Éimhic language

Éimhic

Traced off Éimhic clay tablet

Śuata zaśə

Pronunciation	/ʃu̯ata zaʃə/
Native to	West Taisémi
Language family	Isolate
Writing system	Éimhic script

Éimhic (/ɛ:vɪk/, Raghómhí: Éimhiur /ɛ:vʲʊɾ/) was a language spoken in the area of west Taisémi (see image to the left). It went extinct some time in early history, with the last attestations in (year). It was spoken by what appears to have been a fairly strong empire which fell due to infighting and badly-timed storms from the west. Remnants of it are left in clay tablets, written in the Éimhic script, and loanwords into the Raghómhíur language family, specifically the Western branch.

Phonology

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal	m	n	ɲ <ń>
Stop	p b	t d		k (g)
Fricative		s z	ʃ ʒ <ś ź>
Approximant	w	r	j <y>

The voiced velar stop as a phoneme appears only to exist in the Eastern variant. Otherwise, it has merged with /k/. Additionally, in the eastern variant, the approximants and nasals appear to be entirely flipped.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid		ə
Open		a

In addition to the vowels, there appears to be most of the possible diphthongs, excluding /ə/: /ai̯ au̯ iu̯ ui̯ i̯a u̯a/. These will be represented without non-syllabic marks.

Éimhic also appears to have a syllable structure of (C)(V̯V / V / VV̯). A vowel is obligatory, despite its placement in parentheses.

Morphology

There appears to be very little inflection in either nouns or verbs. Nouns can be declined for plural, depending on their place in one of 6 semantic classes:

1. Humans: -i
2. Gods and sacred objects: -riu
3. Plants: -ńə
4. Dangerous objects: -wai
5. Animals and other animates: -ma
6. Inanimates: -si

There is no case marking.

For verbs, they are marked for imperfective (-sa) and perfective (-ńi). Marking is obligatory and cannot be ommitted.

Éimhic script

The Éimhic script is a semi-syllabary, combining elements of a syllabary and elements of an alphabet. Specifically, most consonants are represented in syllables, whereas approximants are represented like an alphabet. Diphthongs are also represented in an alphabetic fashion. The image below shows the script in full. The V row must have either ə, ia, or ua after it.
i̯/y, u̯/w, and r occur where they phonologically make sense (e.g. /ai̯/ would have the character after /a/, /ja/ would have the character before /a/).

See also

• Éimhiur empire
• Raghómhíur language family
• Languages and language families of Taisémi