Tanzangi

Tanzangi
Language family	Cangic
Early form(s)	Classical Tanzangi, Proto-Cangic
Era	today
Writing system	Tanzangi Alphabet
Official status
Spoken in	Tanzang
Regulated by	Government of Tanzang
Speaker
Endonym	Tanti
Number of speakers	1
Technical information
Language code	TZN

Tanzangi (Tanzangi: tanti /tənti/), the official language of Tanzang, is a language in the Dangic branch of the Cangic language family descended from Classical Tanzangi. It features an inventory of 17 consonants and 9 vowels.

Phonology

Consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Dorsal
Nasal	m	n	ɲ ⟨ni⟩	ŋ ⟨g⟩
Plosive	p, b	t, d		k ⟨c⟩, g
Fricative	f	s, θ ⟨z⟩	ʃ ⟨j⟩	x
Approximant	w ⟨l / v⟩		j ⟨r / y⟩

• Phonemes /x n/ become palatalized [ç ɲ] before front vowels /i e/.
• Fricatives /f θ s ʃ x/ and [ç] become voiced [v ð z ʒ ɣ ʝ] intervocalically.
• /w/ is realized [g] when adjacent to /u/; /j/ is realized as [ʎ] (historically [ɟ]) when adjacent to /i/.
  • These allophonic plosives cause preceding voiceless plosives to assimilate in voicing.
• The voiced alveolar plosive /d/ is realized as [dˡ] before vowels and semi-vowels, and [l] elsewhere.
  • A similar change occurred to allophonic [ɟ], becoming [ʎ] in all positions.
  • It is considered old-fashioned to pronounce these sounds without lateralization.
• Standard orthography for the phonemes /w j/ is ⟨l r⟩, but it is becoming increasingly more common to write them as ⟨v y⟩ instead.
• Orthographic ⟨h⟩ indicates vowel hiatus when intervocalic or word-initial, and lengthens the preceding phone in other positions.

Vowels

	Stressed			Unstressed
	Front	Central	Back	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨː ⟨ū⟩	u	ɪ	ɪ̈	ʊ
Close-Mid	e	ə ⟨a⟩	o	ɪ	ɪ̈~∅	ʊ
Open-Mid	ɛː ⟨ē⟩		ɔː ⟨ō⟩	ɛ		ɑ
Open	aː ⟨ā⟩			ɑ

• Vowels are reduced in unstressed syllables.
• /ə/ was historically deleted in some unstressed syllables, particularly word-finally. In these positions, it is not written. In less formal speech, it is deleted in all unstressed syllables.
  • Due to the deletion of the schwa, stress patterns may sometimes be unpredictable. Historically, Tanzangi featured a strict penultimate stress system. In modern times, this pattern is somewhat irregular. "Irregularly" stressed vowels are marked with an acute accent. Additionally, a grave accent may be used to mark a deleted vowel at the beginning of a word, in places where this causes a distinction.
• The macron diacritic may also be written as a circumflex ⟨û ê ô â⟩, breve ⟨ŭ ĕ ŏ ă⟩, or tilde ⟨ũ ẽ õ ã⟩.

Realizations of Syllabic Consonants

Phoneme	Realization	Orthographic Replacement (Nonstandard)
m	[ʊ̃]	⟨m⟩
n	[ɪ̈̃]	⟨n⟩
ɲ	[ɪ̃]	⟨g⟩ (rarely ⟨g̃⟩)
ŋ
f	[ʊ]	⟨u⟩
w		⟨o⟩
θ	[ɪ̈]	⟨a⟩
s
ʃ	[ɪ]	⟨i⟩
x
j		⟨e⟩

These consonants are those that have become syllabic due to the deletion of schwa. They only occur in unstressed syllables.

Phonotactics

Proto-Dangic syllable structure was strictly (C)V(C). Modern Tanzangi retains that phonemically, but phonetically, with the deletion of schwa, clusters are much more common and can be more complex. Modern Tanzangi syllable structure is largely undefined, especially due to very free phonotactics in loans. Vowel hiatus is allowed, orthographically separated by ⟨h⟩. Stress patterns may be irregular, marked with an acute accent.

Grammar

Word Order

The standard word order for Tanzangi is SOV. However, Proto-Cangic used different word orders to communicate grammatical moods. For example, VSO word order is used to convey the imperative mood. Less commonly, SVO word order conveys the interrogative mood; however, in modern Tanzangi, this has been replaced by SOV word order, with a question word (xe) following the verb.

Verbs

Verbs in Tanzangi do not conjugate for person, but takes suffixes for past and future tense. There is also an archaic prefix, ron-, which marks the imperfective aspect, although this is archaic and rarely used.

Below is the conjugation for the verb cit, "to be."

Past	Present	Future
citic	cit	cippã

Nouns

tba

Pronouns

Pronouns in Tanzangi may be omitted entirely. When an object pronoun is deleted, the accusative suffix (usually -t) is cliticized to the following verb, becoming a transitive marker instead. In younger speakers, this happens to all objects, not just pronouns, rendering the accusative case somewhat archaic.

Pronouns have special irregular forms for some particular noun cases. Those unlisted in the below table pattern like regular nouns, adding a suffix to the nominative.

	1sg	1pl	2sg	2pl	3sg	3pl
NOM	gēm	gēnt	los	lost	tōc	tōtt
ACC	(t')
DAT	ns	nts	s	z	x	j
GEN	mh	nh	sh	zh	xh	jh

Script

The Dangic Alphabet (Tanzangi: Tántih Bēce [ˈtəntɪː ˈbɛːkɪ]) is the alphabet used to write Tanzangi.

Letter	Romanization	IPA (Classical)	IPA (Modern)
	a	ə
	p	p
	b	b
	ē	æː	ɛː
	t	t
	d	d
	e	e
	z	ts	θ
	s	s
	(ṣ)	z
	i	i
	j	ʒ	ʃ
	(w)	ɯ
	x	ʃ	x
	ā	ɑː	aː
	r / y	ʀ	j
	ō	ɔː
	k	k
	g	g
	o	o
	g	ŋ
	ni	ɲ
	n	n
	m	m
	u	u
	f	θ	f
	v?	i dont know if this one is real
	h	h	∅
	ū	iɯ̯	ɨː
	l / v	l	w

(WIP: Incomplete; missing some archaic and unused characters I think)