The Rakki Language

Rakki, or tavvirakkiellas (Eastern pronunciation: [dɑvːɪʁɑgːɪɛlːɑɹ̝], Western pronunciation: [taɸːiɾakːiɛːɮa], Southern pronunciation: [taˀpiˀɾacɛtɬaɹ̥]) was the second most spoken language worldwide after Euluska. 
== Speakers and History ==
It had 9 million speakers (over 14% of the world), about 2.7 million of whom lived outside of Rakkimar (in Bracken, Datria and the NE coast of the Danderillon). It was spread as the dominant language of much of Rakkimar through the conquest of the Old Rakki culture in the -3000s to the -1000s, who settled and mixed with the peoples of Gildegra, Tarkassia, and the northeast Danderillon. The Eastern dialect was the standard, spoken in most of east Rakkimar (the blue area on the map across). Western was spoken in the west half of archipelagic Rakkimar, and Southern was spoken upon the NE Danderillon as well as parts of Antikosti Isle. The Darim language was also closely related to Old Rakki, having broken off and becoming isolated a few millennia before 0. 
Rakki has formed numerous creoles throughout history with its neighbours, such as Low Rakki underground in the Mantle, the Velkalanetziü Whaling Creole in iron age Brist, or the Essurakki creole that's spoken in a lot of West Rakkimar. It also lent a large base of words to Euluska related to the polar regions, especially animal, plant, & climate words. Finally, the Southern dialect has also more recently been evolving side-by-side with the Tarkas dialect of Euluska, which some describe as 'Euluska, but spoken in Rakki". Their slang forms are mutually intellegible and spoken side by side in Bracken. 
== Sounds ==
Rakki contained a fairly limited amount of phonemes - its written form was fairly standardised, and even in its dialects it didn't gain a lot of contrasts. In addition, vowels could be followed by other vowels to create any diphthongs. If you saw two of the same vowel in a row, they doubled in length, and this showed that polysynthesis had occurred (e.g. tu "I" + ullivi "see" = tuullivi "i see").
Consonants could be written twice to geminate them. All forms of Rakki did not contrast consonant voicing - but Eastern dialects tended to voice some consonants where Western and Southern dialects tended to devoice them. Finally, Southern dialects displayed stød̛, and frequently glottalised vowels if they were at the end of a (CV) syllable. 
The consonants and vowels of Rakki, plus IPA phonemic realisations
Written Letter 	Eastern pronunciation 	Western pronunciation 	Southern pronunciation
VOWELS 	VOWELS 	VOWELS 	VOWELS
i 	ɪ 	i 	i
a 	ɑ 	a 	a
When the less stressed vowel in a diphthong, /a/ sometimes sounded like /ɛ/ as seen in the language's name.	When the less stressed vowel in a diphthong, /a/ sometimes sounded like /ɛ/ as seen in the language's name.	When the less stressed vowel in a diphthong, /a/ sometimes sounded like /ɛ/ as seen in the language's name.	When the less stressed vowel in a diphthong, /a/ sometimes sounded like /ɛ/ as seen in the language's name.
u 	u 	u~o 	u
e (rare) 	ɛ 	e 	æ
CONSONANTS 	CONSONANTS 	CONSONANTS 	CONSONANTS
k 	g 	k 	k
k 	g 	k 	c (if followed by /ɪ/)
q 	q 	q~k 	q~k
v 	v 	ɸ~w 	p
t 	d~t 	t 	t
l 	l 	l 	l
l 	l 	ɮ (only if geminated) 	tɬ (only if geminated)
l 	l 	ɮ (only if geminated) 	kɬ (if geminated & at word-onset)
ł 	ɬ 	ɬ ~ ɮ 	ɬ ~ ɮ
r 	ɹ̝ (if word-final) 	ɹ̝ (if word-final) 	ɹ̝ (if word-final)
r 	ʁ 	ɾ 	ɾ
r 	ɹ̝ (if word-final) 	ɹ̝ (if word-final) 	ɹ̝ (if word-final)
s 	ɹ̝ (if word-final) 	ɹ̝ (if word-final) 	ɹ̝ (if word-final)
s 	s 	s~ʃ 	s~ʃ
n 	n 	n 	n̥
w 	w 	w 	ʍ
p 	p 	p 	p
This put the standard Rakki alphabet (the "kativul") as: 
 k a t i v u l r s n w p e q ł
== Other Information ==
Rakki was a synthetic SVO language. Like Euluska, Information like tenses were affixed onto verbs - and even more so than Euluska, because in Rakki, the subject of a verb was proclitic (attached to the start of the verb), and the object was affixed as an enclitic (to the end). Therefore, one word could convey information in the structure [subject-verb-tense-object].
How one word in Rakki can mean a sentence.
iaulliviputasuttiaut? 	iaulliviputasuttiaut? 	iaulliviputasuttiaut? 	iaulliviputasuttiaut? 	iaulliviputasuttiaut? 	iaulliviputasuttiaut?
ia 	ullivi 	pu 	ta 	suttia 	ut
you 	see (v) 	simple past 	the 	bowhead whale 	dual
"Did you see the two bowhead whales?"	"Did you see the two bowhead whales?"	"Did you see the two bowhead whales?"	"Did you see the two bowhead whales?"	"Did you see the two bowhead whales?"	"Did you see the two bowhead whales?"
The Rakki language did not tend to use capital letters, even for names, except on matters of foreign relations where it was seen as the international standard. 
The language also distinguished a dual object plural - e.g. tavira "the polar bear", tavirala "the 2 polar bears", tavirauit "the 3+ polar bears". This is something that the Essu language did too, and few others did. 
== Old Rakki ==
Though sagas are written in Old Rakki, not much else survives, so it's unknown how much of the records of it are just over-exaggerated to sound poetic. Also, I never invented it properly. Suffice to say though, there are some notes on it. Old Rakki was called rakkisk, and descended from Proto-East-Tarkassic, which itself came from Proto-Tarkassic. Spoken from the -10,000s until a few centuries before 0 (morphing to Middle Rakki in the first millennium and Modern Rakki from the 900s onward), it was written in runic script, and its alphabet in antiquity encompassed the following letters.
Reconstructed (estimated) Old Rakki pronunciations from sagas.
Written Letter 	k	a	d	e	v	o	h	l	þ	g	ð	m	ø	n	r	t	y	u	p	s	i	f	j	x 	á
Saga Pronunciation (IPA)	k	ɑ	d	ɛ	v	o	h	l	θ	g	ð	m	œ	n	ɻ	t	ʏ	u	p	s	ɪ	f	j	k͡s	a
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Category:Languages