Zompist Bboard Again

This is a project I've been working on for a few years, though really sporadically; thus the thread is more of a scratchpad than a fully presentable result. It's a large language family, spoken in a version of the present day. The name comes from Proto-Kuzitic *kuz "person, human being."

In universe, the Kuzitic Languages are one of the world's largest families, dominating 2/3rds of the continent of Pacifica, located between Asia and North America in the North Pacific. They are all descended from Proto-Kuzitic, which was spoken around 5,000 years ago, vaguely contemporaneously with PIE, likely somewhere in the Hagash Mountains in western Pacifica. Proto-Kuzitic and its descendants are characterized by a system of four semantically-assigned noun classes (masculine, feminine, neuter, and inanimate), which have distinct number marking; the plural animate is marked by a tone change, while the inanimate class has singulative marking instead, with an unmarked plural. Other distinctive features of PK include tone, a fairly complex system for marking posession (including multiple possessive classes), polypersonal agreement (including with indirect objects), a desiderative mood which causes ablaut, and mostly head-final syntax. Although PK was nominative-accusative, many (most?) descendants have developed ergativity, which is an areal feature of western Pacifica; those which retain a nom-acc. alignment tend to be outliers from the core areas of the family. Notable languages include the historical Classical Darnic/Odanite, Old Penau, Sewaqli, Deligian, and Classical Arroe and Guywana, as well as the modern languages of Odanite, Modern Arroe, Modern Standard Penau, Wikkaynese, Llapoyan, and Ozavakve.

Aesthetically, I'm kind of aiming for something with its own unique feeling for Proto-Kuzitic, rather than aping a specific natlang (although I am trying to be naturalistic.) I'm putting in features that I tend to think of as "ugly" or "cludgy," like lots of voiced obstruents, ejectives, tone, and copious consonant clusters. The aesthetic was also inspired by Rot13, a cipher, which naturally produces some of these features when metabolizing English text. These features are maintained to varying degrees in the descendants.

Here are some notes on phonology.

Vowels: *i *e *a *u

Stops: *p *b *p’ *t *d *t’ *ṭ *ḍ *ṭ’ *k *g *k’ *q *ʁ *q’ *ʔ
Fricatives: *s *z *s’ *h
Nasals: *m *n *ñ *ŋ
Approximants: *l *l’ *j *w

Note that I haven’t used IPA in all cases, because it makes it feel more realistic to a protolang to me; for example *ṭ *ḍ *ṭ’ *ñ have an uncertain value; they may have been retroflex, palatal, or palatalized coronal consonants. Similarly, the exact nature of the distinction between *l and *l’ is not certain, though the latter was probably glottalized or velarized, and *l may have been palatal or palatalized. Others are more definitive; the ejectives were definitely ejectives, and *ʁ was almost certainly [ʁ], though it patterned as a voiced stop (a la Inuktitut).

The syllable structure is (C)(C)V(C)(C); clusters follow the sonority hierarchy generally, but also permits consonants with the same MOA to co-occur in a cluster; i.e. *mnañ “mouth” *gḍíʁ- “wipe.” However, obstruents in clusters (except *ʔ) must agree in voicing, so **bt **sz are illegal while *bd *sh are permitted. Clusters of ejectives sort of follow this rule, in that voiced obstruents become voiceless before ejectives, but it appears the first element in such a cluster was unreleased so I write what was likely */t’k’/ as *<tk’>. These rules apply to compounds, but not inflectional morphology.
Proto-Kuzitic had two tones, low and high; the high tone is indicated with an acute.

Anyway, gonna put my notes on the different branches in another post.

Here's a very rough map of subfamilies of Kuzitic:


The Kuzitic languages are typically divided into eight branches (Arroe, Lusoberian, Deligic, Darnic, Abo-Llapo, Penautic, Nachtol, and Todosic), which are more questionably grouped together in three nodes (Paleo-Western, Western, and Eastern).

Paleo-Western is the smallest node, both by number of languages and number of speakers. It consists of two branches, Arroe and Lusoberian.

Arroe (blue) is the largest of the two; it’s the official language of the Arroe Republic, a small, mountainous country along Odan Bay. It has an extremely deep written history, with the earliest attestations from the late 700s BCE. The Arroe have traditionally been a middle power in Western Pacifica, maintaining their political independence and a strong cultural identity in all but the worst times thanks to their mountainous homeland. The early Arroe were highly oriented around militarism and self-defense, a legacy which has been drawn upon throughout history. The deep history and continuity of Arroe means that there are not only one but two classical Arroe varieties – Classical Arroe proper, which was in written use from the 400s BCE to the 300s CE; and Guywana, which was in use from the 600s CE to the 1100s CE.

The Lusoberian languages (purple) have no such heavy attestation; they are a small group of endangered languages spoken in the Lusoberian desert, and are barely even attested before the late 1800s, though toponyms and descriptions from outside sources suggest that these languages were dominant in the central and eastern Lusoberian desert until the early modern period, when they were overwhelmed by neighboring Deligic languages.

Despite their differences, these two branches have some commonalities, most notably preservation of the historic palatal stops as stops, retention of Proto-Kuzitic applicatives, and a “vowel crunch” at some point in their early history which saw the loss of the phoneme /e/.

There are also a few ancient inscriptions and toponyms in southeastern Pacifica which suggest that languages with these characteristics may have had a broader distribution in the ancient past. Most of these inscriptions predate the Deligic conquests of the 100s BCE. The only variety which is even moderately attested is the Old Laawanic, spoken by the invaders of the Lidan islands (which I forgot to add to the map) from the 300s to the 1st century AD, when they were invaded themselves by the Deligi. Old Laawanic is sparsely attested, but what is available of it suggests a weak affinity with the Lusoberian languages, albeit with some very odd features, like the absence of the desiderative mood (otherwise totally unheard of).

Western is a tighter grouping than Paleo-Western, with a lot of common phonological, morphological, and even lexical changes. This node contains three branches: Deligic, Darnic, and Abo-Llapo. Some linguists have hypothesized that Proto-Western Kuzitic was a dialect continuum, with the Deligic languages being one end of the continuum and Abo-Llapo the other.

Deligic (red) is the largest branch of Kuzitic languages, both by number of speakers and by number of languages. It’s spoken up and down the west coast of Pacifica.. The spread of the Deligic family is a bit of a historical accident; the Deligi, who were nomadic pastoralists in the Hagash mountains, were one of the first cultures to integrate the horse into their lifestyle and military after it was introduced to Pacifica in the 300s BCE. They used this to their advantage in the 100s BCE and 00s CE through a campaign of large-scale conquest along the west coast. The Deligi were never politically unified, and the conquerors were rival clans who quickly collapsed into infighting, but the conquests spread the Deligic language as a lingua franca. When the area was later conquered by the Odanite empire, the empire continued to use Deligic as a lingua franca for its western territories (much like Greek in the Roman empire), which cemented its position.

The Deligic language family is large enough to have two large subbranches, confusingly named after the historic directionally named clan groupings – so Northern Deligic is not necessarily spoken in the north, instead being named after the Northern Deligi clans. The Northern Deligic languages are spoken on the southwest coast, from the Lusoberian desert to just south of the Keslangas River, as well as in the southern and northern Hagash Mountains. Southern Deligic is spoken on the northwest coast of Pacifica, as well as in the central Hagash Mountains.

Notable features of the Deligic languages include a more complex vowel system and a tendency towards morphological simplification. The languages of the southwest coastal plain form a sprachbund with several common features, including quotative forms and a perfective auxiliary derived from “to do.”

The Darnic Languages (orange) are close relatives of Deligic. The Darnic languages are another variety, like Arroe, with tremendous antiquity, dating back to the Darnic civilization. The ancient Darnic city states in eastern foothills of the Hagash Mountains conquered various downhill principalities in the early Common Era, and spread their language there; these Darnites called themselves and their new state Yadine, or in English Odan. They established a massive and long-lasting empire, which spread Darnic religion westward, and entrenched the Darnic family as dominant in the Odan Bay region. Presently, the Darnic language with the most speakers is Odanite (Odanite: Yadinek’e), the official language of the Republic of Odan, but there are other important languages too, including Modern Darnic and Siyawa.

The Abo-Llapo languages (brown) are a small family of languages, spoken in eastern Llapoya and Petina. They are attested, mainly in Episanist inscriptions, from the 200s CE onward. Most are endangered as a result of language shift to Llapoyan and other languages in the contemporary period. They have some unique features, like a split-ergative alignment in most languages, strong traces of applicatives, and heavy influence from outside languages, including Deligic and Darnic.

The Eastern languages are a much more dubious group, and some linguists reject this entirely, though it has tended to stick around a useful if not entirely accurate label. For a time, the most robust feature linking these branches together was a loss of historical tone distinctions – total loss in some Penautic languages and Nachtol, and partial loss in the rest of Penautic and Todosic – but one common development does not a family make. This node includes Penautic, Nachtol, and Todosic.

Penautic (yellow) is the largest family, dominant in the populous altiplano of Penau in the northern Akar Adidi Mountains. It includes three major classical languages of antiquity: Sewaqli, a sacred liturgical language of Episanism (the primary religion of eastern Pacifica), Old Penau, and Old Andandese; closely related sister languages. In the present era, major languages include Modern Penau, Cheretori (descended from Old Penau), Modern Andandese (descended from Old Andandese), and Metlan (descended from an unattested sister language). The Penautic languages lost Proto-Kuzitic tonal distinctions early on, first developing a pitch accent system and then eventually stress accent in some descendants. Many of the current languages, notably Metlan, have redeveloped tone from coda consonants.

Nachtol (lime green) is a regional language spoken in the Hetun Basin of the Akar Adidi Mountains. It has never been a literary language, with its speakers always using either Penau or Andandese as a prestige variety; consequently it was never written down until the late 19th century. As its speakers are ethnically Penau, and the language has massive influence from surrounding Penautic languages, it took linguists a while to realize that Nachtol was its own branch of the Kuzitic family, one which took a very different course of development to Penautic but which converged with it through massive borrowing and sprachbund effects. Frustratingly, the relatively small number of robust native lexemes and lack of historical attestation mean that Nachtol’s story is not well understood.

The Todosic languages (dark green) are spoken in eastern Pacifica. As with the Abo-Llapo languages, speakers of the Todosic family were historically herders and subsistence farmers on the chilly northern periphery of Pacifica, with relatively little historical documentation, though there are some scanty records from the middle ages onward. Notable features include a pitch accent system derived from historic tonal contrasts, loss of ablaut (!), and retention of applicatives and the historical nominative-accusative alignment, a conservative trait which was lost in most descendants.

The language of these with the most speakers is Ozavakve, a historic trade language used along the northern Pacifican littoral.

Proto-Kuzitic had four noun classes: masculine, feminine, animate, and inanimate. Gender assignment was quite regularly assigned based on semantic grounds; the masculine and feminine were reserved for human men or women (and likely a handful of other extremely high animacy entities, like deities and also the Hagash Monkey, known in PK as *kuzbu or *nuzbu depending on sex). The animate class referred to animals and plants, while the inanimate noun class referred to most inanimate objects as well as abstract concepts. There was also a much smaller class of variant nouns which will make more sense to cover later, but they aren't an exception to the rule of semantic gender assignment.

Noun class determined the specific form of number marking used:

• In the feminine, the singular was unmarked, and the plural was marked with the suffix *-nin. *néḍéñúb "sister" --> *néḍéñúb-nin
• In the masculine, the singular was similarly unmarked, and the plural was marked with *-ke. *kpáwdgi "killer" --> *kpáwdgi-ke
• In the animate, number was marked via tone; the singular form had a low tone on the final syllable, while the plural had high tone on the final syllable. This was so thoroughgoing that no animate noun with a high tone in the final syllable in the singular is reconstructable to the protolanguage, and only one irregular noun, *p’él’e "tree," retains the low tone in the plural. *bésli "dog" --> *béslí.
• In the inanimate, the plural was unmarked, and there was instead a singulative suffix -g(i), which only surfaced with the vowel when following a consonant cluster, or after a velar, uvular, or voiceless stop. *nujé "stars" --> *nujé-g "star," *bab "rain" --> *bab-g "raindrop" *ḍwejm "newness, new things" --> *ḍwejm-gi "a new thing," *kuweʔ "sands" --> *kuweʔ-gi "grain of sand."

In addition to noun class marking, there was also a highly complex system for marking possession which was simplified to various degrees in descendants. Proto-Kuzitic appears to have had alienable possession, marked by inserting the particle *gi between possessee and possessor, and inalienable possession, marked by the suffix *-ñi on the possessor. (Note that, contrary to the general head-final tendency of Proto-Kuzitic overall, it was head initial in possessive constructions.) Additionally, some "not traditionally possessable" nouns, such as wild animals, natural features, or deities, can be made possessive with the locative postposition *ʁwéjs; e.g. *hálb ʁwéjs nin "the woman's hill." In the literature, this is traditionally called light possession.

Note that, because of the awkwardness of adding *-ñi over and over again, it's believed that inanimate possessive marking likely "exhausted" after the second *-ñi in more complex possessive phrases, and possibly not even that; two *-ñis are only attested in Darnic.

Notably, Proto-Kuzitic did not appear to distinguish between adjectives and nouns, and used these same possessive structures to indicate adjective-type relations; thus *ánjáw gi méṭé "the white franciscan [1]" and *ánjáw gi ʔénéq' "ʔénéq''s franciscan." It's not known to what extent the different forms of possession were used here, but several descendant languages use the distinction between the inalienable and alienable to express differences between nature and state (not unlike the different uses of ser and estar in Spanish). Light possession does not appear to have been commonly used for adjective-esque relations, though light possession was clearly on the way out in basically every descendant so it may have been more common in PK.

Finally, it bears talking about variance in noun class. A few nouns can vary between masculine or feminine without any additional marking, such as *ʔtu
"ancestor," which can either mean male or female ancestor depending on agreement. Similarly, animals which are used as foodstuff can sometimes appear in the inanimate when they are being eaten; *ánjáw in the animate is a franciscan cat wandering around and catching mice, while *ánjáw in the inanimate is franciscan meat on your plate. Finally, the most unusual form of variant nouns are body parts and a few other semantically similar words, which can be any noun class; for example *diʁdág "hair," can be masculine or feminine (if it belongs to a man or a woman), animate (if it is the hair or fur of an animal), or inanimate (for cut hair, or poetic descriptions, or the abstract concept of hair). This last group of nouns are obligatorily possessed, and always in the inalienable possessive class.

[1] Franciscans (Prionailurus aurisrotundae) are relatives of the domestic cat which were domesticated in much the same way and for similar purposes in ancient Pacifica; they are nevertheless somewhat distinct, with an appearance more like that of the flat-headed cat or the Pallas's Cat in colder regions. They also tend to be a bit heavier because they are sometimes bred for meat.

Proto-Kuzitic cardinal numerals between 1 and 10 have been robustly reconstructed; they were likely decimal.

1. *íws’ú
2. *píns
3. *lét'
4. *zí
5. *meʁí
6. *ʁibḍé
7. *í
8. *eg
9. *laŋ
10. *s’eze

Additionally, *ṭañqaʁu "eleven" and *lét'meʁí "fifteen" are well attested in descendants. The formation patterns for two-digit numerals are not reconstructable, with different branches having different tendencies. Larger numbers are even more doubtful. The Western languages have *sawgel "one hundred," and Darnic and Abo-Llapo have *tígel "one thousand," but these transparently seem to come from compound of the words for many (*saw) and all (*tí) with an unknown nominal, perhaps related to the very old Arroe word kʰi "thing."

Additionally, Proto-Kuzitic is reconstructed with ordinal and distributive numerals. Ordinal numerals are formed with the suffix -*zi, which assimilates to the preceding MOA of obstruents; i.e. *léts'i "third." Distributive numerals are formed by total reduplication; *egeg "eight at a time, eightfold." The forms of both of these for the numerals one and two are irregular; for one the ordinal is *ṭ’aṭis’ and the distributive is *ṭañṭañ rather than the expected **íws’úzi, íws’úíws’ú. For two it's a bit more regular; the ordinal is *pínzi and the distributive is *píspín. Technically, the distributive of seven *íjí is irregular as well, as a *j is inserted to repair the hiatus created by reduplication.

I've done a bit less work on Proto-Kuzitic verbs, and these are a bit more in flux -- so I'm posting this with the understanding that it will likely change.

PK verbs are exclusively suffixing, and appear to have been largely agglutinating. I'll describe the suffixes Proto-Kuzitic verbs receive, from left to right in the verb complex.

The reciprocal was formed via full reduplication of verbs.

*Kage emp'esemp'eskík.
3p.MASC.PL wash-RECP-3p.MASC.SBJ
"They wash each other."

Slight digression on reflexives: After the reciprocal in the verb complex comes the desiderative. The desiderative is marked with the suffix *-(j)u, with *j only being inserted after vowels. The desiderative also causes raising and backing in the final vowel of the verb; *e becomes *i, while *i *a become *u. Because of the presence of both ablaut and an affix, the desiderative has been one of the most persistent features of most Kuzitic descendants.

Proto-Kuzitic had a range of applicatives: the benefactive *-ḍe, the comitative *-lu, the instrumental *-jénké, the locative *-ti (which may have also been used as a dative), and *-jé, which appears to have been a dummy applicative. These are retained as full pieces of morphology in only the Paleo-Eastern and Todosic languages (and in a very reworked form in Abo-Llapo) but these are retained in relict form abundantly as portions of words in other branches; c.f. PK *áma-ḍe "give away for," Deligic mainǧe "give."

After the applicative came the passive *-te. As passives tend to do, it reduced the valency of an otherwise transitive verb; demoted subjects could be reintroduced with the postposition *ʁu "at."

*Kage emp'estekík (áná kagmú ʁu) .
3p.MASC.PL wash-PASS-3p.MASC.SBJ (mother 3p.MASC.PL.POSS at)
"They were washed (by their mother.)"

Next in the verb complex came the mood markers: the subjunctive *-núg and the conditional *-ʁa, which could not co-occur. The subjunctive appears to have been used for hypothetical scenarios, the protasis of conditional sentences, future events, and in conjunction with the negative particle *gel'imak; this full range is attested in Darnic and (Classical) Arroe, suggesting this goes back to PK. The conditional appears to have been used for the apodosis of conditional sentences.

*Jéq mednúgmeqʔá, ádadán medʁaʔá.
fish eat-SUBJ-3p.ANIM.SG.OBJ-1p.SG.SUBJ, grape eat-COND-1p.SG.SUBJ
"If I eat the fish, I will eat the grapes too."

It also appears to have been used with a resultative sense, perhaps as part of serial verb construction.

*Ábdidálem pṭ’iṭ’na ʁbañq’úʁa ébásʁa.
stone paint-3p.FEM.SG.SUBJ black become-COND
"She painted the stone black."

Finally, Proto-Kuzitic had polypersonal agreement, with object marking coming before subject marking.

Object Suffixes: Subject Suffixes: You'll note that there isn't any agreement for inanimates. In Proto-Kuzitic, inanimate objects didn't receive agreement, while inanimate subjects were not permitted at all.

A few additional bits of information to add before I go on to descendants.

Proto-Kuzitic pronouns: Inalienable possessive marking was identical to nouns.

Proto Kuzitic had three invariant demonstratives: the proximal *jes', the medial *gul, and the distal inú. These were also used as inanimate pronouns, taking expected singulative marking when used pronominally; *jezg *gulg *inúg. Notably, when used adnominally, the PK demonstratives, followed the noun phrase.

Proto-Kuzitic can also be reconstructed with a large derivational morphology.

I’ve enjoyed reading through this. I like the phonotactics, and I like the way you’ve presented the different cultural features of the different branches in a clear way (so I can see which languages are ancient literary languages, which are attested more recently etc) ‒ it’s giving me a good ‘feel’ for your setting and the languages and people in it. I also like the franciscans. They sound cute but scary.

Not got a lot of specific feedback, but I’ve enjoyed what you’re doing so far

I don't have a ton to say, but I really like the "vibe" you've captured here. Something about the phonotactics feels vaguely Native American, without being strongly reminiscent of any one specific family. I particularly like the gender/number system. I seem to include singulatives in every conlang I experiment with. For the section on derivational morphology, it would be cool to see examples of them in use. Look forward to reading more!

sasasha wrote: ↑Sun Oct 12, 2025 12:52 pm I’ve enjoyed reading through this. I like the phonotactics, and I like the way you’ve presented the different cultural features of the different branches in a clear way (so I can see which languages are ancient literary languages, which are attested more recently etc) ‒ it’s giving me a good ‘feel’ for your setting and the languages and people in it. I also like the franciscans. They sound cute but scary.

Not got a lot of specific feedback, but I’ve enjoyed what you’re doing so far

Aww, thank you! And the Franciscans are cutie pies, not at all scary.

Skookum wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 5:57 pm I don't have a ton to say, but I really like the "vibe" you've captured here. Something about the phonotactics feels vaguely Native American, without being strongly reminiscent of any one specific family. I particularly like the gender/number system. I seem to include singulatives in every conlang I experiment with. For the section on derivational morphology, it would be cool to see examples of them in use. Look forward to reading more!

Thank you! I actually hadn't used singulatives before, so glad to see that they are coming off well. Will do wrt: derivational morphology, there are few example of them below actually.

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I figured I'd talk a bit about the sound changes to the Deligic languages, which are what I'm feeling most motivated to work on right now. Here's the Grand Master Plan, with examples until I got too lazy.

Brettschneider’s Law
*ʁj *l’j *lj → jj
*ʁw *gw→ b
*l’w *lw → ww
PK *ʁwéjs "with" → bòis

This is shared across all of the Western languages

Preparatory Palatalization
*VC[+palatal] → VjC[palatal]
*ṭ’áṭ’i "sewing" → č'aič'i "sewing, intention"

This is another very common set of changes in many PK descendants, though not exclusive to the Western languages.

Glide Fortition
*jj → ʒ
*w → ɸ
*kpáwdgi "killer" → kàphdi "hunter"

Another quintessentially Western change, though Deligic fortites PK *w in all cases, not just sequences of *ww as in Darnic and Abo-Llapo.

tl-shift, part 1
*C[-coronal][+stop] → C[+alveolar]/_C[+lateral]
*eblig "ground sloth" → *edlig → lig

Note that this doesn't affect the palatals? of Proto-Kuzitic. Stops here include ejectives.

tl-shift, part 2
*t *t'→ tɬ tɬ’/_a
*tL *t'L *dl → tɬ tɬ’ l
*sL *s'L *zl → ɬ s' z
*l *l' → i u/C_V
*ʔútá "give" → ʔòtlà
*béslili "puppy" → bèhlili "child"

P-lenition
*p → f
*plúlp "tongue" → foòlf

Tone Chain Shift
Vʔ → V[+high tone]/_C, _#
V[+high tone] → V[+mid tone]

Note that this is a push chain shift, the high tones derived from a coda glottal stop do not become mid.

Uvular Loss
*i *e → u a/_C[+uvular]
*q *q’ *ʁ → g k’ x

u-dropping
*u → o

Another common Western change.

Apheresis
*V → 0/#_ (except monosyllabic words)

Western languages tend to dislike initial vowels, but while other branches insert glides Deligic clips them. Note that this results in some vowels disappearing when declining or deriving historically monosyllabic roots.

Obstruent Cluster Simplification
*C[+stop] → 0/C[+stop]
*C[+fricative] →0/C[+fricative]

Deligic Prenasalization
*b *d *ḍ *g *z *ʒ→ ᵐb ⁿd ⁿḍ ᵑg ⁿz ⁿʒ/ V_, C[+glide]_, #_

Diphthong Mergers
*ij *ej→ aj oj/_C, _#

Postalveolar Series Frication
*ṭ *ṭ' *ⁿḍ→ ʧ ʧ' ⁿʤ

Velar Frication
k ᵑg k’ x ŋ → ʨ ⁿʥ ʨ’ ɕ ȵ/_i,e,j

These are still phonemically velars in Proto-Deligic (and many descendants).

Which gives an inventory of (providing there are no errors):

/*i *e *a *o/
/*ai *oi/

/*p *(m)b *t *t' *(n)d *tl *tl' *č *č' *(n)ǧ *k *k' *(n)g *ʔ/
/*ph *f *s *s' *(n)z *hl *x *h/
/*m *n *ň *ŋ/
/*l *l’ *y/

I am using Deliginist transcriptions here rather than IPA, which should be mostly obvious; romanizations like this are used for all modern Deligic languages. Note that PD *p is PK *p'; its value is totally unknown and it could have plausibly been any of [p p' ɓ]. High tone, as in Proto-Kuzitic, is represented with an acute, while mid tone is represented with a grave accent.

Note that many of the features of modern Deligic, most notably the larger vowel systems, aren't present; these are largely modern innovations.