Standard Gabrielt language

Gabrielt
មដឌុកន់ឣម្រាឃនិ Mada Dzukan Amragyani
Native to	Gabrielland
Region	Southern Gabrielland
Ethnicity	Gabrielts
Native speakers	Total:190 million (2020)
Language family	Gabrieltic Central Gabrielt Gabrielt
Writing system	Modified Prei Script
Official status
Official language in	Gabrielland Dokodo Union
Regulated by	Gabrielt Language Preservation Center
Language codes
ISO 639-1	gb
ISO 639-2	gab
ISO 639-3	–

Standard Gabrielt (Gabrielt: មដឌុកន់ឣម្រាឃនិ, Mada Dzukan Amragyani), colloquially known as plainly Gabrielt (Gabrielt: មដឌុកន, Mada Dzukan), is a Gabrieltic language of the Central Gabrielt branch which serves as the official standardized language of Gabrielland spoken by a total of 190 million speakers distributed throughout the country, as well as several small pockets of minorities in other Dokodo Union states and other neighboring countries. Standard Gabrielt should be contrasted with the Central Gabrielt languages, from which the language is based on.

Standard Gabrielt serves as the lingua franca of the nation, and is the sole language of instruction in schools in the Gabrielland region of the country. In the New Frontier and Arsyan Realms, the language serves as a second langauge to facilitate the differences between the native languages and the rest of the country, and is taught to children as a second language, but outside of academic and formal situations, the language is not used that often. Standard Gabrielt also serves as the neutral dialect or language across the wide array of regional Gabrielt languages which are not mutually intelligible with one another, as they form a dialect continuum. As a result, standard Gabrielt is mostly a written language for ethnic Gabrielt people, as ethnic Gabrielts would use their own regional language or dialect to communicate in daily occurences.

The language was artificially created in 1926 during the congress of all-Gabrielts as a way to further unify the newly-formed country with a neutral and easy-to-learn language for all Gabrielts, including the ethnic Arsyans which do not speak the language. The Central Gabrielt languages which was seen as the de-facto lingua franca at that time due to the capital's influence was chosen as the base of the standard language not only because of its influence but due to its central proximity and location in the middle of the expansive dialect continuum being very suitable and mimicking features of other regional languages, so that other Gabrielts learning the language would have an equal amount of difficulty in learning the new standard language. As of 2019, 99% of Gabrielts are reported to be able to understand Standard Gabrielt.

The Prei script is used to write Standard Gabrielt, as the script was already being used to write the various regional languages of Gabrielland even before the advent of the new standard language came to place in the late 1920s. Usage of the Latin script has grown over the past few decades with Gabrielland joining the Dokodo Union and with the country entering an era of rapid globalization, however, the government has stated that the Prei script will continue to be used for virtually all aspects when dealing with Standard Gabrielt, and is Gabrielland's one of two official scripts, the other one being the Arsyan script solely used to write the various Arsyan languages.

Name

The term "Standard Gabrielt" is the proper way to call the name of the language. The term was coined at the 1926 all-Gabrielts congress as the sole lingua franca uniting the various Gabrielt languages spoken in the Gabrielland area. While in colloquial speech the correct term is often referred to plainly as "Gabrielt", the term Gabrielt in the field of linguistics refers to the group of languages collectively spoken by the Gabrielt people. In Standard Gabrielt, the term មដឌុកន់ឣម្រាឃនិ "Standard Gabrielt language" is the official term of the langauge. មដឌុកន់ "Gabrielt language" or simply ឌុកន់ "Gabrielt" are also used in colloquial speech when context is clear as to what the speaker is referring to. Hence, a singular "Gabrielt language" simply does not exist, and most of the time refers back to the Standard Gabrielt language.

History

WIP

Phonology

Standard Gabrielt has a simple phonology with a 25 consonant system and a 5 vowel system. There exists two diphthongs, namely /ai̯/ and /au̯/.

Consonants

Gabrielt is a palatal-heavy language, and is evident by the number of palatals which exist in the langauge and their relative frequency in spoken and written examples. The palatal /ɟ/ is often cited as one of the most universal sounds across the Gabrielt languages, and is therefore one of the most common sounds in the language besides the nasals, vowels, and the bilabials. Note that the glottal stop [ʔ] does not constitute its own sound or phoneme in the langauge, and is simply used in intervocalic vowels which do not form a diphthong, usually in the form of compound words or formations. Such attributes are represented with the letter អ in the Prei script, and is often attributed as a "neutral letter."

Below is the consonant chart for Standard Gabrielt.

Gabrielt consonant phonemes

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	c	k
	voiced	b	d	ɟ	ɡ
Affricate	voiceless		t͡s	t͡ʃ
	voiced		d͡z	d͡ʒ
Fricative	voiceless		s	ʃ		h
	voiced	v	z
Approximant		w	l	j
Trill			r

Standard Gabrielt has a few cases of irregularities a

• In almost all cases, when an [n] which acts as the coda of a syllable meets [k], [c], or [ɟ] which in turn is the onset of another following syllable, [ŋ] is always used as an allophone of [n], as shown in the examples តន្កិ tanki "tank" which has a pronounciation of [ˈtʰäŋki]. Some special cases which this phenomenon does not occur is either when the conjuction in question is due to the result of compounding, with the example of តន់ឃនិ tangyani "education". It should be important to note that the Prei script equivalent for the word does not use a subscript form for "ngya" and uses a shirek or "stop" on the n.
• The aspiration of [t] and [k] only occurs when the syllable in question is a stressed syllable. Aspiration may also occur when the phoneme in question is a coda which meets another unvoiced plosive in an onset position. Examples include កម់ kam "high" which is pronounced as [ˈkʰäm], and បត្កិម់ batkim "window" pronounced as [batʰˈkʰɪm]
• [c] and [ɟ] are allophonic with [kʲ] and [gʲ] when followed by /i/
• [v] is often a [w] or even [u̯] depending on dialect in coda positions for all vowels except /u/ and /o/, in which the original sound is retained. An example is តវ tav "hand" which is almost always pronounced as [ˈtʰäw] or [ˈtʰau̯]. Note the levelling of the vowel when appendixed with a [w] instead of a vowel. In carefull speech, the pronounciation [ˈtʰav] is acceptable, resembling it to the original capital dialect it was based on.
• [t͡s] and [d͡z] in some unstressed syllables drop the plosive, being entirely reduced to solely their fricative parts. The overall tendency for speakers to do so mainly depends on the language one grew up with. While an eastern speaker would pronounce ឌុកន Dzukan "Gabrielt" as [ˈd͡zʊkän], a western speaker might pronounce it simply as [zuˈkʰän].
• The disappearance of [g] and [c] in some regional langauges can be observed in select speeches. The phonemes [k] and [ɟ] individually replace the phonemes respecitvely, while sometimes [ɣ] or [x] substitute both. In standard speech, these forms are also considered correct.

Vowels

Standard Gabrielt differentiates five phonemic vowels with allophonic variation for some of them in specific conditions.

Gabrielt vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

• Generally, all vowels have a "minor form" when serving as the nucleus of some closed syllables or in some stressed positions. The vowels /a i u e o/ correspond to [ä ɪ ʊ ɛ ɔ] respectively.

Grammar

Standard Gabrielt is a low-inflecting fusional language with classification ranging towards the more isolating side, relying mainly on word order to convey intact messages. Its verbal and nominal morphology has been weared down and simplified compared to the natural languages of Gabrielland in order to provide for better similarities and consensus between the Gabrielt peoples for them to accept the new standard language as the lingua franca. Still, most of the substrata found in the Standard Gabrielt language could be traced back to the Central Gabrielt languages. Most verb construction bears analytical forms, and inflection is given only to indicate formality.

Word Order

Standard Gabrielt is a strictly VSO language, akin to almost all of the modern Gabrielt langages. This word order remains intact through almost all grammatical moods except in several medio-passive constructions and the imperative. Imperaritve constructions are one aspect of the language which deviate from this standard, with SVO structure being observed.

Nouns

Nouns in the Standard Gabrielt language inflect and change forms to respect grammatical categories. There exists two numbers (singular, plural), two genders (animate, inanimate), and three cases (nominative, oblique, vocative). The old gender and case system found in Literary gabrielt has collapsed into the few categories which remain today, and is heavily based upon the central Gabrielt languages which have undergone such changes over the past few centuries.

The functions of the case in Standard Gabrielt has been described to give attention to separate objects found in speech. The nominative case which usually does not have any additional markings gives attention to the subject, while the oblique case gives attention to the direct object or indirect object. This role-marking sentence structure easily helps in determining important elements in daily speech. It is often seen that the noun in the oblique form will always come after the nominative, but this is not always the case.

Declension

There are two declensions found in the Standard Gabrielt language, appropriately one for each gender. Declension paradigms in the language decline for the grammatical categories found in the language, and thus are the system in which nouns undergo change systematically according to its gender. Below is the declension chart for កលិ kali "tree" (an animate noun) and មរ mar "carpet"

	I		II (Inanimate)
	Sg.	Pl.	Sg.	Pl.
Nom.	កលិ kali	កលិន kalin	មរ mar	មរុ maru
Obl.	កលៀ kalai	កលិនៀ kalinai	មរេ mare	មរ្សិន marsin
Voc.	កល! kala!	កលយ kalaya!	មរ mara!	មរយ maraya!