| Fiscosian | |
|---|---|
| Toahn | |
| Pronunciation | ˈtʰʌŋ |
| Created by | Hong Kong Students |
| Date | 2012 |
| Users | 2 (2012)[citation needed] |
| Purpose | |
| Sources | Multiple, a priori |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | art |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
Fiscosian (English: /fɪsˈkɔːʃən/), or in Fiscosian, Toahn (IPA: [ˈtʰʌˑŋ], rooted from the English word "tongue") is a constructed personal language by two Hong Kong linguistics students, originally created for the sake of telling secrets without being discovered. Fiscosian is designed to be highly inflected, with lots of irregular noun declensions and verb conjugations in order to create barrier in understanding.
Fiscosian uses totally 40 Latin and Greek alphabets with diacritics. Fiscosian has various root of vocabulary. Most vocabularies share the same root with Finnish, where some of them are rooted from English, German, French, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, et cetera. Some vocabularies, on the other hand, are a priori.
Phonology
editThe following is the monophthongs (Monaoþohn) of Fiscosian.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | [i]·[y] [ɪ]· |
[ɨ]· [ɪ̈]· |
[ɯ]·[u] ·([ʊ]) |
| Mid | [e]·[ø] [ɛ]·[œ] |
[ɘ]· [ə] [ɜ]· |
[ɤ]·[o] [ʌ]·[ɔ] |
| Open | [æ] [a] |
[ɑ] |
Consonants
editConsonants (Konsonend) of Fiscosian vary with the vowel before them (mostly depending on the hardness of the proceding vowel). One distinctive feature of the Fiscosian language is that click consonants are used in many words (marked by diacritics on vowels or the click holder "y"). The following is a table of the consonants in groups.
Alphabets
editFiscosian consists of 39 Latin and 1 Cyrillic alphabets with certain diacritics. The alphabets are shown below.
| A a | B b | (C c) | (Č č) | D d | Ď d̆ | Ð ð | E e | F f | G g |
| H h | Ħ ħ | I i | Ï ï | J j | K k | L l | M m | N n | Ń ń |
| O o | P p | П п | Þ þ | Q q | R r | Ř ř | Ŕ ŕ | S s | Š š |
| T t | U u | V v | W w | Ƿ ƿ | X x | Y y | Z z | Æ æ | Œ œ |
The letters ⟨c⟩ and ⟨č⟩ are slightly similar to the Russian ⟨ъ⟩ and ⟨ь⟩, they represent the hardness of preceding consonants and cannot be pronounced alone. (They are called the "hardness adjustors".)
Grammar
editFiscosian grammar is complicated as the original means of the language is secret communication. It is highly inflected.
Nouns
editNouns in Fiscosian are divided into 6 groups, according to their rationality. The first three classes (I, II, III) are the Rational Class (the R-class) and the latter three (IV, V-reserved, VI) are the Irrational Class (the I-class). The nouns are then inflected according to their rationalities. R-class nouns are always capitalised, where I-class nouns are not capitalised unless being the first word of the sentence. Details are shown in the below table.
| Class | Group | Descriptions | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rational | I | Human-related, Religious words | Ihminyyn man (human-related), Ďaevasn sky |
| II | Abstracts, Languages, Nationalities | Ońi happiness (abstracts), Toahn (languages) | |
| III | Instruments, Tools, Animals, Places and builings | Kitšahn cat (animals), Scdifd pen (instruments) | |
| Irrational | IV | Natural landscapes, Weathers, Plants, Machineries, Electronic appliances | kyœkk flower (plants), sumu fog (weather), duudoqone computer (electronic appliances) |
| V | Words derived from other parts of speech | ||
| VI | Loanwords | vauƿoull vowel, kaod̆a coda |
Syntax
editThe syntax of Fiscosian is relatively restricted as compared to other highly inflected languages (like Latin) due to its noun class system. As described by the creators, Fiscosian nouns are "true classists". The general syntax of Fiscosian is either SOV or OSV, depending on the classes of the subjects and objects. Normally, for a regular (or null-focus) sentence, the noun, no matter the subject or the object, with the higher class is put first, thus creating SOV or OSV sentence structure. However, Fiscosian is partially pro-drop, nominative pronouns are usually omitted in simple sentences. For example:
However, if it is necessary to focus on a particular word/meaning in a sentence, the sentence should be formed as shown in the following table:
| Focus | Fiscosian | Literal translation | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| Focus | Fiscosian | Literal translation | English |
| Focus | Fiscosian | Literal translation | English |
| Focus | Fiscosian | Literal translation | English |
