Aoma

Aoma together with Rinap form the main languages of South-West-Herookuan family deriving from the ancestral Rinapri. Though Aoma is spoken in Eastern Sceptre it has not much to do with the languages of Western Sceptre.

Phonology

Very similar to Rinapian ones

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labio-dental	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	m			n			ŋ
Plosive	p b			t d			k g		ʔ
Fricative		f v	θ ð	z s	ʃ ʒ		x		h
Approximant				ɹ		j
Trill				r
Lateral app.				l

Consonants k, l, m, n, p, ɹ, r, s and t all have a geminated version which are mostly found in two-syllable verb infinite forms. The double-consonants have special marks in written Mihkanor so glottal stop is indicated by writing the consonants separately. Notice: pp [p:ʰ], tt [tθ]

Vowels

	Front	Back
Close	i y	u
Near-Close	ɪ	ʊ
Close-Mid	e ø	o
Open-mid	ɛ œ	ʌ ɔ
Near-open	æ
Open	a	ɑ

Similarly to consonants, vowels have geminated forms marked with special graphemes so that glottal stop is indicated by writing the short graphemes separately. Since i, æ and œ are often written over preceding consonants, there is a special glottal stop grapheme for them. There are also graphemes for vowel combinations occurring at the end of words but their pronounciation varies: aee [aɛ:]/[æeˑ], oee [oe:]/[œɛˑ] and uee [wɛ:]/[ʊe:].

Orthography

Aoma has a hand-written script developed in Eastern Sceptre from the Eastern Temple Marks of third era. Shinesharers, spreaders of the religion of Light, took the original marks to north where they were developed into Northern script (our Latin). Highly decorational Jauhmø script originates to fifth era, but is still in use mainly for formal documentation.

Basics

Aoma is a Verb-Subject-Object language with strong head-initiality (right-branching). The language has two numbers, three persons, four genders and five cases with nominative-accusative alignment. Very important to the speakers and the society is the formal register with polite forms of second person pronouns, honorifics and anti-honorifics.

Verbs

Verbs are conjugated according to person, number, tense, aspect, mood which are indicated by suffixes, prefixes and reduplication.

Conjugation Tables

There are three conjugation classes based on the infinite forms:

• vowel-ending
• consonant-ending
• irregular which do show characteristics of either first or second conjugation

The conjugation stem is received by removing the last syllable, and then endings are added to its place.

Ia) last vowel a/o: tol|la see

	1st Singular	2nd Singular	3rd Singular	1st Plural	2nd Plural	3rd Plural	2nd SG Polite	2nd PL Polite
Present simple	tolan	tolu	tola	tolom	tolus	tolos	toltu	toltus
Past simple	tolin	tolui	tolai	tolimo	toluis	tolosi	tolti	toltis
Future	tolaran	tolrau	tolas	tolramo	tolrus	tolaros	toltaru	toltarus

Ib) last vowel e, often intransitive: rok|ke run

	1st Singular	2nd Singular	3rd Singular	1st Plural	2nd Plural	3rd Plural	2nd SG Polite	2nd PL Polite
Present simple	eng	e		em	es	ös	ite	ites
Past simple	ing	ei	i	im	is	ösi	eti	etis
Future	eran	raa	ase	rom	res	rös	tare	tare

IIa) last consonant m: sum speak

	1st Singular	2nd Singular	3rd Singular	1st Plural	2nd Plural	3rd Plural	2nd SG Polite	2nd PL Polite
Present simple	sun	s(a)mu	su	sumo(o)	s(a)mus	sus	sutu	s(a)mutu
Past simple	suin	s(a)mui	sui	suim	s(a)muis	suis	sutti	s(a)mutti
Future	suran	sura	suas	surom	surus	suros	surta	surasa

IIb) last syllable tes/kes/hes (→ z, x, sh): ty|tes get

	1st Singular	2nd Singular	3rd Singular	1st Plural	2nd Plural	3rd Plural	2nd SG Polite	2nd PL Polite
Present simple	ten	tse=ze	te	töm	zes	tös	zite	zites
Past simple	t(e)in	zei	tei	töim	zeis	töis	zeti	zetis
Future	teran	zera	tas	terom	zerus	teros	zare	zares

Aspects

Imperfective is formed by adding prefixes bo for Ia & IIa or be for Ib & IIb to the conjugated form and often also lengthening the last vowel: Pekin→Bopekiin, I gave → I was giving

Perfect prefixes: ju for Ia, ma for IIa and je for Ib & IIb: Roke → Jeroke, You run → You have run

Ancestral past in the third person is used when discussing ancient historical events and it is formed by adding the prefix ne to pluperfect (past perfect) form: Komai sish. → Jukomai sish. → Nejukomai sish., He did it. → He had done it. → He had done it a long time ago. (or: It was done eons ago.)

Moods

Plain imperative is formed simply by using the indicative present singular third person verb form together with a pronoun: Peko foo sish naee! You give it to me!

Nouns

Noun declension according to two numbers and five cases correlates with the four noun classes which are indicated by the last vowel:

• divine a
• masculine y
• feminine u
• neuter i.

The declension is shown with suffixes added to the stem gotten by removing the nominative vowel ending.

Declension Table

nominative, accusative, prepositional, dative and genitive

Special cases: divine time noun group with temporal cases; some locative forms

Adjectives

Many adjectives are formed from nouns simply by adding e to the genitive case. This is sometimes called the adjective case or adjective form of a noun.

Adjective Declension

Always the same.?

Prepositions

In Aoma, fusional prepositions also convey the word gender and definiteness through vowel change. Same prepositional stems have different ending consonants which give new meanings together with the case of the following word. k- a/u/y - /k/s + prep/gen/prep = at/into/from

Derivational Morphology

Aoma uses suffixes, gemination and apophony to create new words from existing ones. Same noun stems often occur in all four classes. Most important are the eight elemental nouns:

• (divine noun, verb, (secondary verb,) masculine, feminine, neuter, adjective form, colour form)
• gesha [gɛʃa] (life), gesse (live), geshy (brain), geshu (heart), geshi (nature), geshare (lively, active), geshari (yellow)
• tösha (death), tösse (die), töshy (soldier), töshu (disease), töshi (war), töshare (still, silent), töshari (purple)

Numerals

Numbers use nowadays decimal system, but were originally of base twelve also known as dozenal even though there was a special mark for twelve. Some numerologists have proposed that six was the ancient base just like in Rinap, while others say it was eight, the number of all elements when they separated light and darkness from life and death in favour of Lightlisteners' beliefs. To my mind, six is the true base of our universe and must have been the original. Use of eight came later from coastal peoples of Sceptre.