Classical Oqolaawak

Classical Oqolaawak is the most thoroughly explored version of Oqolaawak.

Real-World Information
Biblaridion began work on Oqolaawak in 2015, and is currently his oldest conlang that remains up to his standards. It was the second conlang featured in a Conlang Showcase.

Summary
Oqolaawak is spoken by the Oqolaayo people, native to the Oqolaam region. Within the Refugium, it is commonly associated with the arts, exoticism and beauty.

Phonemes
Stress

Phonotactics
Classical Oqolaawak has a simple vowel harmony system and consonant harmony system. High (i ii u uu) and low (e ee o oo) vowels cannot co-occur in the same word. "a aa" is considered neutral and can occur with either. Alveolar sibilants (ts s) cannot co-occur with palatal sibilants (ch sh). Exceptions primarily occur in loanwords and in compounds. Most affixes have two realizations for words with high and low vowel roots. Sibilants undergo voicing between voiced segments (/s ʃ/ → /z ʒ/) and the romanization reflexes said allophony. Classical Oqolaawak allows for codas, a small increase in complexity from Proto-Oqolaawak.

Stress
Stress in Oqolaawak always falls on the syllable containing the third-to-last mora of the word.


 * 1 mora: Open syllable with short vowel (Ex: qo, hla)
 * 2 mora: Open syllable with long vowel/dipthong, closed syllable with short vowel (Ex: kak, qoi)
 * 3 mora: Closed syllable with long vowel/dipthong (Ex: taan)

Writing System
Oqolaawak uses the iilwa script, which was adapted from the Ts'ap'u-K'ama abjad. The iilwa script is closest in real-world systems to an abugida: consonant glyphs are assumed to be followed by "a" unless followed by a different vowel character. The sole exception is for when "a" occurs at the beginning of words, in which case a special glyph is used.

Iilwa also features a number of characters for punctuation.

Noun Classes
Classical Oqolaawak has five noun classes, which form a loose animacy hierarchy.


 * Ethereal (ETH): abstract nouns, conceptions, verbal nouns
 * Elemental (EL): inanimate, natural objects, places
 * Material (MAT): animate natural phenomena, body parts, instruments, very low animacy animals
 * Kinetic (KIN): animals (note that not all animals are considered kinetic nouns)
 * Exalted (EX): humans, deities, certain culturally important animals

The class a noun belongs to affects the type of numbers it can take.

Word Order
The default word order of Oqolaawak is VSO (verb-subject-object). Arguments in a sentence are expected to come in order of descending animacy: for example, the sentence "The coconut hit the warrior in the face" would be more naturally translated into Oqolaawak as "The warrior was struck across the face with the coconut." However, less animate nouns can be fronted for emphasis.

Oqolaawak is strongly head-initial: nouns follow prepositions and adjectives but precede possessors and relative clauses, while verbs are preceded by auxiliary verbs.

Pragmatics
Oqolaawak is highly sensitive to formality, using six different levels of speech: Plain/Casual, Polite, Familiar, Affectionate, Subordinate, and Formal.

Animal Registers
The animal registers are speech patterns derived from Oqolaayo mythology: prominent recurring characters within the folklore are associated with characteristic patterns of speech, which carry with them associations of personality traits. Mimicking a speech pattern implies that the referent shares personality traits of the respective animal.

For example, the Chalicothere in Oqolaayo folklore is seen as naive and simple-minded, so using the Chalicothere register will imply the referent is dimwitted.

Nouns

 * akam: tree
 * chelai: woman
 * chihlik: large arthropod
 * fozok: creodont
 * hampo: house
 * hlitssoolwa: temperature
 * hlitwa: heat
 * hliwaltuu: a musical instrument, considered symbolic of Oqolaayo culture
 * ihlao: singing
 * ihlatumpu: musical instrument
 * ihlatunwa: music
 * ihlwa: love
 * illakhaa: jellyfish
 * kalwa: walking, ambulation
 * keppam: a drink made of coconut water steeped in the leaves of a rose-like plant
 * khaazwai: a mythological creature, culturally equivalent to dragons in the real world
 * kiinim: earth, soil
 * lajii: stream, flow, current
 * maai: person, human
 * mihlaao: beauty
 * molai: mother
 * molpaahii: parent
 * paahii: father
 * pachuu: boat
 * palquuquujuy: divine being
 * qoyteew: rhythm
 * qulka: labyrinthodont
 * sheqaa: knife, blade
 * sheqai: butcher
 * sheqak: leaf-cutter bug
 * sheqam: slice, cut, piece
 * sheqwa: cutting
 * tolpo: hand
 * toutuk: bird
 * tunwa: drumming
 * tsoolwa: cold
 * weilom: beach

Verbs
Verbs in Classical Oqolaawak are highly fusional with a single affix conveying one of a combination of three tenses and 11 persons. There are also direct object markers. Oqolaawak also uses a set of three auxiliary verbs to convey more precise tense/aspect encodings.


 * mala: to swim
 * sheqa: to cut

Numbers
Oqolaawak use a decimal system. There are words for numbers as well as powers of ten. Numbers like 4,321(four thousand three hundred twenty-one) are best known as "putu haai qu wichi ma kipu hla"(lit. four thousand three hundred two ten one). They're transcribed in the iilwa script using the consonant glyph for the first sound of the word for the number(minus the vowel deletion diacritic), and preceded by a numerical marker. Though there are some exceptions.

Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUf7GnJcyhA