Ashenacom Thread: Phonology; Names on the Plains

[Pedant]

Here is the thread for a plains-dwelling race of mine, the Ashenacom, who instead of riding horses ride camelopards--in effect the camelid equivalent of the horse--and have the rather nasty ability to consume souls by setting themselves on fire.

The Basics
Phonology; Names on the Plains

First up, a note on the BASICS:

The Ashenacom are a grasslands people, and have been for many thousands of years. Unlike their Hemeraean counterparts, the Mà Qul and Duun Nam peoples, they do not ride horses. Instead, the animal of choice is the camelopard, cyphion ferus caballus, a relative of the Salvian boskoe, with cloven hooves, good speed across the plains, and (in some breeds) a tendency to spit with extreme accuracy. The Ashenacom themselves have a particularly powerful Gift for the grasslands: the ability to suck an area dry of energy and use it to produce a flaming halo around the body (and objects or animals in direct contact) for protection. (This likely evolved as a reaction to the frequent wildfires on the savanna their ancestors called home, and bears remarkable similarity to the methods used by the dragons in Malehi.) For a time, they ruled an enormous empire across both the savanna and the steppe to the west; one group, the Ashung "strong people", even became the Twelfth Dynasty of the Telepath Empire (with some local dissatisfaction, naturally, but that's bound to happen occasionally). They worshipped the ever-present sky, the earth, the animals that lived upon the grass, the major sun Suran (a rather mercurial deity), and a race of invisible flaming people with metallurgy skills called the Agaderdu. Today, most bow before the Raven Reborn in Minzatu, but there are still a few petty states scattered around what remains of the grasslands and scrublands in the east.
The Ashenacom actually speak a variety of languages by this point in history, the proto-language spoken around 2,500 years ago. The language with the most speakers is that of Kikheymür, just north of the Qutosbegehi Mountains, but the Imperial language, spoken by the Ashung, is the one to be studied here. It is agglutinative, with a number of honorifics based on kinship terms, nominal distinction between animate, inanimate, and flammable nouns (the Ashenacom are categorized as inflammable) as well as between seven basic "shapes", a base twelve numeral system (an Ashenacom crossing their arms may only be representing the number twelve), verbal distinction between indirect and direct agent and patient (four in all) in six different combinations, and 400 words for describing camelopards of different ages, sizes, and colours.

[Pedant]

A note on PHONOLOGY and NAMES ON THE PLAINS:

Remember that this is the language spoken over a thousand years ago (nearly a thousand Earth years), not any of the languages of the here-and-now.

Phonology

• Consonants: m <m> p <p> b <b> w <w> n <n> t <t> d <d> s <s> l <l> r <r> t͡ʃ <ch> d͡ʒ <j> ʃ <sh> ʒ <zh> j <y> ŋ <ng> g <g> k <k> x/h <h,kh>
• Vowels: i <i> y <ü> e <e> ø <ö> a <a> o <o> u <u>
• Phonotactics: Word-final syllables may only end in a vowel, <w>, <y>, <m>, <n>, <ng>, <d>, <g>, <š>, or <r>; word-internal syllables may end in any of the aforementioned except <g> and including <ž>.
• Vowel Harmony: Proto-Camelborn had a vowel harmony system that led to cemented variations of old prefixes and suffixes, leading to pairs such as Eshenacom/Ashenacom "Rider" and Ishungod/Ashungod "Strongling" but Imperial Ashenacom had a slightly different system, based not on height and rounding but on backness and rounding.

(NOTE: the <c> in Ashenacom is an affectation from common spelling in Quiramic; the actual word is best transcribed Ashenakom.)

Names on the Plains
The Ashenacom take a minimum of three names during their lifetimes. The kalotar waya-dor "baby name" is held until some sign of adulthood begins to beset the child. This is usually something simple, like Khür "bison hide" or Lenar "soft", a placeholder for any actual characteristics that may reveal themselves. Popular too are names suggesting some form of misfortune, such as Chuyung "weak" or Börög "miserable". These are given regardless of gender.
The second name, the kalotar barsanig-dör "mature name", is given after the young Eshenacom has given some sign of physical maturity. This could be from bloodshed--for girls from menstruation, for boys from combat--or from successfully raising their first camelopard, or from the manifestation of the native Gift. Regardless, it is at this time that the proud parents will consult one of the roaming shamans of the plains, who will consult the Sky and Earth (and the parents) and choose a name that seems to best suit the new adult. Usually these are two-root names, a noun and adjective or two nouns. A common name, the kalotar proper, is then derived from the first syllable of each root. Thus a woman named Zhikör-Khen "blood-river" would have the kalotar Zhikhen--as did one of the most famous queens in Ashenacom history, just as destructive as her name would suggest.
The third name, the kalotar chedür-ün "soul name", is known only to the person and the shamans, established during a vision quest which the parents are absolutely not allowed to attend. Little is known about these, except that they appear to be a sentence rather than a noun-adjective combination. When one is dying, one calls for a shaman and asks them three times if they know one's name. If they are true shamans, they will be able to pluck the name from the space around one in the Dream and use it either to heal or to help along the soul. This is a slight alteration of the regular Gift of sucking energy into a corporeal form from others' souls; here, it allows the shaman to pour energy into the soul itself.

Vocabulary
Börök "miserable, unfortunate" (*börök)
Chuyung "weak, not strong" (*c-uy-ung)
-dor/-dör "genitive postposition" (*-dor)
Eshenakom, ashenakom "rider; member of the Ashenacom ethnicity" (*I-caynak-Um)
Ewaya, awaya "baby" (*i-waya)
-in/-ün "ablative postposition" (*-in)
Ishungod, ashungod "strong person; member of the Strongling Tribe" (*I-cu:ng-At)
Kalotar "be named; name" (*k-al-otar)
Ukhen, lakhen "river" (*u-xe:n)
Üzhikör, lezhikör "blood, bloodstain" (*u-ji:kör)

[Xwtek]

Why does your conscript has the latin equivalent of <c>?

[Pedant]

Why does your conscript have the Latin equivalent of <c>?

Strictly speaking it doesn't; the word Ashenacom, as I said above, would in the actual language be transliterated Ashenakom or Ašenakom. But the word as Salvian and Irthironian scholars first became aware of it came from the languages of the Quiramic Empire, who do have a development similar to <c>. It never actually appears in the text beyond this one word, for which I changed the singular form so that it wouldn't be asymmetrical.