Čia-Ša
From Almeopedia
| ČIA |
| ŠA |
| < TEI |
The Čia-Ša language family is a member of the Eastern family of languages. Given its striking divergence from the rest of the family, some linguists prefer to speak of an Eastern-Čia-Ša family, divided into Eastern and Čia-Ša subfamilies.
Though proto-Eastern as it is reconstructed is clearly a multisyllabic, fusional language, the Čia-Ša languages are typically isolating (and where they are not, this is due to borrowing or to internal compounding, not inheritance). Lufaša, its best-documented member, is SVO, but otherwise head-final; it has no cases nor genders, and pronouns are required. It has a relatively simple pronoun system for the family; Čia-Ša languages tend to have a large proliferation of pronouns, and to regularly innovate new ones.
The Čia-Ša peoples have been perhaps the most peripatetic of the Easterners. After the initial explosion into Eretald and Xengiman, they were left with the original Eastern homeland in Bolon, and subsequently spread eastward— in the 400s they even took over the Lenani plateau, establishing the kingdom of Javan.
The Jeori emperor Suma:un conquered Bolon around 740. The Čia-Ša first moved westward, into the Barbarian Plain; then a Karazi counter-invasion forced them southward, west of Xengiman, where for a time they had a strong kingdom, Munior. From here they spread south into the Koranax. Finally the expansion of Gurdago in the 2700s prompted a movement into the interior of Luduyn, at the expense of the aboriginal Mgunikpe peoples.
For some centuries the Čia-Ša were almost entirely under the thumb of the Gurdagor. Many of them took well to city life, and even served in Gurdago’s army; eventually they realized that they could run their affairs just as prosperously without the overbearing Gurdagor. The Ša city of Lufào rebelled in 3220, and now rules most of the Koranax. The Čia were a little slower to rebel, but equally successful. They are not united; their chief towns, Omi, Tan, and Šeɔ, have formed city-states.
Their remote relatives never quite disappeared from the vicinity of Lake Lenan. The Tei persisted through the centuries, becoming independent of their various overlords around 3000. They were briefly conquered by Cuoli, then elected to join the confederation of Belšai (3236).
Organization
See also
- Proto-Eastern philology — the page with the most information currently available about Čia-Ša
