K'aitani

From Almeopedia

K’aitani
Native name	K’aitani
Verdurian	caitanřon
Characteristics
Location	Apoyin
Family	Western
Subfamily	Bekkayin
Standard	Melik'ur
Writing system	none
Info available	lexicon (~250 words)
Sample wordlist
one	pič
two	das
three	zim
river	dah
town	k’uar
people	ban
big	tes
little	buh

K’aitani [ˈkʰaj ta ni] is the language of K'aitan, the kingdom occupying the northern half of Apoyin island, though before the Omeguese invasion its speakers occupied the whole island.

It’s a member of the Bekkayin branch of the Western family (along with Omeguese), and thus distantly related to Nanese. Its closest relatives are the dialects spoken in Tuŋbad or East Bad.

As Omeguo is more advanced socially and technology and is used for writing, there are many borrowings from Omeguese. There is also a substratum of Old Bekkayin words (indeed, this substratum is a major source of the little we know of that family).

Phonology:

Stops p t k b d g t’ k’ (latter two aspirated)
Affricates č
Fricatives f v z s h (s h only occur syllable-finally)
Nasals n m
Liquids r
Vowels i e a o u

K’aitani is an inflecting language, though its inflections evidently derive from an earlier agglutinating stage (as in Nanese).

Its default word order is SOV and constituents are head-final, but verb inflections largely occur after the word, suggesting an earlier head-initial stage.
There is no case marking (though there is an array of locative suffixes), but the verbal system suggests earlier ergativity: transitive verbs are normally formed with a special prefix na-.
The plural is -ek (or -k after a vowel).
Verbal conjugation marks aspect, as well as who is affected by an action and in what way.

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