Veshkis (Language)

## Veshk'is

Map of the geographical distribution of Veshkis within Stinjel, inset shows the Valtaenis Port.

### Spoken In

Veshdyn, Valtaenis Port

**Veshkis** (Veshkis: Veshk'is) is a Veshkic language spoken by the Veshkis people of western Stinjel, almost exclusively in the Kingdom of Veshdyn and the Valtaenis Port. It came into its own as a language in roughly 800 UA as a descendent of Old Veshkis, making it a sister-language to Jatsyti.

## Classification

*Main Articles: Veshkic Languages, West Veshkic Languages*

Veshkis is a member of the Veshkic language family and is of the West Veshkic group. Veshkis descended from Old Veshkis along with Jatsyti, having diverged from its mainland relatives due to the physical barrier and linguistic influence from the native inhabitants of Stinjel. It is to a large degree mutually intelligible with its West Veshkic relatives, especially Jatsyti.

## Geographical Distribution

Veshkis is almost entirely restricted to the country of Veshdyn in the western isles of Stinjel, just off the coast of mainland Zumäro (Veshkis: Dis'kul'tant). On the island of Jutynt (Veshkis: Shtec'ton) the borders begin to blur as populations of Veshkis, Zorr, and Jatsyti are heavily mixed. In these regions Veshkis takes on the role of an administrative and prestige language.

### Veshkis Outside of Stinjel

Very few groups outside of Veshdyn speak Veshkis, but there are three populations of note. Firstly, the Valtaenis Port is the only other nation in which Veshkis is an official language and has a sizeable minority of its half-dozen islands fluent in the language. The other two groups find residence in Dracanél (Veshkis: Dak'an'con) and the Astor River Delta (Veshkis: Net'fan'con bok Jast'esh) as remnants of Veshkis raids and rule in Ásdend (Veshkis: Jast'esh'tant). These populations are dwindling and overall insignificant, not constituting a majority anywhere in the regions they call home.

## Phonology

The phonetics and phonology of Veshkis are fairly rigid and differ very little between the dialects, most notably between those of Stinjel and the minor dialects outside of it that often borrow words and phonemes from languages such as Ásdare and Ásdaro, and with the conservative dialect spoken in the islands of Bytanon and Sitanon (and the rest of Sitantech-Valten). The information provided reflects typical Veshkis spoken in most of Veshdyn unless otherwise clarified. The symbols used below are from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

### Phonemes

*Note: all consonants excluded from below are transcribed within the graph as they are in both Romanized Veshkis (RV) and English*

* tʃ is typically written as "c" in RV and as "ch" in English
* ʃ is typically written as "sh" in both RV and English
* ç is typically written as "ch" in RV and as "h" in English words such as *hue* (preferred phoneme in most of Veshdyn)
* x is typically written as "ch" in RV and in English words such as *loch* (preferred phoneme in Sitantech-Valten)
* j is typically written as "j" in RV and "y" in English

Veshkis will often aspirate certain consonants such as "p" at the start of syllables, but this is not a contrastive difference and is of little importance to the language's pronunciation and understanding.

**Vowel Phonemes**
 u
 e/eɪ

*Note: All groupings of phonemes not included below are allophonic across all of the Veshkis speaking world.*

* ɑ is not preferred in the dialect of Sitantech-Valten

### Phonotactics

Veshkis has incredibly strict and defined phonotactics, with only loose exceptions made for a handful of loanwords. The standard syllable structure of Veshkis is based around a vowel-consonant nucleus, being (CC)VC(C), with every word having to start and end with a consonant. As well, while vowels are not separate there are phonotactical groupings of consonants and their clusters: opening, closing, and flexible. Opening may only occur at a syllables start, closing the end, and flexible anywhere. There are exceptions to these rules, mostly from loanwords.

* Opening: b, f, j, m,
* Closing: ch, gs, gsh, ks, ksh, ls, lsh, lt, lv, nt, ps, psh, pt, ts, tsh
* Flexible: c, d, g, k, l, n, p, s, sk, st, sh, shk, sht, t, v

## Grammar

Veshkis is a grammatically standard and highly predictable language, being overall conservative in its grammar, making it highly standard for a Veshkic language. Notably, Veshkis follows Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) word order just as every Veshkic language does. Veshkis distinguishes between at least 6 major word classes: verbs, nouns, adjectives (including adverbs), determiners (including articles), prepositions, and conjunctions. Veshkis primarily uses analytic construction over noun-cases.

One of the only major quirks of Veshkis is the suffix *-on* which can be applied to nouns, adjectives, and verbs all the same. It works as an amplifier, roughly translating as "x of x's". In some cases this suffix can become engraved in words, forming entirely new concepts separate from the intuitive pattern of meaning.

### Nouns

Veshkis nouns are only inflected for plurality, with the exception that pronouns are sometimes inflected for possession. New nouns are frequently created through changing the position of simple-present conjugated verbs. Nouns are divided between proper nouns and common nouns.

All nouns, including pronouns, have the option to attach a gender suffix to the end. Specifying gender is never grammatically required in Veshkis, but can be convenient in conversation. The suffix *-ad* is used to refer to masculine, and *-at* for that which is feminine.

Plurals are the only inflection of non-pronoun nouns, and are created by adding the suffix *-ech* to the end of the word.

* Singular: *shkyp'tis*, *bal*
* Plural: *shkyp'tis'ech*, *bal'ech*

Possession has two routes of being implemented, via inflection for pronouns with dependent possession with the suffix *-ac* and via the use of the word *bok* (English: of) for all else. They are interchangeable for dependent pronoun possession.

* Dependent Pronoun Possession: *tyk'ac bin*, *shkid'ac bal*
* Standard Possession: *bin bok tyk*, *bal bok shkid*

Nouns can form noun phrases in ways generally intuitive and may incorporate many different parts of speech.

### Adjectives (Including Adverbs)

Adjectives in Veshkis have no grammatical casing and as such are not given inflection. Degrees of comparison are marked mostly with the words for "more", "most", "less", and "least", but also with the suffix *-on* in particularly strong and notable cases. All adjectives are applied before the noun or verb they are altering, except for negation words and a few exceptions which occur after. Interestingly, adjectives are often found fossilized at the end of Veshkis words instead of the beginning, most likely remnants from an earlier stage of the language. Adjectives may also be found at the end of names with a hyphen, in which case they form a new word (with some exceptions, notably s*tol'min*, meaning "all")

### Pronouns

Pronouns in Veshkis are relatively straightforward, not differentiating between the subject and object and only differentiating with gender when deemed necessary by the speaker. The reflexive tense is also used sparingly, and not at all for first person singular, as it is more of a clarification and aspect of formal speech than something seen in every-day usage. As well, the fact that the dependent possessive can be freely replaced with the independent possessive means that in many contexts only two tenses will actually be used: subject-object and independent possessive.

### Prepositions

Prepositions in Veshkis are fairly standard, being used to describe movement, place, and other relations between different entities, and on occasion to specify the meanings and functions of verbs.

### Verbs

Verbs in Veshkis are inflected for tense, experience irregular inflection patterns according to aspect, and use auxiliary adjectives (adverbs) for aspect while having no grammatical agreement. Veshkis also suffers from an extremely small amount of irregular verb conjugations, almost all being loanwords. The chart provided below uses the regular-v Veshkis verb *kyv'uv* (English: to eat) as an example.

Veshkis Regular-V Verb Conjugation
 Past
 Future

The various verbal inflections, adverbs, and adverb inflections are mostly consistent but not entirely. Firstly, the three simple tenses are divided between the regular-v *-lv* for present, universal *-g* for past, and universal *-l* for future. In the two other verb types, regular-psh and regular-ps, the present inflection is changed to *-pt*. The chart provided below uses the regular-ps verb *tec'eps* (English: to like) as an example.

Veshkis Regular-Psh and Regular-Ps Conjugation
 Past
 Future

In reference to aspects, the inflection of the verb is consistent for the three types of regular verb, wherein all verbs in the progressive aspect are given a present inflection whether they are in the present tense or not. Likewise all perfect and perfect-progressive aspect verbs are given a past inflection whether they are in the past tense or not.

Past this, there are the auxiliary adverbs, which can quickly become arguably the most confusing aspect of the Veshkis language. In the progressive, perfect, and perfect-progressive these adverbs are used according to the tense they inhabit, with *vog'esh* corresponding to the present, *begsh* corresponding to the past, and *bulsh* corresponding to the future. In the perfect-progressive tense the suffix *-on* is applied here as well outside of its normal use, having no direct translation and rather being a pure product of grammatical contextualization. Unfortunately for the Veshkis listener, all of these adverbs are also normal adverbs placed before the verb they modify with a normal meaning. *Vog'esh* means *now/current*, *begsh* means *before/early*, and *bulsh* means *after/late*. In order to be able to use these words with verbs on top of their grammatical uses, they are frequently lowered down to their leading three letters so that they may avoid confusion. For example, "I'm eating now" may be said as "Tyk vog-vog'esh tec'ept" in Veshkis.

In literary/poetic contexts, the inflections of verbs are often added to the end of the word (with vowel harmony) as opposed to replacing as they normally do. For example, *kyv'ug* may turn into *kyv'ulv'ug and tec'el* may turn into *tec'ept'el*. This is seen less and less in Veshkis literature and almost never in speech.

Veshkis has a relatively low amount of phrasal verbs (verbs composed of more than one word), but nonetheless does permit them.

Questions in Veshkis are normally constructed as a statement with an inquisitorial tone or with an appropriate question word, but there is another way to make a yes-no question known. In a system of "huh-support," the Veshkis word *cic* (English: huh) can be made to lead the statement in order to more clearly broadcast that it's a question.

## Vocabulary

The vocabulary of Veshkis is primarily Veshkic is origin, with around 95% of the words being native to its language family. The remaining loanwords are mainly from the original Zorr and pre-Veshkic languages of Stinjel, as well as from overseas contact with the Ásdaric languages of Ásdend and less so from Szöhaúmu.

The Lounge Dictionary (Including Veshkis)

## Writing System

*Main Article: Veshkic Script*

Veshkis is written exclusively using the Veshkis variety of the Veshkic Script, a type of abugida developed specifically for the language with little outside influence. As such, writing in Veshkis is fairly straight forward and uniform with very few exceptions to its rules. As an abugida, the consonants dominate and are joined (if there are multiple consonants/consonant clusters) into one syllabic unit. From here, the vowel sound is added with diacritic marks in the outside "curve" of the latter consonant symbol. Each consonant-cluster and vowel has its own unique symbol, a list of which is provided below with the Veshkic Script symbol and its Romanized Veshkis equivalent.