Rokadong

Rokadong 
Language family	Nentan
Early form(s)	Classical Nenta, Old Rokadong
Writing system	Telajang Latin script
Official status
Spoken in	Rauratoshan
Regulated by	Rauratoshan Royal Academy
Speaker
Demonym	Rokaselan
Technical information
Language code	RKD

Rokadong ([ˈɾokadoŋ]), also known as Rokaselan, is a Nentan language spoken in Rauratoshan. It has a fairly robust phonology, a rich set of affixes for various purposes, and an angular, oblique script.

Etymology

"Rokadong" is short for Rokaseladong, or "the language of Rokasela"; this is where the alternate name "Rokaselan" comes from. Rokasela is the name of an archipelago, on which the language originates. This archipelago is considered extranguhcraftial.

In Nguhcraft

Rokadong's source world, Spectradom or Pezen, is a near-modern world, so unlike languages like Xindvâ, Rokadong need not loan words for things like democracy. However, there are Nguhcraft-specific words, as some features are unique to Nguhcraft.

• 󴃉󴂳 medakawil [meˈdákâwɪ̄l] - allay, vex (literally "song fairy")
  • Allays and vexes aren't distinguished in Rokadong by default. However, vexes, as the familiars of illager priests, are often referred to as medakawil to aryarazil.
• 󴂁 aryarazil [àˈɾʲárâzɪ̄l, -ʒɪ̄l] - illager (literally "ashen person")
• 󴂡󴁃󴁽 lerabzona [lèˈɾábzônɐ̄] - Nether ghast (literally "weeper")
• 󴂭󴁽 yatayusona [jàˈtájûˌsónɐ̂] - Overworld ghast (literally "floater")
• 󴃔 Néðer [ˈnéːzɛ̄ɾ] - the Nether
• 󴀀 󴃥 ila Ngika [ˈílɐ̂ ˈŋíkɐ̂] - Nguhcraft

Phonology

Main article: Rokadong phonology

Consonants

Consonant phonemes

	Labial		Alveolar/ Dental		Post- alveolar/ palatal		Velar		Uvular		Glottal
Nasal		m		n		ɲ		ŋ
Stop	p	b	t	d	t͡ʃ	d͡ʒ	k	ɡ			ʔ
Fricative	f	v	s	z	ʃ						h
Approximant				(ɹ)		j		w
Lateral				l
Trill				(r)						(ʀ)		(ʢ̠ᵐ)
Tap				ɾ

Notes

• /ɾ/ is a highly variable sound, with exact realization depending on dialect and surroundings:
  • [r], the "long r", is usually found morpheme-initially as well as in clusters of /ɾ l/.
  • [ɹ], the "vowel r", is found morpheme-finally in some dialects.
  • [ʀ], the "growl r", is marginally phonemic, as some words in some dialects retain it instead of it merging. It may also appear in imperative or otherwise forceful speech as an allophone of /ɾ/.
  • [ʢ̠], the "purr r", is usually also labialized, if not produced with an entirely closed mouth, which is why it appears as ʢ̠ᵐ in the chart. This sound is true glottal, and thus is not possible for humans to reproduce, as the only method humans have of producing a glottal trill is through vowels, which are produced with an open mouth. However, it can be imitated through a variety of means if desired, and often is merged with one or more of [r ʀ m], even for kanva speakers.
• Nasal consonants lose their contrast before stop consonants. However, they still contrast in morpheme-final position, so /ŋ/ is still considered phonemic.
• /h/ is frequently elided between unlike vowels.
• Generally, "alveolar" occlusives [n t d s z] are actually dental in Rokadong, as with other Nentan languages. Although this partially serves to further dissimilate them from their palatal counterparts, it's also of note that all kanva languages have this allophony, likely a result of their physiology.
• /s, z, (t)ʃ, dʒ/ palatalize to [ʃ~ɕ, ʒ~ʑ, (t)ɕ, dʑ]] before /i, j/, though in some dialects this is rarer for /s, z/.
• In Pahang Rokadong and Oceanic Rokadong dialects, [s, z] may vary with non-sibilant equivalents [θ, ð], especially morpheme-finally. The latter used to be phonemic, but merged with the former, now only appearing as an allophone of it. These dialects are described as "tékuhasa" ("all S"). In Continental Rokadong dialects, assibilation of /θ/ is complete, and only [s, z] remain.

Vowels

Vowel phonemes

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i iː		u uː
Mid	e eː	(ə)	o oː
Open		a aː
Diphthongs	aj		aw

Notes

• /e, o/ may be realized as [e̞, o̞].
• /i, u, e, o/ may be opened in closed syllables, to any of [i~ɪ~e~ɛ, u~ʊ~o~ɔ, e~ɛ, o~ɔ] respectively, though this is substantially more common for /i, u/ than for /e, o/.
• The /a/ in the diphthongs /aj aw/ often assimilates with the frontness of the glide: /aj aw/ [æj ɑw].
  • In Spectradom, in northerly Coastal and Continental dialects of Rokadong, these diphthongs are further altered, as when they aren't stressed, the target off-glide may "miss", or not quite reach [j w]: /aj aw/ [æe̯ ɑo̯]. (These dialects are not necessarily northerly in Nguhcraft, but are historically spoken in northern Rauratoshan.)
  • Interestingly, although this is likely unrelated, an extremely similar vowel alternation to [ˈɑw ɑo̯] is found in Amphorean, though the body of Amphorean ⟨ω⟩ is usually more mid than Rokadong ⟨⟩, at [ˈʌw ɐo̯].
• Morpheme-final short /a/ becomes [ə] in most dialects, but some perform this change on all unstressed short /a/.

Phonotactics

Rokadong is maximally CjVC. However, if the vowel is a diphthong, then no coda is allowed. An onset is usually required word-medially, but if the consonant is /h/, it's frequently elided, and two vowels are allowed in hiatus if the first one is /i u/ (as the intervening vowel would be /j w/, which is generally non-phonemic).

Coda consonants are most commonly nasals; these assimilate to the next consonant's place of articulation if they're within the same morpheme. This is also the only way to get a coda /ɲ/. Coda /ʔ/ will also assimilate to a following consonant, but only if the sound is voiceless. Coda /h/ is forbidden.

Cross-syllabic clusters are somewhat limited within the same morpheme. Sequences of two plosives are only allowed if the first is /ʔ/ or the second is /ɾ/, while sequences of two approximants are only allowed if one of them is /l/. Sequences of two nasals are technically allowed, but usually merge to one nasal, much as nasal-plosive pairs do. Generally speaking, the more sonorous consonant of a sequence will come first, metathesizing if needed.

Prosody

Rokadong is generally described as mora-timed, with short vowels and coda sonorants each providing one mora to the syllable, and long vowels and diphthongs providing two moras. However, timing may sway toward syllable-timing in certain dialects and speaking styles. Particularly for Sanenyandoka, the dialect most well-known for syllable timing, this phenomenon is known as "raisendoka" (literally "gun speech").

Stress and pitch

Rokadong is a dynamic-accent language. Accented syllables are generally longer and pitched up compared to unaccented syllables, though in some dialects, pitch and length are affected, rather than pitch and volume. Accent is phonemic in Rokadong.

Stress is usually on the syllable containing the penultimate mora. As such, the ultimate syllable usually receives the stress if it is closed or has a long vowel, else the penultimate syllable does. In compounded words, only the final accented syllable is stressed. Since morphemes are comprised of up to three syllables, this is generally described as stress falling on one of the last three syllables of a word.

Rokadong does have pitch accent to some degree, however, usually the stressed syllable is also the one that begins a pitch accent (that is, its pitch is heightened). The difference, however, is that pitch will affect the next vowel if the vowel of the accented syllable is short, as the entire accented mora will have high pitch, the pitch only falling on the subsequent mora (which may be another syllable). Additionally, in compounded morphemes (where a word consists of two or more morphemes), the pitch part will not be neutralized, even though the stress will almost always be neutralized. Instead, compound words generally only contain one pitch-change (that is, once the first pitch-accented mora is reached, the pitch stays high until the final pitch-accented mora), though some words will receive the pitch accents they would normally have as single words, which is randomly distributed. Some morphemes, usually those that are monosyllabic, will not have any pitch accent whatsoever, and are referred to as nikjairi (zero sound).

In Rokadong dictionaries, syllables that prescriptively receive a pitch accent but not length are typically marked as secondary stress. However, in some dialects, some or all of these also are lengthened. Generally, in a morpheme with prefixes, the prefixes receive pitch accent, and in a word with more than 3 syllables, every other syllable from the last stressed syllable to the beginning of the word receive this so-called "secondary stress." Note that a word with suffixes usually does not receive a pitch accent unless the suffix is 2 or more syllables in length.

Orthography

Rokadong may be either written using the Latin alphabet or the native Rokadong abugida.

Romanization

Rokadong consonants are written as seen in the IPA, with the following exceptions:

• /ɲ/ is written as ny, except when before <c> or <j>, in which case the y is dropped.
• /ŋ/ is written as ng
• /tʃ/ is written as c
• /dʒ/ is written as j
• /ɾ/ is written as r (this includes all of its allophones)
• /ʃ/ is written as sh
• /j/ is written as y in the onset (and in i-on-glide diphthongs) and i in the coda (in i-off-glide diphthongs)
• /w/ is written as w in the onset and u in the coda (in diphthongs)
• /ʔ/ is written as h at the end of a word, the same letter as the following plosive, or ‘ otherwise

Rokadong short vowels are written as they are seen in the IPA, while long vowels are written with an acute accent over the short vowel being lengthened. The diphthongs /aj, aw, oj/ may be confused with the syllable-boundary monophthong pairs /a.i, a.u, o.i/, so in situations where the latter is preferred, the syllable boundary is written with an apostrophe. Assimilated nasals are written as they are spoken, except when separated by a dash.

Rokadong is usually romanized as a transcription, not a transliteration. However, names of people and places are usually transliterated.

Native script

Main article: Telajang

Rokadong natively uses a script known as telajang or Rokaselan script. It is an abugida of the Nentan family.

The following is considered "basic Rokadong" (the bare minimum needed to communicate, though other glyphs may be preferred in certain words):

IPA Name  p [p] pa  b [b] ba  t [t] ta  d [d] da  c [t͡ʃ] ca  j [d͡ʒ] ja  k [k] ka  g [g] ga   h [ʔ] ahha  f [f] fa  v [v] va

IPA Name  s [s] sa  z [z] za  sh [ʃ] sha  h [h] ha  l [l] la  y [j] ya  w [w] wa  r [ɾ] ra   m [m] ma   n [n] na   ny [ɲ] nya

IPA Name   ng [ŋ] ang  a [a] á Diacritics (on ka)   a á [a aː]   i í [i iː]   u ú [u uː]   e é [e eː]   o ó [o oː]    ai au oi [aj aw oj]  no vowel

Lexicon

A full list of Rokadong vocabulary can be found on Astaryuu's wiki, though it is currently somewhat outdated.

Grammar

Morphology

Nouns

Root noun morphemes are usually one to three syllables long. There are many derivational affixes in Rokadong as well, including but not limited to:

•  jan- - instrument of the root (occasionally also fills the role of -sona)
•  -sona - actor or someone characterized by the root
•  vota- - collectivity, similarity, instrument of the root
•  -an - object or place characterized by the root (occasionally also fills the role of vota-)
•  i(t)- - quality or abstraction of the root, often used to derive adjectives from nouns
•  -(k)il - quality or abstraction of the root, often used to derive nouns from adjectives
•  fen-/ fer- - abstraction, place (especially with -an), goal, or result

Nouns do not decline for gender. In fact, many Rokadong nouns for animals or people do not have a natural gender by default, especially for native words. Nouns also do not decline for plurality, using numerals instead if context demands it. Full reduplication, or numeral-like determiners like Template:Term and Template:Term, could also be used to pluralize. However, full reduplication does not always result in a plural word.

Particles

Particles generally are applied to nouns. An unmarked noun is said to be in the direct case - as Rokadong uses Austronesian alignment, both the agent and object of a verb may be unmarked if it is syntactically redundant. The other cases are marked by a particle preceding the noun (and its measure word and numeral, if present):

• Genitive  to, used for possession, apposition, origin, reference, and description
• Ergative  ká, used for the agent of a verb
• Accusative  pá, used for the patient (direct object) of a verb
• Locative and instrumental  gun, used for the location of a verb and the means by which it was performed
• Dative  laki, used for the indirect object or the benefactor of a verb

These particles become prefix-like proclitics when they apply to pronouns, with gun and laki shortening to  gu and  la(h). However, they could be considered proclitics in all cases, as they frequently are pronounced as if they are prefixes, especially given that outside of careful pronunciation, the final vowel of these case particles replaces the starting vowel of nouns that start with /a/.

Verbs

Generally speaking, verbs are treated as if they were verbalized nouns, which in many cases, is etymologically the case. However, there are some morphological features unique to verbs.

Verbs often are the longest words in Rokadong, owing to the large numebr of agglutinative affixes that can be applied simultaneously. Often, nouns and adjectives can be formed from these affixes by removing the final  r(a) in the word. For example,  matar ("to scare"), like most emotion words in general, can be turned into  tenamata ("scary") and  anmata ("scared") using the causative and continuous aspect affixes respectively.

For verbs, reduplication does not pluralize the verb, but it does intensify the action the verb represents. In the extreme case, 3 rulurukr ("to sprint, to move at top speed") is a reduplication of 2 lurukr ("to run"), which is a reduplication of  rukr ("to walk").

This is an example of the verbal paradigm, using the regular verb  minar ("to want").

Conjugation of minar
Tense	rem.pst	pst	pre		fut	rem.fut
	minarkapan	minaran	minar		minarlin	minarkedin
Aspect	prf	hab	caus	cont	sem	nvol
	minar	bélminar	tenaminar	anminaron	ínminaras	danminaron
Mood	imp		hyp		cond
	minaten		minarkedin		minada
Topic	av			pv
	manminar			káminar

Measure words

In Rokadong, when counting objects, nouns take on measure words, also known as counters, even if they are count nouns. This makes the distinction between the two a bit less clear, but there is still some distinction, as usually reduplicating a noun refers to a group of the count noun, often resulting in a mass noun. Mass nouns formed through this method usually keep their count noun's measure word, as most words do. Otherwise, most mass nouns are kaca nouns. Compound words almost always use the measure word of their major noun (the last noun in the sequence, to which the compound word is expected to belong).

Table of measure words

Measure word	Used for measuring	Literal translation	Example
kaca	generic things large things, landforms, abstract nouns, thoughts, vehicles, houses, etc.	"thing"
naka	generic things (rarely used)	"thing"
koro	animals and their body parts (razil may be used for the body parts of people specifically)	"scale"	de koro kicíng (two mice), harikoro tala (eight claws)
razil	humans, kanvas, spirits anything else that would be considered "people"	"person"	anyara razil néko (ten thousand soldiers)
tóho	small and/or round objects most fruits, cups, nuts, etc.	"apple"
liki	tiny objects smaller fruits, nuts, particles, etc.	"seed"
tela	long, thin things trees, pencils, branches, etc.	"branch"
tasha	plants (rarer, often kaca or koro is used)	"flower"
tamis	broad, flat objects slabs of stone, bricks, pieces of wood, slices of bread, land, coins, paper	"chip"	kani tamis káyang (ten coins)
fíra	things in thin layers or sheets paper, cloth, feathers, hair, etc.	"fur"	afíra pánta (a piece of paper)
sakya	weapons and tools	"dagger"
maya, mai	words, sayings, nouns implying words or sayings (e.g. votes, stories)	"spoken word"
kage	time periods	"step"
daho	occurences of a verb degrees of temperature or angle	(formerly "occurrence"; meaningless in modern Rokadong)
sela	divine or spiritual nouns (rare, usually razil or kaca is used)	"star"
jang	written letters and words etc. (rare, usually maya is used)	"letter"

Additional rules

Measure words are not required to say just one of something. If one is used in this case, it generally refers to a certain one of that object, in a similar vein to the English indefinite article. If so, the number will either be removed or replaced with the prefix a-.

Much as with Japanese, not all measure words use the modern numerals: vestiges of the Nentan dozenal or seximal counting system live on outside of cardinals as a result of the old, unadapted measure words: sela, kage, daho, naka, and maya. In these cases, the -sha (or similar ending) is removed from the cardinal number. Additional mutations may occur depending on what numeral and measure word are being used: dungkage, minámya.

Note that mai does use modern numerals, as this is its adapted form, but not all dialects use mai over maya. Also, naka being displaced occurred around the same time as Modern Rokadong dialects started to split, so that measure word is unused in almost all dialects.

Some nouns do not take measure words. Most prominently, if the major noun of the object (the primary root, found last in compound words, directly before suffixes and the back parts of circumfixes) is the measure word the noun would use, it does not take a measure word. Words that do not take measure words can themselves be considered measure words, as the a- prefix is applied to them directly.

Counters

Additionally, measure words double as counters, that is, a phrase used to refer to each of a set of objects, usually using cardinal numbers. Examples include akanca tamis for the first floor of a building, maminasha tela for 15th Street, and dunesta mai for the second part of a series of books and so on. Some irregular measure words exist specifically for this purpose, but they are either identical to or a shortened form of the underlying noun; these will be found in the dictionary.

Notably, even though they were derived from cardinal constructions, days of the week are not cardinal: Akkage, Dungkage, and so on.

Irregular uses

Measure words are not completely strict. In academic writing and other situations where "proper" language is expected, a Rokadong speaker is expected to use the "correct" measure word, but different measure words may be used outside of these contexts. This is most evident in the sela class, where the measure word that would be used by a non-divine version of the noun is often used, particularly by those who do not follow Yukacan (the religion historically practiced by the Rokalan, the original speakers of this language), though usually only Raikaram clergy are expected to always use sela for sela nouns. The jang and maya/mai classes are often merged as well, as are the tashaand koro classes; mai and koro are thus better described as "language-related things" and "living things and their parts" respectively.

Syntax

Constituent order

In transitive sentences, Rokadong tends to place the agent before the verb and the objects after the verb. However, Rokadong does not have a subject in the Indo-European sense, so this word order is notated "AVO" rather than "SVO". Additionally, the verb can be moved from agent trigger into patient trigger with the prefix Template:Term. Both the agent and direct object can also be marked individually as such with ká and pá respectively. As a result, the word order of Rokadong is relatively free, though AVO is the most common word order, although OVA is common too, and VAO is rare but not unheard of. The first of the three is the topic of the sentence.

Noun phrase

Adjectives and determiners follow the noun they apply to. Much as in the natural language Spanish, numerals are often considered adjectives, but are placed before the noun, rather than after it. This means that even though Template:Term and Template:Term express an amount of something, they are determiners and not numerals, as they follow the noun. Prepositions and case particles precede the noun they apply to.

When placed in the genitive, a noun is considered an adjective, and is placed after the noun it applies to. That is, the phrase "cup of sugar" translates to ruhung to kairi, not kairi to ruhung.

Verb phrase

Adverbs are considered a form of adjective, and follow the verb they apply to. However, unlike adjectives, adverbs take on the same tense affix as the verb they apply to. This is likely a holdover from when all adjectives were stative verbs.

Verbs are detransitivized by making their object the reflexive pronoun, ká. Usually, the causative affix makes verbs transitive that otherwise wouldn't be, but sometimes a helping verb tenar will be used:

   󴀀  Nata tenaran kafar ibi kalana.

"I got the machine to work."

In cases like this, where there are two verbs in the phrase, the first verb conjugates for tense, aspect, and mood, but not the trigger, while the second verb only conjugates for trigger (agent or patient).

Final particles

Final particles follow the complete sentence and may change the meaning or tone of the sentence, though some may be placed sentence-initially (before the complete sentence) or as interjections instead, and may have a different meaning if so.

•  kel - the interrogative particle. It turns the preceding sentence into a yes-or-no

question.

•   re/ré - used to show and ask for confirmation or agreement respectively, though often pronounced identically as if they were both ré. Usually ré can be translated into English as the tag question "right?," while re can be translated into English as the tag question "eh?." If used sentence-initially or in its own sentence, ré

usually is a sarcastic interjection like English "right", while re usually is an informal attention-grabbing interjection like English "hey". In Rokadong orthography, especially in dialogue, the "e" diacritic is often duplicated for the sentence-initial versions, as  for example.

•  au - expresses excitement or emphasis.
•  ru - assertive, expressing confidence in the preceding statement, especially if the listener is believed to not know it. In such contexts this particle may be translated as the English tag question "you know?" Often spoken with uvular /ʀ/ instead of alveolar /r/. Ru, by itself or with au preceding it, may be used instead of vai to answer the question

"Are you sure?" affirmatively.

•  kir - dubitative, expressing a lack of confidence in the preceding statement. May also be used as an interjection to express shock, much like the English interjections "no" or "wow." Often spoken with glottal /ʢ̠/ instead of alveolar /r/, and the vowel may be softened or completely elided.
•  sén - sympathetic, expressing sorrow or sympathy.

See also

Rokadong word list