Sabunese Language

**Sabunese** (*tung’nabalê*) is a language spoken across the northern islands of the continent of Tōkai, primarily within the Union of Sabun where it is the national language. It is a member of the Mektanese language family and is believed to have been derived from older languages originating in northern Tōkai. In 375 G.E., Sabunese was instituted across Sabun as the official language of the country. Prior to this institution, different regions of the country primarily spoke in linguistically related, yet mutually unintelligible languages.

Sabunese utilizes its own distinct script that is a featural alphabet which is written in syllabic blocks. These syllables begin with a consonant letter, then a vowel letter, then potentially another consonant letter. If the syllable begins with a vowel sound, then the vowel character is placed at the top of the block. Syllable blocks may also end with vowels, in which case a final consonant character is not written at the bottom of the block. Vowel characters may occupy entire blocks by themselves if they comprise the entire syllable of a word. For instance, in the word *elùn*, meaning "person or human", the character for the vowel "e" is written by itself as an independent syllable block. The Sabunese script is written from left to right with spaces between words.

## Phonology

### Vowels

 Mid
 Open-mid

All Sabunese vowels are pure, meaning that there are no diphthongs, only monophthongs. The only vowel variations occur between the back vowels "u" and "ù" and the front/near-front vowels "e" and "ê". In the Sabunese writing system, u and ù are written with different characters and are treated as separate vowels. The vowel u makes the typical /u/ sound while the vowel ù makes a falling /u/ sound, or /u:/. Additionally, e and ê are also treated as separate vowels and written with separate characters. The vowel e makes the mid front /e/ sound while the vowel ê makes the open-mid, near-front /ɛ/ sound.

### Consonants

The consonant often transcribed as "ng" offers some variation despite always being written with the same character in the Sabunese writing system. It can be pronounced as the velar /ŋ/ or the uvular /ɴ/ depending on context.

## Grammar

### Word Order and Sentence Structure

Sabunese word order is classified as SOV, or subject-object-verb. Basic sentence structure in Sabunese is topic-comment.

Adjectives in Sabunese come directly after their modifiers. Multiple adjectives can be placed after the word they modify.

### Context and Tenses

There are no tenses in Sabunese and most words are left ambiguous as to the time and place of their occurrence. In cases where the speaker wishes to provide context, contextual phrases are used. Contextual phrases are usually placed at the beginning of the sentence (or at least before the words they describe) and are separated from the rest of the sentence with the word "men", which is placed at the end of the phrase. For example: "ka'an men wa le'ken" (ka'an = daytime, men = context marker, wa = I/me, le'ken = work) = "I work during the day" or "During the day, I work."

### Singular and Plural

By default, nouns in Sabunese do not distinguish between singular in plural. In common speech, context alone is used to determine whether the speaker is referring to a singular noun or a plural noun. In cases where it is necessary to make a distinction between singular and plural nouns, the suffix -gok (pronounced /goʔ/) is attached to the end of the noun to specify that it is singular.