Loulanese language

Kroraini
Shanshanese, Loulanese
Kroraiññe 鄯善語 / 樓蘭語 ཀྲོ་རཻཡྣྱ་ཉེ་
Pronunciation	[kroˈrəɪ̯ɲe]
Native to	Kroraine
Native speakers	23 million (2018) 3.7 million L2
Language family	Hyndo-Euclean
Early forms	Proto-Kroraini Old Kroraini Middle Kroraini
Dialects	Saka dialect
Writing system	Solarian script Xiaodongese characters (chiefly historical) Rygyalic script (historical)
Official status
Official language in	Kroraine
Language codes
ISO 639-3	xto

The Kroraini language (Kroraini: Kroraiññe, pronounced [kroˈrəɪ̯ɲe]), also known as the Shanshanese language, is a Hyndo-Euclean language with between 23 and 24 million speakers, which is primarily spoken by the Kroraini people. Communities of Kroraini speakers exist in Xiaodong, but the vast majority of Kroraini speakers are found in Kroraine, where the Kroraini people are the majority and the language holds official status.

Kroraini represents what is possibly the last extant member of an independent branch of the Hyndo-Euclean family of languages. It is of interest to linguists, as it falls on the centum side of the centum-satem isogloss, which contradicts the previously held assumption that the isogloss was the result of an east-west phylogenetic divison within Hyndo-Euclean.

Modern Kroraini has developed over a period spanning at least 2,400 years, with some estimates placing the separation of Proto-Kroraini as far as 4,000 years before present. The earliest forms of the language were brought to the area by migratory Hyndo-Euclean-speaking pastoralists, who settled in the mountainous terrain in the region between modern Yi and Xiaodong, where the land was unsuitable for the agricultural methods practiced by the surrounding peoples at the time. The oldest attested manuscripts in Old Kroraini date to the 4th century, making it a language of Late Antiquity, on par with Late Solarian.

Standard Kroraini is not a tonal language, but some regional varieties have developed tonal registers. The written language is highly conservative, being based upon Classical Kroraini and retaining a great deal of historic and etymological spelling. The verbal morphology of Kroraini is extremely conservative, and the language employs a system of 10 nominal cases.

Geographic distribution

Dialects

Traditionally recognised dialects of Kroraini
  Northern group
  Southern group
  Far Southern group
  Saka

Standard Kroraini as used in government and media is based on the language as it is spoken between Korla and Krorän; as such, the Northern dialect group has the strongest affinities with the standard variant of the language, often being indistinguishable from cultured speech. The Southern dialect group, while divergent in manners of pronunciation and using some vocabulary that would be unusual in the standard language and Northern group, is more accurately described as a regional accent than a separate dialect. The Far Southern dialect group is further from the standard, simplifying consonant clusters and undergoing tonogenesis. Still, Far Southern dialects are largely mutually intelligible with other dialect groups, albeit with some difficulty.

Saka

Main article: Saka dialect

The Saka dialect, spoken in the mountainous northeastern part of the country by the Saka people, is in contrast extremely divergent from other Kroraini dialects; for this reason, it is often considered to be a separate language by linguists and language educators. This variety is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of the language, and Saka schoolchildren children must learn Standard Kroraini as a foreign language in order to participate in Kroraini education. Historically, Saka and mainstream Kroraini varieties were often mutually intelligible in writing by virtue of the widespread use of Xiaodongese script, but this has been largely negated by the adoption of Solarian script.

Phonology

Vowels

The Kroraini language has seven pure vowels and four diphthongs in its standard form and northern dialects. Southern dialects have monophthongised two of the diphthongs into new pure vowels, which are distinct from the existing monophthongs in northern dialects (far southern dialects, however, retain all diphthongs).

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i /i/	ä /ɨ/	u /u/
Mid	e /e/	a /ə/	o /o/
Open		ā /a/

	Closer component is front	Closer component is back
Opener component is unrounded	ai /əɪ̯/	au /əʊ̯/ āu /aʊ̯/
Opener component is rounded	oy /oɪ̯/

:^ In southern dialects, /əɪ̯/ and /aʊ̯/ are generally pronounced as /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ respectively.

An additional vowel, /ɪ/, exists as an allophonic pronunciation of the consonantal letter y /j/ in situations where the consonantal pronunciation would be difficult or impossible, i.e. between two consonants or at the beginning of a word before a consonant.

The letters r and l are sometimes included with the vowels in their syllabic (/r̩/, /l̩/) pronunciation. They are sometimes written with a dot below as ṛ and ḷ respectively when syllabic, but this is nonstandard and considered erroneous.

Consonants

Kroraini's native consonant inventory contains no voiced stop consonants. There exists however a large body of non-native vocabulary in which voiced stops are retained in common pronunciation, and words are transcribed to reflect this. Many consonant letters are redundant, as Kroraini does not have any retroflex consonants, despite the Kroraini alphabet having letters to represent retroflexes in loanwords from Hyndanan and Pardarian languages.

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Alveolo-palatal	Palatal	Velar	Uvular
Plosive	p /p/ b /b/		t, ṭ /t/ d, ḍ /d/				k /k/ g /g/ kụ /kʷ/	q /q/
Affricate			ts /t͡s/	c /t͡ɕ/ j /d͡ʑ/
Fricative		f /f/	s /s/ z /z/	ṣ /ʃ/	ś /ɕ/			x /χ/
Nasal	m, ṃ /m/		n, ṇ ṃ /n/			ñ /ɲ/	ṅ /ŋ/
Trill			r /r/
Approximant		v /ʋ/				y /j/
Lateral approximant			l /l/			ly /ʎ/

^1 Phonemes found in loanwords only.

^2 Consonants with dots below (ṭ, ḍ, ṇ, but NOT ṣ, ṃ) represent retroflex consonants in the source language, which in Kroraini pronunciation are simply rendered as dentals.

^3 The letter ṃ, traditionally known as anusvāre, represents a homorganic nasal (a nasal with the same place of articulation as a neighbouring consonant). It is pronounced /m/ before bilabials and labiodentals, /ŋ/ before velars and uvulars, and /n/ in all other positions.

^4 When /n/ occurs before a velar or uvular, it assimilates to /ŋ/ and is written as ṅ. /ɲ/ never assimilates before velars or uvulars.

^5 ly /ʎ/ may have an underlying form /lɪ/, as it breaks to this form when before a consonant or at the end of a word.

Additionally, the letter h exists as an inert letter for the transcription of loanwords with aspirated consonants. These consonants lose their aspiration in Kroraini pronunciation.

Grammar

Main article: Kroraini grammar

Vocabulary

Kroraini has a rich vocabulary; besides forming new words from existing words and their roots, it has also borrowed extensively from other languages. One of the consequences of the long history of Satyism in Kroraine is the vast number of Sanskrit words and phrases present in nearly all attested forms of the language. Loanwords tend to be spelled according to their source, and preserved pronunciation has introduced a relatively large number of non-native phonemes which are used in common words and personal names (for example, voiced consonants). Some foreign words and names which have remained in use for a long enough period have undergone changes in pronunciation and spelling in order to fit the parameters of the Kroraini language — take, for example, the name Guṇacandra, which has the variants Guṇacaṃdre and Kunacaṃtre, in which the former is closer to the etymon while the latter has undergone plosive devoicing to fit Kroraini's phonological constraints.

Most modern loan words in Kroraini come from Xiaodongese and Yirō, due to the position of Kroraine between Xiaodong and Yi and the hegemony these powers had over Kroraine until very recent history.

Kroraini has both formal and informal speech registers; informal registers, including speech directed towards children, tend to use more native vocabulary of Proto-Krorainic origin, while the percentage of vocabulary that is of foreign origin is higher in legal, scientific, and academic texts.

Kroraini	meñe	ñuve	mācer	ṣer	yṣiye, nekciye	meli	trai	erkent	ratre	tute	motartstse	valkve
Other Krorainic Languages
Saka	mañ	ñu	mācar	ṣar	nakcu	malañ	tre	arkant	rtär	särpo	motartsa	späṅku
Other Hyndo-Euclean languages
Estmerish	month	new	mother	sister	night	nose	three	black	red	yellow	green	wolf
Hyndi	महीना mahīnā	नया nayā	माँ māṃ	बहन bahan	रात rāt	नाक nāk	तीन tīn	काला kālā	लाल lāl	पीला pīlā	हरा harā	भेड़िया bheṛiyā
Solarian	mēnsis	novus	māter	soror	nox	nasus	trēs	āter, Niger	ruber	flāvus, gilvus	viridis	lupus
Hellese	μήνας minas	νέος neos	μητέρα mitera	αδελφή adhelfi	νύχτα nihta	μύτη miti	τρία tria	μαύρος mavros	κόκκινος kokkinos	κίτρινος kitrinos	πράσινος prasinos	λύκος likos
Narodyn	місяць misiats	новий novyi	мати maty	сестра sestra	ніч nich	ніс nis	три try	чорний chornyi	червоний, рудий chervonyi, rudyi	жовтий zhovtyi	зелений zelenyi	вовк vovk