Yirō
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Yirō is the official language of the High Kingdom of Yi. It is a direct descendant of Classical Reivääh, which was spoken in parts of present-day Yi some 2000-2500 years ago. Yirō was established in its current form following the 'Hyehyō-Reforms' in the latter half of the 18th century, named after writer and poet Diesé Hyehyō (1733 - 1805) whose works were the most important example of these reforms.
Phonology
Morphology
Nouns and adjectives
Yirō nouns have two cases: nominative (or ergative, see under Syntax) and oblique, and two numbers: singular and plural. Before the Hyehyō-Reforms, many of the four resulting nominal forms were formed irregularly as they were the consequence of many centuries of phonological development that unrecognisably altered the original regular system. The new system is completely regular and has the following endings, which differ depending on whether the stem ends in a vowel or a consonant, and on some remnants of vowel harmony that was very prominent in Reivääh:
Vowel stems:
| singular | plural | singular | plural | ||
| oblique | kafĕ (road) | kafĕn | lŭzŏ (snake) | lŭzŏn | |
| nominative | kafĕsĭ | kafĕtsiiu | lŭzŏsĭ | lŭzŏtsie |
Consonant stems:
| singular | plural | singular | plural | ||
| oblique | tiūn (house) | tiūna | hyen (portrait) | hyenō | |
| nominative | tiūnĭ | tiūnĭtsiiu | hyenĭ | hyenĭtsie |
Numerals
1 ciura, 2 sĭwŏ, 3 totĕ, 4 sakawa, 5 sahŭ, 6 tsukŭ, 7 kĕsy, 8 pawa, 9 yesĭ, 10 yūrĭ
Syntax
Cases
The nature of the nominative case is somewhat dubious as it is used for the subject of transitive clauses and often for the subject of intransitive clauses - but not always and not by all speakers in the same way. Linguists have even attested the use of both the nominative and the oblique cases as subject of intransitive clauses by the same speaker. Whereas some linguists claim that Yirō is shifting from a nominative-accusative language to an ergative-absolutive language, others reject this as nonsense and explain the phenomenon as 'oblique dominance': because the oblique case is used far more often than the nominative case and because making the difference between the two is only required in transitive clauses to express subject and object, speakers just randomly pick one of them in intransitive clauses, where there is only a subject.