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.

Etymology

"Rokadong" is short for Rokaseladong, or "the language of Rokasela". Rokasela is the name of an archipelago, on which the language originates. This archipelago is considered extranguhcraftial.

Phonology

Main article: Rokadong phonology

Consonants

Consonant phonemes

	Labial		alveolar		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.
• /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

Notes

• /e, o/ may be realized as [e̞, o̞].
• /i, u, e, o/ may be opened in the final syllable of a morpheme if it is closed, 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/.
• Morpheme-final short /a/ becomes [ə] in most dialects, but some perform this change on all unstressed short /a/.

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

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.

Native script

Main article: Telajang

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