Nekāchti

**Nekāchti** is a language spoken in Thirēa

## Real-World Information

Biblaridion began working on Nekāchti in 2016. Of the conlangs he's developed, Biblaridion considers Nekāchti his favorite, as well as his most thoroughly developed.

The first version of Nekāchti was referred to as "Hekantrian".

## Summary

Nekāchti is a member of the Thirēan language family, originating in Nekāchta descending from Classical Thirēan. It is well-regarded among the scholarly and scientific communities within The Refugium, and serves as a prestige dialect for speakers of the True Thirēan languages.

## Example text

Here is the example shown in the showcase video:

*Kaprillik katothēmon īmētstilikas Eritōsken thēpanok tēlin, intsok Nekāchtas eriptanī īse tanōston ankomēan mētstak ītrinok. Thene ontīlan itrōpan, athīches ithrachentāsa chīkatmonin anchīmētstī mēran ipson, kīthrālitānī impa methrapson, kelatstrin, no lakratstrin īmētsta īkirem. Kītses thene īotstīske Nekāchti īpilōha, no sanemālin īlaronaske itrikēlos.*

Gloss: Passion-DIM MER-city-GEN language-DIM-ERG Eritōske-GEN coast-LOC begin-PERF.CONV, ending-LOC Nekāchti-ERG history-INSTR within greatest nation-GEN language-LOC 3.INAN.SUBJ-become-PERF. Many century-PL-ABS pass-PERF.CONV, purity-ABS wound-PASS-CONC.CONV commoner-PL.GEN 3.PL.ANIM.POSS-PEJ-language-INSTR speech-GEN intertwine-PERF.CONV, scholar-ASSOC.PL-INSTR as science-GEN, knowledge-GEN, and logic-GEN language 3.INAN.SUBJ-see-PASS-GNO. Learn-INF much thought-INSTR-ABSTR Nekāchti 3.INAN-demonstrate-GNO, and predecessor-GEN 3.INAN.POSS-god-GEN-ABSTR INCH-know-INF.

Translation: "Having begun as the dialect of an unassuming colony on the coast of Eritōske sea, Nekāchti ultimately became the language of one of the greatest empires in history. While with the passing of many centuries its purity has been sullied from intermixing with mongrel tongue of the commoners, it is still recognised by scholars and learned men as the language of science, knowledge, and logic. To learn Nekāchti is to show great wisdom and to come to know the glory of our forefathers."

## Phonology

### Phonemes

 Close
 Close-mid
 Open

### Phonotactics

The max syllable structure is #C/TrVK/F#:

* C: all consonants

* T: all consonants

* V: all vowels

* K: all consonants except r and l

* F: <m, n, s, k>

No word can begin or end with a consonant cluster, and words can only end in m, n, s, k, or a vowel. A word-internal cluster can consist of, at most, a nasal or obstruent, then an obstruent, and then r.

**Stress**

Word stress is by default on the antepenult (third-to-last syllable), but fall on the penult (second-to-last) if said syllable ends in a consonant or has a long vowel.

## Writing System

The Nekāchti script is a derivative of the Edun script, and is written right-to-left. The script, dubbed a "super-alphasyllabary" by Biblaridion, operates somewhere in-between an abugida and syllabary: glyphs are constructed by combining an onset character with a coda character, or by using an onset character on its own. Glyphs are assumed to have an inherent /a/ nucleus unless marked with a diacritic. Separate characters are used for null-onsets and vowel isolates.

In stark contrast to the Edun script, the Nekāchti script is frequently reformed to address historical spelling. The simplicity of the Nekāchti script has led to its adoption by multiple other languages, including Ilothwii (although the latter version required multiple modifications).

## Grammar

Nekāchti employs free word order and a system of animacy-based split ergativity. Employing double marking, Nekāchti is highly non-configurational, with word order being dependent on focus and topic, although it leans towards head-final alignment: focus is sentence-initial, while topic and background information generally appear right before the verb.

### Nouns

Nekāchti employs seven cases: nominative, accusative, ergative, genitive, benefactive, instrumental, and locative.

The morphological cases (nominative, accusative, ergative) are used in this way:

 Subject
 Transitive
 Object

Nekāchti also has a high degree of quirky subject, meaning the subject and object of specific verbs can be marked with other cases. Some patterns include:

* The Benefactive marks the subject of verbs of experience (to be cold, etc.)

* The instrumental is used for the agent of verbs of involuntary or accidental action (to accidentally break something, etc.)

* The locative and genitive mark the objects of a change of state (to become something, etc.)

Case suffixes:

Nekāchti takes animacy very seriously. All nouns are classed as animate or inanimate, and are treated very differently based on how they are classified. Only animate nouns take plural marking or the definate article, but most inanimate nouns are treated as mass nouns and do not take plural marking, though to express one of something, a singulative suffix exists, which also has derivational properties.

### Verbs

Nekāchti's polypersonal agreement is also split-ergative. The first person, second person, and animate third person are nominative, while obviate third person, inanimate person, and indefinate person are ergative.

 3rd obviate
 Inanimate

The indefinate marker is used to mark something that is undefined, and is also used to derive intransitive verbs from transitive ones.

Verbs are marked for tense, aspect, and mood encodings by combining a stem alternation system with a series of suffixes. Back in Proto-Thirēan, a bare verb represented a simple or perfective meaning, and reduplicating the first syllable represented an imperfective meaning. Modern Nekāchti retains this system, although rampant sound changes have made them virtually unrecognizable from each other.

Over the course of millenia, various auxillary verbs evolved and became suffixed, which encoded different meanings depending on if they were paired with a short or long stem. As more and more auxillary verbs became suffixed, Old Nekāchti became heavily agglutinative. Later on, sound changes blurred the boundary between affixes, melding them into a single highly fusional suffix.

Proto-Thirēan had a negative and interrogative auxillary, like many of its descendants. In Nekāchti, these auxillary verbs became suffixed to the verb and have now fused with the tense suffixes. What began as modal auxillaries got suffixed to the verb too, creating four grammatical moods. There are also five conjugations depending on the phonology of the stem, resulting in 560 distinct combinations of tense, aspect, and mood.

Nekāchti permits a maximum of one fully finite verb per sentence. To link clauses together, Nekāchti renders verbs in subordinate clauses as converbs, which in English are equivalent to conjunctions. Only the main verb takes person marking: unless otherwise stated, converbs are assumed to have the same subject as the main verb.

## Lexicon

### Nouns

As implied by the tables above, nouns are classed as being either animate or inanimate. Only animate nouns can take the /-n/ plural marker; inanimates are all treated as mass nouns, but can take the /-k(a)/ suffix to emphasize exactly one unit of something.

Adjectives

 impa
 kalas
 kōrin
 naal | big

### Words with unknown meanings

#### "Nath", "Neth", "Nith", and "Noth"

It is unknown if "Nath", "Neth", "Nith", and/or "Noth" are word(s). They may have been used as placeholder words to demonstrate spelling.

### Other words

#### "Nīn"

The word "nīn" is Nekāchti's equivalent of the English word "the".

## Number System

Nekāchti uses a duodecimal numerical system,

## Video

[1]

1. ↑ https://youtu.be/da0Cq3enfXM?t=465
2. ↑ https://youtu.be/da0Cq3enfXM?t=616
3. ↑ https://youtu.be/da0Cq3enfXM?t=465
4. ↑ https://youtu.be/da0Cq3enfXM?t=555
5. ↑ https://youtu.be/da0Cq3enfXM?t=882
6. ↑ https://youtu.be/da0Cq3enfXM?t=443
7. ↑ https://youtu.be/da0Cq3enfXM?t=465
8. ↑ https://youtu.be/da0Cq3enfXM?t=465
9. ↑ https://youtu.be/da0Cq3enfXM?t=465
10. ↑ https://youtu.be/da0Cq3enfXM?t=565
11. ↑ https://youtu.be/da0Cq3enfXM?t=617
12. ↑ https://youtu.be/da0Cq3enfXM?t=565
13. ↑ https://youtu.be/da0Cq3enfXM?t=344
14. ↑ https://youtu.be/da0Cq3enfXM?t=465
15. ↑ https://youtu.be/da0Cq3enfXM?t=843
16. ↑ https://youtu.be/da0Cq3enfXM?t=382
17. ↑ https://youtu.be/da0Cq3enfXM?t=382