History of Oodspeak

This article describes the development of the Oodspeak language from Old Oodspeak (Literary Oodspeak) to Modern Oodspeak (Vernacular Oodspeak).

## Old Oodspeak

*Main article: History of Oodism*

Modern archaeologists, linguists, and astrobiologists remain puzzled by the origin of Oodspeak since its rediscovery, but Oodist folklore speaks of a transcendental origin. According to such tales, Oodspeak was a musical language which was inherently part of the fabric of the universe. As sentient species appeared throughout the cosmos, they were bestowed by Ood the gift of music and language. Thus, Oodspeak was eventually spoken and sung by all species of the universe, including the first humans.

### Phonology

Old Oodspeak has a small sound inventory with only three vowels, four consonants, and nine tones. Words in Old Oodspeak begin with /ʔ/ and are of the form "ood" where "o" can be any of /u/, /o/, or /ɔ/, and where "d" can be any of /d/, /t/, or /tʰ/. The word's meaning is determined by two vowels and one tone, and the word's part of speech is determined by the consonant. With three vowels and nine tones, Old Oodspeak allows 81 non-homophonous root words.

Vowels
 Close-mid
 Open-mid

Consonants
 Non-sibilant fricative

Tones
 ˧
 ˥

## Middle Oodspeak

As societies and civilizations across the universe were developing, new concepts had appeared, so new words had to be coined. Eventually, a group of radical linguists had reformed the language in order to disambiguate these new concepts and to take dialectal differences into account. Linguistic reactionaries had deemed the reforms as sacrilegious to the language’s musical tradition, so the universe was plunged into chaos. The reformists eventually prevailed, and Old Oodspeak became a mostly liturgical and literary language.

As a result of the chaos, the first humans became isolated from the rest of the universe but had still managed to preserve Old Oodspeak.

### Schism

Inspired by dialectal linguistic innovations, the reformists have appended /j/ and /a/ on some words to distinguish them from words with similar pronunciations, which, in some dialects, had become homophonous.

For the tables below, Middle Oodspeak phonemes in parentheses are prescribed by the reformists.

### Phonology

Out of Old Oodspeak's nine tones, only two survive in Middle Oodspeak: the rising tone (6) and the falling tone (9). Entering tones merge into the rising tone, departing tones merge into the falling tone, and level tones become toneless (hereinafter referred to as 'neutral'). As there are only two phonemic tones, /˩˧/ (4), /˧˥/ (5), and /˧˩/ (7), /˥˧/ (8) may be treated as allophones of /˩˥/ (6) and /˥˩/ (9) respectively. The tone mergers are compensated by sound shifts from Old Oldspeak diphthongs and long vowels into three categories:

* Tones 1, 4, and 7 fall under Category I
* Tones 2, 5, and 8 fall under Category II
* Tones 3, 6, and 9 fall under Category III

For example, /uod˩˧/ (study) becomes /woːd˩˥/, /ɔːd˧/ (meaning) becomes /ad/, and /uːd˧˩/ (three) becomes /uːd˥˩/. For more examples, see Root words.

With 27 onsets, two tones, and one neutral tone, Middle Oodspeak, just as in Old Oodspeak, allows 81 non-homophonous root words.

Vowels
 Close-mid
 Open-mid
 Open

Tones
 ˥˩
 ∅

## Early Modern Oodspeak

The dialects of Middle Oodspeak eventually evolved into modern human languages, most of them being mutually unintelligible. Oodspeak itself was mostly forgotten except by a small community of disciples who continued to preserve the language’s archaisms and peculiarities. As a result, the language had remained mostly the same save for a few changes in phonology and lexicon.

However, the number of Oodspeakers was dwindling by the millennium, so the community became increasingly secretive and isolated until the existence of Oodspeak, once the universal language of humanity, became the stuff of folktales and legends. The language would have remained in obscurity had the Great Oodist Canon, written in Literary Oodspeak, not been mysteriously revealed to the world by memetic means.

## Modern Oodspeak

The number of native speakers of Modern Oodspeak is impossible to ascertain given the secrecy of the Oodspeak community. Zoological linguists posit that other great apes have a rudimentary understanding of Oodspeak. Hence, it is estimated that between 20 and 100 humans are native speakers, and as many as one million beings possess some knowledge of Oodspeak.