Tžuro language
From Almeopedia
| Tžuro | |
| Native name | ista si Tžuro |
| Verdurian | šurë |
| Characteristics | |
| Location | Šura |
| Family | Lenani-Littoral |
| Subfamily | Tžuro |
| Standard | Jippirim |
| Writing system | alphabet |
| Info available | lexicon (~150 words) |
| Sample wordlist | |
| one | mo |
| two | ñok |
| three | dej |
| river | jal |
| town | im |
| people | man |
| big | -luj |
| little | -it |
The Tžuro language is the Lenani-Littoral language of the Tžuro people in the time of the adoption of Jippirasti, the language of the Jippirasti scriptures (Baburkunim), and the literary language of all modern Lenani and Tžuro speakers. Classical Tžuro has a system of consonantal roots modified by vowel changes, similar to that of related Old Skourene.
The vowels of classical Tžuro are a e i o u. The consonants are p t k b d g č tž j f s š h v m n ñ ŋ w r l. The affricates č tž j are distinguished by voicing offset time (VOT). Voicing occurs latest in č, earlier in tž, and even earlier in j. Since English voiced consonants have a relatively late VOT, tž sounds very similar to English j, and j something like nj. The three-way contrast is only present in initial consonants.
The syllable structure of Tžuro is (C)(C)V(C)(C). The language has fewer consonant clusters than Old Skourene.
Tžuro nouns that end in a consonant form their plurals like Old Skourene affixing nouns, namely, by adding the vowel that appears before the ending consonant (lam > lama, asev > aseve, etc.). Nouns ending in a back vowel add -m (jeŋu > jeŋum), while others add -u (fsava > fsavau).
