Talk:Old Xšali

By far the biggest gap in Akana at this point is the language and history of Xshalad, so I’ve started working to fill in the gap. Late Old Xshali is the language of Xshalad circa -1200 YP, shortly after the fall of the First Empire. What I ended up with is something that I think could be very elegant and versatile, a good language for an empire of epicures.

I’ve tried to follow Dewrad’s and Radius’s notes as closely as I could, while including inspiration from other analytic languages in West Africa, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. I know the ideas that have been shared so far are for Xshali circa 100 YP, but I moved the dates back for two reasons. First, there is some contradictory information about the dates of the second empire. More importantly, I want to start as early as possible so there is more room for other people to build on the language going forward.

One important feature of Xshali is that it has clicks, at least according to Radius. Dewrad’s Proto-!Ho did not have clicks. However, I have decided that it did have sesquisyllabic content words, and that these initial syllables broke down, creating clusters. Some of these clusters became clicks. The upshot of this is that, while initial clicks are very common for content words, originally monosyllabic words, i.e. most function words, never have initial clicks. Function words with clicks are recent innovations. It also means that all native roots are monosyllabic, although due to borrowing and no-longer-productive compounding, lexical words can be two or more syllables long.

You may have noticed the name. I could find only one document that gives a pronunciation guide for the name Xšali, and it gives a uvular fricative as the onset. But this phoneme was not listed as part of Xšali's phonemic inventory. So I decided that the X actually represents a lateral click, a la Bantuist transcription. There are a number of liberties like this I've taken, while still trying to stay true to the original vision.

Besides finishing the Xšali grammar page, I also have a few thousand words of Xšali history and culture, especially regarding the religion and politics of the late First Empire. Other tasks on the horizon include finishing the logography, and putting a short series of lessons on the ZBB.