Other languages in the world of Kxënt'exo

For assistance with reading IPA, see Help:IPA

This page contains information about the other languages that exist within the same universe as Kxënt'exo.

These secondary languages are what's known as naming languages or conlang sketches, which basically means that they're not going to be developed in much depth, there won't be translations of full texts or anything complex made with these, though of course I could end up changing my mind and develop any of these further, and if you're interested in taking these conlang sketches and turning any of them into full fledged languages go ahead!

The main purpose of the languages in this page is to provide a source for Kxënt'exo to borrow vocabulary from, that way not all words in the language will be native terms, which is particularly useful for vocabulary that refers to concepts that would be foreign to Kxënt'exo speakers, like polar bears, bamboo, ships, mooshrooms, different types of flora and fauna or even the Nether dimension and the End dimension.

Gwa'ava /ˈɣʷa.ʔa.va/

Geographical and cultural information

Gwa'ava (meaning "clear speech") is spoken in more humid and tropical areas, such as jungles, swamps and coastal regions.

Underground they tend to have more lush caves, in their coastal areas they're more likely to have lukewarm oceans and warm oceans, and in the transitional areas between where Kxënt'exo is spoken and where this language is spoken there's meadows, plains and forests, predominantly cherry groves and oak forests.

Gwa'ava speakers also tend to have more knowledge on the other planes of existence like the Nether dimension and the End dimension, though this is believed to be some sort of evil, dark magic by Kxënt'exo speakers.

Their access to Nether resources also means that they're more knowledgeable on redstone components, like redstone comparators and observers which require nether quartz to be crafted. They don't have access to abundant Nether resources though, so even in places where this language is spoken redstone is quite rare to come across, and only few even know how it works at all.

Most Gwa'ava speakers have not seen these other dimensions or interacted with any beings from those places, so it's also rumored that they don't actually exist and they're folklore.

This means that the vocabulary Kxënt'exo can borrow from Gwa'ava is mostly for things that appear in humid areas, oak, birch and cherry trees, bamboo, moss, vines, different types of flowers, bees, axolotl, coral, and things that come from the other dimensions, such as some redstone components, endermen, zombified piglins, withers, potions and anything to do with portals, among others.

Gwa'ava is related to Shokô, they both evolved from a common proto-language.

Phonology

Gwa'ava has 3 vowels:

And 15 consonant phonemes:

These phonemes are treated as having no allophonic variation, because these languages are not meant to be very fleshed out, the main conlang of the project is Kxënt'exo, so the exact pronunciation of these isn't strictly defined beyond the basics.

Syllables can only take the shape CV (Consonant-Vowel) which means that:

• Every syllable must start with a consonant, never a vowel.
• No syllable can end in a consonant.
• There can't be any consonant clusters, each pair of consonants has to have at least one vowel between them.

Stress always falls in the first syllable of the word, even in loanwords or in cases where prefixes or compounds are used.

The romanization of Gwa'ava is fairly straight forward, most letters correspond to their reading in the IPA, and there's no need for diacritics other than the letter <ñ> being used to represent the palatal nasal /ɲ/, though the < ny > digraph could be used instead if the special character is not easily typeable for you.

Syntax

The default word order of Gwa'ava is SVO (Subject - Verb - Object) which is to say that in a sentence the doer of the action goes first, then the verb, and finally the one receiving the action, as in "The villager harvested the potatoes".

The order of modifiers in relation to the words they modify is as follows:

The word order is mostly important when determining in what order words would come in in compounds, or if things would be prefixes or suffixes, or if there are simple sentences or phrases that you want to translate.

Inflectional morphology

This language is meant to be heavily agglutinating, so it would have lots of affixes and compounds, beyond that I don't have anything concrete at the moment, but I will write a list of affixes and common compounds and their uses here.

Historical linguistics

Gwa'ava is related to Shokô, they both evolved from the same proto-language. To see the proto-language that Gwa'ava descended from go to history of the other languages in the world of Kxënt'exo.

Shokô /ˈʂo.kʌ/

Geographical and cultural information

Shokô (meaning "clear speech") is spoken in colder areas and places with higher elevation, such as mountainous areas, snowy regions like snowy plains and frozen rivers and colder forests like taigas and birch forests.

The language is mostly spoken inland, Shokô speakers don't tend to live in coastal regions, so the language probably won't have vocabulary for areas like frozen oceans or snowy beaches.

Given the mountainous terrain you would expect to see more earthquakes in these regions.

In the transitional area between where Gwa'ava and Shokô are spoken you find dark forests and those tend to be inhabited by people who predominantly speak Shokô, which also means that Shokô speakers are familiar with pale gardens and the creaking.

Underground Shokô speakers are also more familiar with the deep dark, though they haven't explored it very well due to how hostile that area is, but at the very least they know of the existence of ancient cities and sculk. Note that this civilization did not build the ancient cities, those have been there for a very long time and seem to have inscriptions in undeciphered languages, unrelated to Kxënt'exo or any known language of this world.

This means that the vocabulary Kxënt'exo can borrow from Shokô is mostly for things that appear in colder areas and places with higher elevation, such as earthquakes, snow, ice, mountains, goats, stray, polar bears, spruce trees and birch trees, as well as some terms for deep underground areas like sculk, geodes, ancient cities, wardens and bedrock, among others.

Shokô is related to Gwa'ava, they both evolved from a common proto-language.

Phonology

Shokô has 8 vowels:

And 19 consonant phonemes:

Shokô also features vowel harmony, so words can only have vowels that are considered front or back, but not a mix of both, here's how the vowels are classified in the harmony system of the language:

This also affects affixes, for example a hypothetical suffix like /-t͡so/ would become /-t͡se/ when it's being used on a word with front vowels, and a different suffix like /-zʉfk/ would become /-zufk/ when used on a word containing back vowels.

These phonemes are treated as having no allophonic variation, because these languages are not meant to be very fleshed out, the main conlang of the project is Kxënt'exo, so the exact pronunciation of these isn't strictly defined beyond the basics.

Syllables have the shape (C)(C)V(C)(C) (Consonant-Consonant-Vowel-Consonant-Consonant) all of the consonants are in parenthesis because they're all optional, so the minimum shape of a syllable is just a vowel and the maximum shape is two consonants at the beginning and at the end of the syllable.

Stress tends to be on the first syllable of the word, however that's not always the case, sometimes it falls on the second syllable, and this is because at one stage of the language there used to be a vowel length distinction, and when the second vowel was long it took the stress from the first syllable, but Shokô no longer has vowel length distinction, making stress unpredictable.

The romanization of Shokô is relatively simple, only requiring a few diacritics for some vowel sounds

Syntax

The default word order of Shokô is SOV (Subject - Object - Verb) which is to say that in a sentence the doer of the action goes first, then the one receiving the action, and finally the verb, as in "The villager the potatoes harvested".

The order of modifiers in relation to the words they modify is as follows:

The word order is mostly important when determining in what order words would come in in compounds, or if things would be prefixes or suffixes, or if there are simple sentences or phrases that you want to translate.

Inflectional morphology

This language is meant to be fusional, so it would have lots of affixes that merge with other affixes, beyond that I don't have anything concrete at the moment, but I will write a list of common affixes and compounds along with their uses here.

Historical linguistics

Shokô is related to Gwa'ava, they both evolved from the same proto-language. To see the proto-language that Shokô descended from go to history of the other languages in the world of Kxënt'exo.

Séén /seːn˥/

Geographical and cultural information

Séén (or the full name "xìsuk re séén" /xi˩.suk˧ ɾe˧ seːn˥/ "language of the people") is spoken in islands and archipelagos, the language is spoken in a very vast area, even larger than where Kxënt'exo is spoken, there is some dialectical variation but for the purposes of this project I may just make one or two.

The south-eastern side of the region tends to have warmer and more tropical islands, that's also where volcanoes are, the north-western side tends to have colder areas, and that's where there are frozen oceans, mainly towards the south there are some mushroom fields, which is a pretty rare biome.

This civilization is also familiar with ocean monuments, which haven't been explored very thoroughly since they're pretty difficult to get into. Note that ocean monuments weren't built by this civilization, it is unknown who built those monuments or for what purpose.

This means that the vocabulary Kxënt'exo can borrow from Séén is mostly for aquatic things, like different types of fish and deep sea objects, magma, ships, treasure maps, tridents, ocean monuments, prismarine, sea lanterns, sponges, conduits and ocean guardians, among others.

Phonology

Séén has 4 monophthongs (with length distinction):

2 diphthongs:

And 18 consonant phonemes:

Séén also features tone, meaning that vowels have to be pronounced with a certain intonation. In tonal languages pitches aren't absolute, the pitch you have to pronounce is relative to the rest of the utterance.

The tones of Séén are the following:

Note that falling tone can only appear in long vowels.

These phonemes are treated as having no allophonic variation, because these languages are not meant to be very fleshed out, the main conlang of the project is Kxënt'exo, so the exact pronunciation of these isn't strictly defined beyond the basics.

Syllables have the shape (C)V(C) (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant) all of the consonants are in parenthesis because they're all optional, so the minimum shape of a syllable is just a vowel and the maximum shape is a consonant at the beginning and one at the end of the syllable.

There is no stress in Séén, the syllables are all said with equal emphasis (unless a speaker is trying to emphasize a word).

The romanization of Séén only uses diacritics to indicate tone:

Note that the diacritics combine with the vowel letters, they're just displayed on their own in the table above for convenience, but here's all of the vowel combined with each tone diacritic:

Syntax

The default word order of Séén is VSO (Verb - Subject - Object) which is to say that in a sentence the verb goes first, then the doer of the action, and finally the one receiving the action, as in "Harvested the villager the potatoes".

The order of modifiers in relation to the words they modify is as follows:

The word order is mostly important when determining in what order words would come in in compounds, or if things would be prefixes or suffixes, or if there are simple sentences or phrases that you want to translate.

Inflectional morphology

This language is meant to be very isolating, so there won't be many words that have inflections at all, you may see compounds being used or maybe there's some affixes used when deriving words, but there won't be a lot of verb conjugations or noun and adjective inflections, if any.

Beyond the basic concept I don't have anything concrete at the moment, but I will write a list of common affixes and compounds along with their uses here.

Historical linguistics

To see the proto-language that Séén descended from go to history of the other languages in the world of Kxënt'exo.

Notes

I'd like to thank my close friend Rana for helping me with creating Gua'ava and Shokô, I had ideas for the worldbuilding and the basic concepts but she basically built the phonetic inventories for these languages from scratch.

I had asked her if she could help me come up with some ideas for the phonology but she went above and beyond, these sound pretty distinct from each other, they're pretty unique in different ways and they're also not too similar to any existing language, I like how these turned out, and once she made the phonetic inventories I added the phonotactics and made the proto-languages and the historical sound changes to turn the proto-words into the evolved words.

I really like how these conlang sketches turned out, so I may take any of these and expand them into full-fledged conlangs at some point in the future, but for now I'd like to focus on Kxënt'exo as the main conlang for this project.

Also if you'd like to take any of these sketches and expand on them, making your own fully developed conlang using these as the base go ahead! And feel free to contact me to show me what you did with them.

Other links

• Back to the main Kxënt'exo page
• History of Gwa'ava, Shokô and Séén.