Araçanic

Araçanic
Language family	Irgi-Zana
Early form(s)	Old Araçanic, Thessama, Proto-Irgi-Zana (Unattested)
Writing system	Xudha alphabet
Official status
Spoken in	Araçana
Speaker
Endonym	zeha Zana /s̪e.ha s̪a.na/
Technical information

Araçanic is the official language of and most commonly spoken language in Araçana.

Phonology

Consonants

Araçanic distinguishes between 17 consonants phonemically.

	Labial	Denti-Alveolar	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m		n	ɲ
Unvoiced Plosive	p	t			k
Voiced Plosive	b	d		dʒ	g
Fricative		s̪	s	ʃ	x	h
Lateral			l
Trill			r

Word Boundaries' Sandhi

Word-initial voiceless stops are usually only weakly unvoiced when uttered directly after a word ending in a vowel or /r/, and the fricatives /s̪/, /s/, /ʃ/, and /x/ are fully voiced to [z̪], [z], [ʒ], [ɣ] in the same circumstances.

/t/, the only stop permitted to end a word, is not pronounced [t] in that position save for when it ends an utterance. If the following word begins with a vowel, the /t/ is pronounced as [d], or increasingly [ð] by younger speakers. If the following word begins with a consonant, the /t/ is usually realized as gemination of that consonant.

Controversy About Murmured Stops

Many older analyses of Araçanic's consonant inventory included the murmured stops /bʱ/, /dʱ/, and /dʒʱ/, which are now usually represented in phonemic trascriptions as sequences of a voiced stop and /h/. In ancient forms of the language, these sequences were treated as single phonemes, along with aspirated stops like */pʰ/ and */tʰ/. However, sound changes such as the loss of coda consonants before /bh/, /dh/, and /dʒh/, and the emergence of new clusters like /mh/ and /s̪h/ make it more convenient to treat these as clusters.

Other Allophonic Rules

/g/ is pronounced [ɣ] between vowels.

/n/ assimilates to [n̪] before a following denti-alveolar consonant.

/n/ becomes [ŋ] before /g/ and before /k/, although the sequence /nk/ appears only in loanwords.

Vowels

Araçanic distinguishes between 5 vowels phonemically.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Allophony

The vowel /a/ is raised in pronunciation to [ɘ] when the next syllable contains an /i/ or an /u/. This does not bode well for Umlaut haters in the future.

Stress

Stress in Araçanic is almost always predictable, occuring in the first syllable of words. The exception is that when a word is made definite by attaching the definite affix to its start, the stress is not moved and remains on the now-second syllable. In some cases this is the sole phonetic difference between two words that would otherwise be homophones, such as in the pair ingruhu [ˈiŋ.ɡru.hu], meaning "sea vegetable," and in-gruhu [iŋ.ˈɡru.hu], meaning "the hand."

Phonotactics

Syllable Structure

The syllable structure may be summarized thusly:

• (Onset) (/r/) Vowel (Coda)

Where:

The onset may be any consonant.

/r/ may follow the onset consonants /p/, /b/, /k/, and /g/.

/g/ does not begin any native words. Loanwords such as geñat (from Yiddish געגנט) are often pronounced with [x].

Permitted Consonant Clusters

Only some of the hypothetically possible clusters given the syllable structure are actually permitted in Araçanic vocabulary.

Clusters of /r/ or /n/ followed by a /p/ /t/ or /k/ only exist in recent loanwords from other languages.

Writing

Xudha Alphabet

The Xudha is the alphabet used to write Araçanic. It is said legendarily to be named after its inventor, although this is dubious historically. It descends directly from the alphabet used for Thessama, which was likely adapted at least in part from an early Greek alphabet, judging by the Thessama names of the letters and by the order they are always listed in, as well as the appearance of some letters. Modern-day Xudha writing makes use of 19 letters:

Xudha Table of Letters

Letter Name	Phoneme		Letter Name	Phoneme		Letter Name	Phoneme
amha	/a/		mi	/m/		uhun	/u/, /b/ (when fortified)
bida	/b/		ñi	/n/, /ɲ/ (before ida)		xi	/x/, /ʃ/ (before ida)
jinda	/d/, /dʒ/ (before ida)		kri	/kr/, /r/ (after voiced kapa)		sadaxi	/s/
zida	/s̺/		pi	/p/		pri	/pr/
ida	/i/, /dʒ/ (when fortified)		ru	/r/		egrun	/e/
kapa	/k/		inga	/h/
lada	/l/		to	/t/

Digraphs are also used:

Xudha Table of Digraphs

Letter Names	Phoneme
amha uhun	/o/
jinda ida (before vowels)	/dʒ/
ñi ida (before vowels)	/ɲ/
xi ida (before vowels)	/ʃ/
uhun ida (often rendered as a single letter)	/i/ (in loanwords from Kozramva /ʉ/)

Some diacritics are used in Araçanic words:

Xudha Table of Diacritics

Diacritic Name (English)	Diacritic Name (Araçanic)	Usage
Dot Above		Indicates voicing of a normally voiceless letter, most importantly turning kapa into /g/. May also be placed above ida and uhun to indicate their fortified variants, although this is often omitted depending on context.
Two Dots Above		Indicates nasalization and voicing, usually of consonants. For example, a /ŋ/ can be written with a kapa and two dots above.
Line Under		Indicates retroflex consonants from Kozramva.

Romanization

The current standard for writing Araçanically using Latin characters was only put in place as recently as May 2025, and because of this, many words in English and other Latin script languages that have been loaned from Araçanic are spelled differently from their Araçanic counterparts, including the English name of the language itself.

2025 Standard Araçanic Latin Alphabet

Letter	Letter Name	Phoneme		Letter	Letter Name	Phoneme		Letter	Letter Name	Phoneme		Letter	Letter Name	Phoneme
A a	a	/a/		I i	i	/i/		Ñ ñ	ñu	/ɲ/		U u	u	/u/
B b	be	/b/		J j	je	/dʒ/		O o	o	/o/		X x	xa	/x/, /ʃ/ (before i)
D d	de	/d/		K k	ke	/k/		P p	pe	/p/		Xi xi	xia	/ʃ/
E e	e	/e/		L l	le	/l/		R r	ra	/r/		Z z	za	/s̪/
G g	age	/g/		M m	mu	/m/		S s	sa	/s/
H h	aha	/h/		N n	nu	/n/		T t	te	/t/

Grammar

Constituent Order

Clauses in Araçanic are always structured in Subject-Verb-Object order.

Noun Phrases

Definiteness

Nouns in Araçanic can be made definite by adding a cliticized article to the beginning of the word. Due to historical sound changes, the correct definite form of a noun is often unpredictable, as demonstrated by contrasting the noun bibha, which becomes irubha when definite, with the similar noun beran, which becomes iberan when definite.

Nouns which denote singular natural features like "Sun" or "Bedrock" do not ever become definite. Nouns that would otherwise be definite are not marked as such when being differentiated using adjectives. For example, if there are two books, and one wished to refer to specifically the blue one, the blue book would be referred to with ori lamha (Literally "Blue book" or "A blue book") instead of ir-ori lamha ("The blue book.") This rule applies to many toponymic phrases, such as Arat Koxi, the most common way to refer to Kozdenen, which can be translated as "The Koz city."

Case

In Araçanic, nouns decline into six cases: The nominative case, the accusative case, the lative case, the ablative case, the locative case, and the genitive case.

Declension Patterns

Araçanic's noun cases are marked by suffixes, which change in numerous ways depending on the vowel or consonant that ends the base form of the noun. Additionally, they may behave in one of two ways with words ending in vowels, depending on if there was once a final */s/ which was debuccalized and then elided. Thus, nouns ending in vowels are labelled lexically as being either "Open" or "Clipped" depending on which pattern the case-markers take.

Case Marker Allomorphs

Ending of Nominative	Accusative Suffix	Lative Suffix	Ablative Suffix	Locative Suffix	Genitive Suffix
a, e, i, o, or u (Open)	-gi	-ri	-duz	-rer	-za
a, e, i, o, or u (Clipped)	-xi	-ri	-ruz	-her	-raza
e from *ui (Open)	-gi	-ri	-(u)juz	-rer	-(u)zha
e from *ui (Clipped)	-(u)xi	-(u)ri	-ruz	-(u)her	-raza
n	-gi	-(r)i	-(r)uz	-(r)er	-(r)aza
en from *uin	-(u)ngi	-(ur)i	-(r)uz	-(ur)er	-(r)aza
r	-(x)i	-i	-uz	-(h)er	-aza
er from *uir	-(ux)i	-(ur)i	-uz	-(uh)er	-aza
t	-(k)i	-(dr)i	-(d)uz	-(z)er	-(d)aza
z	-(k)i	-(dr)i	-(j)uz	-er	-(j)aza

Most personal pronouns, and the word nan, take a different genitive suffix than would be expected.

Verbs

Verbal Aspect

Verbs in Araçanic come in four forms: an form known as the "unmarked" form, a form marked as perfective, a form marked as habitual, and a form marked as cessative. For example, these are the forms of the word zeha, meaning "speak" or "sign":

Unmarked	Perfective	Habitual	Cessative
zeha	zehage	zeho	zehaxa

The unmarked forms of the verb cannot be used on their own. Instead, the unmarked form can be turned into a adjective-like participle phrase with the addition of the particle da. To express the continuous, continuative, and inchoative aspects, this participle is nominalized by using it to describe the word nan, which means "thing" or "what," and the verbs ran, xaz, and irat, which mean "be at," "go," and "make," respectively, are applied to this nominalized phrase. In the present tense, ran is left out as a zero-copula of sorts. Note that nan will end up in the locative case for continuous verbs, the lative case for continuative verbs, and the accusative case for inchoative verbs. Any patient of the action is put into the genitive case after the nominalized verb. For example, the sentence U narer angar da izar means something like "I'm eating it," but literally it says "I'm at the eating of it," or "I'm at its eating." Da is usually contracted to pronouns that may follow it, as in da izar becoming d'ezar.

In the present tense, continuative statements can also be interpreted as gnomic.

The following table shows all 6 possible aspects in the past tense, using the verb angar "eat," a first-person subject, and a third-person object:

Sentence	Gloss	Aspect	English Translation
U ran ir narer angar d'ezar.	1p at PAST thing-LOC eat PRET 3p-GEN	Continuous	I was eating it.
U xaz ir nari angar d'ezar.	1p go PAST thing-LAT eat PRET 3p-GEN	Continuative	I was still eating it.
U irat ir nangi angar d'ezar.	1p make PAST thing-ACC eat PRET 3p-GEN	Inchoative	I was starting to eat it.
U angaxa ir ingi.	1p eat-CESS PAST 3p-ACC	Cessative	I finished eating it.
U angarmu ir ingi.	1p eat-HABI PAST 3p-ACC	Habitual	I used to eat it.
U angare ir ingi.	1p eat-PERF PAST 3p-ACC	Perfective	I ate it.

Verbal Tense

The particles ir and ko are placed after a verb in order to mark the past and future tenses, respectively. It is important to note that in Continuous, Continuative, and Inchoative constructions, ir and ko are always placed after ran, xaz, and irat, because the main verb is nominalized.

A sound change among many younger speakers causes /ir/ and /ur/ to merge as the syllabic trill /r̩/. This almost always causes the ir past tense particle to become non-syllablic /r/ preceding a word beginning with a vowel. For example, U angaxa ir ingi [u aŋ.ga.xɘ ir iŋ.gi] might become [u aŋ.ga.xɘ riŋ.gi].