Bahasa Sokoku

Sokokan Bahasa Sokoku
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Pronunciation	//
Region	Sokoku
Status	official
Speakers
Language family	Language example 1 Language example 2 Language example 3 Bawanesi Language example 5 Bahaso Sokoku
Parent languages	Lazeh
Early forms	Lazeh
Writing system	Sokokana
Official status
Official in	Sokoku
Regulated by	Language Authority at Advancement Secretariat

Bahasa Sokoku, also named Bahaso for short, is the official and national language of Sokoku. It is a standardised version of languages spoken on Shuuen and Nelyasyat, belonging to the Bawanesi language family. Bahaso is using an adapted version of the Kakuri writing system called Sokokana. Bahaso is used for communication between states and citizens of the different states and as such taught as official language on all schools. It is however interintelligible with the local languages and dialect of over 80% of the population. This goes for example for all the speakers of Lazeh, which is the majority language in Nelyasyat. Most Sokokans, aside from speaking the national language, are fluent in at least one of the more than 700 indigenous local languages.

History

Bahaso was proposed as a standardised language in 76XX during the Pakatayan conflict. At that time, it became obvious that Sokoku had the ambition to take over governance of Aspasia. It needed a common language to be able to govern an area at least twice as large as Sokoku was during the Pakatayan secession. Simplifying and standardising was a relatively easy process, but the main issue was the use of a writing system. The several Bawanesi languages in the region used different writing systems without a prevailing one, and post-colonial Sokoku wanted to avoid using the Anarian alphabet as the standard. A solution was found by adapting the Kakuri writing system for this purpose.

In 7628 a first version of the language was presented, but it took until 7638 until the proposal had been developed enough to be able to get implemented in federal government and education. In 7645 Bahaso was formally declared the official language of Sokoku. The language legislation however acknowledged several minority languages and described in which circumstances Bahaso had to be used, thus creating room for the continued application of other indigenous languages, related or not. At that time, only about 5% of the population managed to use the language at an L2 level. The combination of nationalistic, political, and practical concerns ultimately led to the successful adoption of Bahaso as a national language.

Today, almost all 170 million inhabitants regularly make use of the national language, with varying degrees of proficiency. In a nation that is home to more than 700 native languages and a vast array of ethnic groups, it plays an important unifying and cross-archipelagic role for the country. Use of the national language is abundant in the media, government bodies, schools, universities, workplaces, among members of the upper-class or nobility and also in formal situations. Howeve, a 7685 census learned that only 20% of over-five-year-olds speak mainly Bahaso at home, making it a common second language in Sokoku at most. Bahaso still functions as a symbol of national identity and pride, and is a lingua franca among the diverse ethnic groups. The language serves as the national and official language, the language of education, communication, transaction and trade documentation, the development of national culture, science, technology, and mass media. It also serves as a vehicle of communication among the states and different regional cultures in the country.

Phonology

Bahaso has six vowel phonemes as shown in the table below.

Bahaso vowel phonemes

	Front	Central	Back
Close	/i/		/u/
Close-Mid	/e/	/ə/	/o/
Open		/a/

The language has four diphthong phonemes only in open syllables, of which one has entered only through loanwords. They are:

• /ai̯/: kedayi ('shop'), pandayi ('clever')
• /au̯/: kerbaou ('buffalo'), limaou ('lime')
• /oi̯/ (or /ʊi̯/): amboyi ('wow'), toyilet(u) ('toilet')
• /ei̯/: surveyi ('survey')

Diphthongs are differentiated from two vowels in two syllables, such as:

• /a.i/: e.g. lain ('other') [la.in], air(u) ('water') [a.ir]
• /a.u/: bau ('smell') [ba.u], laut(u) ('sea') [la.ut]

The consonants of Bahaso are shown below. Non-native consonants that only occur in borrowed words are shown in parentheses.

Bahaso consonant phonemes

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Plosive/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t̪	t͡ʃ	k
	voiced	b	d	d͡ʒ	ɡ
Fricative	voiceless	(f)	s	(ʃ)	(x)	h
	voiced
Approximant		w	l	j
Trill			r

The language has light stress that falls on either the final or penultimate syllable, depending on regional variations as well as the presence of the schwa (/ə/) in a word. It is generally the penultimate syllable that is stressed, unless its vowel is a schwa /ə/.

Grammar

Word order is generally subject-verb-object (SVO). However, considerable flexibility in word ordering exists. It does not mark for grammatical case, nor does it make use of grammatical gender. A majority of words that refer to people generally have a form that does not distinguish between the sexes. However distinction is made between older or younger. There are a few words that have gender: for instance, putri means "daughter" while putra means "son"

Words are composed of a root or a root plus derivational affixes. The root is the primary lexical unit of a word and is usually bisyllabic, of the shape CV(C)CV(C). Affixes are "glued" onto roots (which are either nouns or verbs) to alter or expand the primary meaning associated with a given root, effectively generating new words, for example, masak (to cook) may become memasak (cooking), memasakkan (cook for), dimasak (be cooked), pemasak (a cook), masakan (a meal, cookery), termasak (accidentally cooked). There are four types of affixes: prefixes (awalan), suffixes (akhiran), circumfixes (apitan) and infixes (sisipan). Affixes are categorised into noun, verb, and adjective affixes. Many initial consonants alternate in the presence of prefixes: sapu (to sweep) becomes menyapu (sweeps/sweeping); panggil (to call) becomes memanggil (calls/calling), tapis (to sieve) becomes menapis (sieves).

Grammar does not regularly mark plurals. To change a singular into a plural one either repeats the word or adds para before it (the latter for living things only); for example, "students" can be either murid-murid or para murid. Plurals are rarely used.

Personal pronouns are not a separate part of speech, but a subset of nouns. They are frequently omitted, and there are numerous ways to say "you". Commonly the person's name, title, title with name, or occupation is used ("does Johnny want to go?", "would Madam like to go?"); kin terms, including fictive kinship, are extremely common. The table below provides an overview of the most commonly and widely used pronouns:

Common pronouns

Person	Respect	Singular		Plural
1st person exclusive	Informal, Familiar	aku	I	kami	we (s/he,they, not you)
	Standard, Polite	saya
1st person inclusive	All			kita	we (s/he,they, and you)
2nd person	Familiar	kamu, engkau, kau	you	kalian	you all
	Polite	Anda		Anda sekalian
3rd person	Familiar	dia, ia	s/he, it	mereka	they
	Polite	beliau	s/he

Verbs are not inflected for person or number, and they are not marked for tense; tense is instead denoted by time adverbs (such as "yesterday") or by other tense indicators, such as sudah "already" and belum "not yet". On the other hand, there is a complex system of verb affixes to render nuances of meaning and to denote voice or intentional and accidental moods.

Adjectives are always placed after the noun that they modify. Hence, "rumah saya" means "my house", while "saya rumah" means "I am a house".

Writing system

Bahaso uses an adapted writing system from the Kakuri languages. Typical for the writing system is the use of morae (kana) where each character of digraph represents a mora. There are 84 characters and a digraphs (wu, written as "wiu") representing the basic mora, while the variations including the /y/ sound (like /kyu/) are depicted by 49 digraphs. The 85th character (ん) is used for ~n at the end of words.

In the case a word ends with a consonant a smaller version of the consonant followed by "~u" symbols tend to be used, except for the /~ng/ which always uses the smaller ん symbol. This is however more a common practice than a requirement within the language, it is not anchored in the spelling rules of Bahaso.

The symbol っ is also use in front of a kana to indicate a short vowel or dubble consonant, for example in あっく[akku] meaning "small container" or "tin", compared to あく [ak(u)] meaning "I".

Because the characters of the kana do not represent single consonants (except in the case of the aforementioned ん), the kana are referred to as syllabic symbols and not alphabetic letters. The alphabetical order in the table below is only used in Bahaso, the (almost) similar writing system in Kakuri has a different order. Digraphs like "kyo" are sorted between "ko" and "ku", while the short vowel indicator "tsu" is sorted after the words without this indicator, for example "tako" (flatbread), then "takko" (forest lizard zootoca vivipara) followed by "taku" (scared)

vowel	a	あ	e	え	i	い	o	お	u	う
H	ha	は	he	へ	hi	ひ	ho	ほ	hu (ɸu)	ふ
B	ba	ば	be	べ	bi	び	bo	ぼ	bu	ぶ
P	pa	ぱ	pe	ぺ	pi	ぴ	po	ぽ	pu	ぷ
M	ma	ま	me	め	mi	み	mo	も	mu	む
N	na	な	ne	ね	ni	に	no	の	nu	ぬ
T	ta	た	te	て	ti (ci)	ち	to	と	tu (tsu)	つ
D	da	だ	de	で	di	ぢ	do	ど	du	づ
TS	ca	タ	ce	テ	ci	チ	co	ト	cu	ツ
K	ka	か	ke	け	ki	き	ko	こ	ku	く
G (g)	ga	が	ge	げ	gi	ぎ	go	ご	gu	ぐ
S	sa	さ	se	せ	si (ʃ i)	し	so	そ	su	す
DJ (ʤ)	ja	ざ	je	ぜ	ji	じ	jo	ぞ	ju	ず
R (r)	ra	ら	re	れ	ri	り	ro	ろ	ru	る
L	la	ラ	le	レ	li	リ	lo	ロ	lu	ル
Y	ya	や	ye	𛀁	yi	イ	yo	よ	yu	ゆ
W	wa	わ	we	ゑ	wi	ゐ	wo	を	wu	ゐう
	nya	にゃ	nye	にえ	nyi	んイ	nyo	にょ	nyu	にゅ

Beside the complicated character of the writing system itself, there are certain variations in place that are difficult or impossible to see in writing. The /ti/ and /tu/ are pronounced as /tsi/ and /tsu/ most often, while there are separate symbols for the almost identically sounding /ci/ and /cu/ morae. Similarly, /si/ is usually pronounced as /sji/ as well. The /h/ sound in /hu/ approximates an /f/ in the form of /ɸ/.

The /n/ can be pronounced as /ng/ in the middle of words (but not always), the /g/ could be as short as almost an /h/ in the middle of words, while /k/ could be pronounced as /g/ as well. Especially the latter can be quite confusing, since there are separate characters for the /g/ sounds as well.

It's also quite difficult to separate the /u/ sounds from the schwa /ə/, which both are present in Bahaso but written the same way. In some cases, the /u/ sound disappears completely in a word, for example in the name なつき (na-tu-ki) being pronounced as natski. Most loanwords ending in a consonant are written with the ~u kana instead.

Most loanwords using "f" are written with "p" characters and pronounced as such, but some are using the ふ symbol instead. Loanwords from Kakuri can be wrtten following the Kakuri writing system, which differs slightly from the Bahaso standard. An example is ずき [juki] (rifle) which can be written as じゅき [jiyuki] as well.

Vocabulary

Bahaso is using a lot of loanwords from former colonial presence. Anisoran has left quite a mark in the vocabulary, while Wortsproke and Kakuri are present as well. It is less common that Stoldic or Hallisian has made it into the vocabulary, but there are dozens of examples present. More recently, the influence of Izto languages can be seen through loanwords in Bahaso as well, so far mainly connected to their cuisine.

• Anisoran loanwords: あくた [akta] (certificate), ばんく [bangku] (chair), べらんだ [beranda] (porch), かなル [kanal] (canal), けめざ [keméja] (shirt).
• Wortsproke loanwords: みっでん [midden] (dump), ざんかる [jankar] (anchor), せくるぷ [sekrup] (screw), づす [dus] (dose), めけラる [mekelar] (broker)
• Izto loanwords: とまとtomato, あぼかど [abokado] (avocado), かかお [kakaou] (cocoa), ちょこラつ [cokelat] (chocolate), もリ [moli] (sauce)
• Auresian loanwords: あるまだ [armada] (fleet), ぐらちす [gratis] (free), ぱルす [pals] (false), ぴぐら [pigura] (figure), にひル [nihil] (zero)
• Kakuri loanwords: ばけろ [bakéro] (stupid), ぼし [boshi] (military hat), ツと [cuto] (intermediate), がっこ [gakko] (school), ずき [juki] (rifle)
  • Tsuki loanwords: あさ [asa] (hamlet), ぶちょ [buco] (deputy chief), ぶっぴん [buppin] (goods), ぶっぱん [buppan] (sales), だい [da.i] (great, large)
• Stoldic loanwords: おとまちす [otomatis] (automatic), せこぷ [sekop] (shovel), てげル [tegel] (floor tile), めれく[merek] (brand)
• Hallisian loanwords: あせつつ [aset] (asset), ぼとル [botol] (bottle), でさイん [desayin] (design), ふろんたル [frontal] (frontal), いす [isu] (issue)
• Livarian loanwords: くるわ [kurwa] (prostitute), こみさる [komisar] (commissioner), つろイか [troika] (trio), らよん [rayon] (administrative region), すわせんばだ [swasembada] (self supporting)