattern. All anchor sounds must be followed by a joining sound, to create a syllabic character. There are 210 basic syllabic sounds/runes in the Nunik language. Within this structure, there are very few limitations to how syllables can be formed to create words. Syllables outside of the 15 'core' anchor sounds (B, D, G, H, K, L, M, N, P, T, W, R, S, F, NG) are rarely used in Nunik. The post-alveolar fricative 'zsh' (common in Kirellik) never occurs. The alveolar fricative 'S' is used instead of 'Ch' and 'Sh' in most cases, and 'Th' is used interchangeably with 'D'.



Exceptions
The anchor-joining-anchor rule has two frequent exceptions: double-joints on the first syllable of a word; and final anchors on the last syllable of a word.



If a word begins with a joining sound (ie. it begins with a vowel), it must be attached to the first anchor. In written form, the starting sound floats above the initial anchor, and the succeeding joint follows the standard format. This is called a double-joint anchor.

The last syllable of a word is allowed to have no joining sound (ie. it ends with a consonant). When an anchor has no joining rune associated with it, this is called a final anchor. In older pieces of writing, if a word ended on a consonant/anchor sound (ex. "dig"), the rune would be written with a line beneath the G character. This convention is generally dropped except in official documents. Now, the lack of a joining rune marks the end of the word. If the next word begins with an anchor sound, some Nunik speakers will join them with a filler 'ah'.

Stress, rhythm, and intonation
Now may be a good time to bring up that sentence pitch doesn't rise for questions the way it does in english. But also, how does stress and rhythm for words work?

Regional variation
This is probably a good time to mention to Rs.

Grammar
Nunik was a traveller's language, and so it was intended to convey a clear message as quickly and understandably as possible. As such, it has an extremely simplified grammar structure. I can't believe I'm going to have to write about Nunik grammar... who and/or what have I become?!

Nouns and noun phrases
I don't even know what this means at this point

Adjectives
cool, hip, great

Pronouns, case, and person
he, she, we wumbo

Prepositions
over, under, cave of wonder

Verbs and verb phrases
Please see caption for nouns and noun phrases

Tense, aspect and mood
Yes, 4:5, grumpy

Phrasal verbs
What? What the hell is this?

Adverbs
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream

Syntax
Hello, I am a 24 year old with no prospects in life who is now going to write about the syntax of a fictional language

Basic constituent order
Dude... what

Clause syntax
See caption for basic constituent order

Auxiliary verb constructions
Hey man, YOU'RE an auxiliary verb.

Questions
Yes, I have many.

Discourse-level syntax
At some point you need to go outside

Word formation processes
et cetera et cetera

Word origins
wherefore art thou, word?

Dialects, accents, and varieties
Idk if its relevant, but this is 100% where you talk about Donaverkik.