Baphian language

This page discusses standard Baphian, which is based off of the Turku dialect. For other Baphian dialects, See Baphian dialects.

Baphian is a group of languages, usually called Baphian dialects, spoken throughout most of Ukilen and Brausia. It is spoken natively by most kaneeds with the exception of Kzmr, a closely related language to the Baphian dialects, usually spoken by Kkzmrri. It is a part of the proto-Ukilen language family. It has around 350 million speakers, most of which are in Ukilen and are L1, with only around 2-3 million being outside of Baphia or L2.

Phonology

Vowels

The following table shows vowel phonemes in standard Baphian.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e	ə	o~ʌ
Open	a		ʌ~ɑ

Most dialects share these vowels with few exceptions. The exceptions being which vowel /ʌ/ is allophonic to. In standard Baphian it is allophonic with /ɑ/, but this is mostly unique to standard Baphian because it is allophonic to /o/ in most other dialects. You can usually tell whether someone speaks standard Baphian natively due to this.

All of these vowels can be lengthened (mostly in words of newer age) and stressed.

Consonants

The following table shows consonant phonemes in standard Baphian

	Labial	Coronal	Dorsal	Laryngeal
Nasal	m	n	ŋ
Plosive	p b	t d	k g	ʔ*
Sibilant		s z	ɕ ʑ tɕ dʑ
Fricative	f v	ð	x	h
Approximant	w	ɹ ɭ	j

All dialects share these consonants, allophony isn't present in standard Baphian consonants, but other dialects do have allophony.

/ɹ/ is used exclusively in onset, and /ɭ/ is used exclusively in coda.

Orthography

Standard Baphian uses both the Ukilen logography and Noellastani alphabet in a mix script to write the language. The logography is heavily preferred and is used the most in standard Baphian including with grammatical concepts, but it is not uncommon to see those written in the alphabet. The alphabet is used mainly with place names, onomatopoeia, and sometimes grammatical concepts.

The following table shows the Noellastani alphabet as its used in standard Baphian in alphabetic order.

Nlls.	IPA	Rom.
A	a
B	b
G	g
C	tɕ	c
Ź	dʑ	jh
W	w
F	f
V	v
E	e
Ë	ə	ë
Z	z
S	s
Ð	ð	dh
D	d
K	k
I	i
L	ɭ~ɹ	l
M	m
N	n
Á	ɑ	ah
Ñ	ŋ	ng
X	x	kh
J	j	y
O	o
P	p
R	ɹ~ɭ	r
S	s
Z	z
Ś	ɕ	sh
Ž	ʑ	zh
T	t
H	h
;	ʔ	'

Ukilen logography

The Ukilen logography is used predominantly for content words such as nouns, adjectives, and verbs. In some cases, such as modern slang, either bare radicals or the alphabet is used.

Grammar

Syntax

Standard Baphian syntax varies greatly by dialect, even within colloquial Turku Baphian and standard Baphian there are differences.

Word order

Standard Baphian word order is exclusively Subject-Object-Verb in prose, and even in poetry it is common for the word order to be SOV, but it is not rare for poetry to break this rule to allow for incredible ambiguation.

Adjectives and nouns

Standard Baphian adjectives and nouns are treated as if they're the same group of words, for example in standard Baphian, "cëzhyu" (/tɕə.ˈʑju/), red, can mean either the colour red itself or "the red one" or even "the one in red" all depending on context. This applies to nouns as well, for example "deye" (/de.ˈje/), louse, can either mean a normal ordinary louse, or "small and annoying".

One important rule about making adjectives and nouns mean more descriptive things, and treating adjectives and nouns as genuine descriptors, is that the descriptor needs to be in the vocative case by adding "mu" if its animate and "nu" if its inanimate, to the end of the word intended to be used for describing, for example, "cëzhyunu mezye" (/tɕə.ˈʑju.nu me.ˈzje/), red hair, and "deyemu bele" (/de.ˈje.mu be.ˈɺe/), an annoying small child, a crying child, or a crying baby, all of which are valid translations.