Seonmi language

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Seonmi
ㄎㄛㄜㄍㄓㄩㄘㄚㄅㄛㄔㄜㄛㄌㄇㄚㄋㄅㄠㄚㄨ (Koegzhijaboseonymanbau)
Pronunciation: /ˈsi.ən.miː/ or /siː.ˈɒn.miː/?
Native to: Saeyri
Language family: Proto-Central Cymluni
  • Central Cymluni
    • Ifunic
      • Seonmic
Early forms: Old Xhani
  • Middle Xhani
    • Modern Xhani/Seonmi
Major dialects: Kaitan, Kaijisa, Kuosluni, Inner Kuosluni, Hwabaeki, Upper Batai, Lower Batai, Laptsai, Northern, Xajiao island, Seoni Anyukai, Goryrang, Xhangsong, Yangon, Suralbu
Writing System
Writing system(s): Unified Seonmi writing system
Period: 1818 - present
Read: left-to-right
Official Status
Regulated by: Seonmi Language Unification Authority
Official language in: Aggurat, Hwabaek, Kuosomy, Saeyri
Minority language in: Uetse
MapLanguageSeonmi.pngThe Seonmi speaking world
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.
[Source]
TextSeonmi.png
This article contains Seonmi (Zhuyin) text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters

Seonmi (ㄎㄛㄜㄍㄓㄩㄘㄚㄅㄛㄔㄜㄛㄌㄇㄚㄋㄅㄠㄚㄨ, Roscoe transliteration: Koegzhijaboseonymanbau, Evangeline transliteration: K'oegtsh'izaposeonymanpau, pronounced (Standard Seonmi) [kʰoeɡ.ʈ͡ʂʰi.ʑa.po.ɕeo.nʲi.man.paɯ]), known as Xhani (ㄏㄚㄋㄩ) until the early 1800s, is the general term used to refer to the languages of the Seonmic language group around the regions of Hwabaek, Kuosomy, and Saeyri, with small communities of speakers in Aggurat and Uetse.

Dialects[edit | edit source]

Dialectical variation is ubiquitous in the Seonmi language, with a high degree of mutual unintelligibility occurring between dialects further apart. The language is divided into fifteen dialect groups, and further subdivided into approximately 641 regional dialects, with 43 considered endangered, 8 of which are considered extinct or critically endangered, and a further 38 proposed additional dialects. For the Seonmi language, the distinction between language and dialect is incredibly blurred, with variation between dialects occurring almost uniformly from town to town, region to region, creating what is sometimes called a "gradient" of dialects across the greater Seonmi-speaking region.

Seonmi's fifteen major dialect groups are Kaitan, Kaijisa, Kuosluni, Hwabaeki, Inner Kuosluni, Upper Batai, Laptsai, Lower Batai, Xajiao Island, Seony Anyukai (also known as Aggurati), Goryrang, Xhangsong (also known as Southern Seonmi), Yangon, and Suralbu. Each dialect group is generally accepted to be at least partially mutually intelligible with other neighboring dialect groups, however become completely unintelligible to dialects from further parts of the Seonmi-speaking world. A person from Xhangsong, for example, could hold a basic conversation with someone from Ghengzhan, however will not be able to communicate (in their native dialect) with someone from Kaitan.

For centuries a form of standard Seonmi has been used across the Seonmi-speaking region, and was based on the Seonmi written in the Five Key Texts of the Seonsol religion, which were first written in 1032 CE in the then contemporary Xhangsong dialect, and has historically been referred to as Temple Seonmic in reference to the Seonsol temples who popularised the dialect across the Seonsol-adherent world. Though actively spoken by the people of Xhangsong in the time the texts were written, by the modern era the language had been reduced to a purely literary language, having remained static as the Xhangsong dialect and all others changed across the centuries, and was spoken and/or written only by the Sojl clergy as a religious language and between Seonmi-speakers who could not understand other dialects as a crude method of communication, with local governmental, scientific and educative authorities using their local dialects in publications and for communication.

It was not until 1816 that Temple Seonmic was revived by the Seonmi Language Unification Authority amongst its other attempts to unify the Seonmi-speaking world. Temple Seonmic's historical use served as inspiration for a reformed Standard Seonmi Language, with the new reformed language based on the Modern Xhangsong dialect supplemented with several dozen words from other dialects. This Standard Seonmi however only found use in Xhangsong and by the well-educated Seonmi intelligensia across Saeyri who sought fortune and influence in the capital. With the foundation of the State of Seonmi in 1894, Standard Seonmi was at last made the official language of Saeyri, and has since been heavily implemented across the nation as the sole official language for education, scientific publications, and governmental documents, quickly finding itself popularised amongst the common people with the spread of radio across the nation.

Grammar[edit | edit source]

Main article: Seonmi grammar

Seonmi is a polysynthetic ergative–absolutive language.

As a polysynthetic language, Seonmi's words are frequently composed from dozens of morphemes (i.e. the smallest meaningful units of a language), many of which cannot be used in isolation. Polysynthetic languages like Seonmi typically have long "sentence-words" comprised of subjects and objects and nouns, describers and verbs sewn together with any number of morphemes which add necessary grammatical information. Amongst its many dozens of morphemes, there are complex systems of honorifics and evidentiality. Pronouns change form to denote their role as a subject or object, and for possession, and are gender neutral.

Though capable of a free word order, the basic form of Seonmi sentence structure is object-subject-verb, with only the verb being required and immovable. As an ergative–absolutive language - like most of the languages of the Central Cymluni language family - the single argument ("subject") of intransitive verbs within expressions behave like the object of a transitive verbs, and differently from the agent ("subject") of transitive verbs. For instance, instead of saying "I moved her, so she moved", speakers of Seonmi would say the equivalent of "I moved her, so her moved".

Phonology[edit | edit source]

The central Cymluni region is home to the oldest living population of anatomically modern humans. Much like the tendency for long-standing, sedentary populations to have high genetic diversities in comparison to migrated populations, so too do the languages of the region possess some of the highest number of phonemes of all the world languages.

Unified Seonmi Alphabet[edit | edit source]

Seonmi is written in the Unified Seonmi writing system, an alphabet devised by the Seonmi Language Unification Authority in 1816 during the post-Atrae-Seonmi War westernisation as an attempt to unify the disparate writing systems of Saeyri and its sister nations of Hwabaek and Kuosomy. The writing system was formally implemented in 1818 throughout the provinces controlled by the Kutsumo Dynasty, and was modelled off the Shaxngashu characters already in use in the region, with the new system also seeing informal usage by the Weiten Clique and Principality of Laptsaita. In the century following, with the gradual unification and modernisation of the nation, the alphabet saw widespread use with its across the board implementation in primary schools, funded and expanded by the modern Seonmi regime predominately as a means to advance the skills of its workforce as the nation's population moved more and more into the industrial and service sectors. As of the present date, the writing system is designed to fully accommodate sounds found within the Goryrang dialect, with many phonemes of Seonmi's other dialects, especially vowels, being incapable of transliteration with the usage of diacritics and/or local writing systems.

For transliterations of Seonmi into Atraelish, there are two predominate methods. The oldest of these two is known as the Roscoe system devised by Roscoe Felte in 1793, which has since continued to function as the official transcription system endorsed by the Seonmi government, and persists as the most well-established in Atraelish transcription of the Seonmi language the world over. The second most common transcription system was devised by Atraelish-Virassian linguist Petro Evangeline in 1893, and is renowned by the small communities of linguists, philologists and other intelligentsia throughout the Atraelish-speaking world for its closeness to the true sounds of Atraelish letters, as well as its clear usage of apostrophes to denote aspirated consonants.

Consonants (Xhangsong dialect)
IPA p ts tsʰ ʈ͡ʂʰ t ɸ ɡ j m
Letter
Atraelish Transcription (Roscoe) b p ts z zh t th f g k y m
Atraelish Transcription (Evangeline) p p' ts ts' tsh' t t' f g k' y m
 
IPA ŋ n ɹʲ ɕ ʂ ʍ x h ɫ ʑ
Letter
Atraelish Transcription (Roscoe) ng n ny r s sh w x h l j
Atraelish Transcription (Evangeline) ng n ny ry s sh hw kh h ly z
Vowels (Xhangsong dialect)
IPA a e i o ɯ
Atraelish transcription (unified) a e i o u
Letter
Diphthongs
Atraelish transcription (unified) uo ai ei au ou iu
Letter

Numerals[edit | edit source]

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
× 1
× 10
× 100  
× 1000

Punctuation[edit | edit source]

Traditional

  • new section mark
  • end section mark
  • word separator
  • small pause (similar to a comma or semicolon)
  • long pause (equivalent to a full stop)
  • 【 】 quotation marks

Western supplements

  • ( ) brackets
  • colon
  • exclamation mark
  • mirative mark[1]

Other writing systems[edit | edit source]

  • Shaxngashu - ~300 CE - present. Adapted from the Yashurhieli writing system used by the then culturally and militarily influential Saknashusz Dynasty.

Dead systems[edit | edit source]

  • Kaitan Hieroglyphs ~1500 BCE - ~400 CE
    • Kaitan Demotic ~600BCE - ~400 CE
      • Kaitan Coptic ~200BCE - ~1800CE
  • Anyukaimi Cuneiform ~2000 BCE - ~1 CE
    • Xhani Cuneiform ~900 BCE - ~20 CE

Notes[edit | edit source]

Languages
Families
Language families Central Cymluni · Ewigic · Lowcymlu-urcinnan · Neiran · Upcymlu-amleian · Yumeran
Languages
Major languages Abata · Amulni · Atraelish · Barva · Cesmelan · Etruarac · Flaigalish · Gakknir · Gashaorhieli · Jovaran · Mahleka · Mainathan · Mordrasi · Mukegani · Pelannician · Ruuvatthan · Seonmi · Tzolkese · Umura · Varlish · Virassian · Wunal · Yashurhieli
Minor languages Šamolai
Misc.
Grammar Amulni · Seonmi · Virassian · Wunal
Word lists List of Seonmi words and phrases · List of Wunal words and phrases
  1. used to signify an unprepared or surprised tone of voice