Taki Itza language
The city for conlangs
| Taki Itza Itza, Ticyate h'Itza | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Qajhitza | |
| Total speakers: | ||
| Language family: | Itzan Yixil-Taki Taki Itza | |
| Official status | ||
| Official language of: | Qajhitza | |
| Regulated by: | Huecticyate h'Itza | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | tk | |
| ISO 639-2: | tki | |
| ISO 639-3: | tki | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
Taki Itza (also known simply as Itza among speakers and Ticyate h'Itza in the Latin alphabet) is a Western Vendan language, closely related to Yixil, and is the official language of Qajhitza.
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[edit] Characteristics
A characteristic feature of Taki Itza (and all Itzan languages) is the use of ejective consonants - /p'/, /k'/, /t'/. Often referred to as glottalized consonants, they are pronounced more or less like their non-ejective counterparts, though the pronunciation is briefly halted and then released with a characteristic popping sound. These are marked by a special brushstroke, rather like an apostrophe, below and to the right of the glyph being modified (so that it is read after the glyph).
Most Iztan words end in a consonant or glottal stop, not a vowel. Those that do end in vowel sounds or weak consonant sounds (/y/, /h/, /w/) are used as phonetic glyphs.
Like almost all Itzan languages, Taki Itza is verb-initial (VOA). Many sentences may appear to be AVO, but this is a derived order due to a topic-comment system similar to that of Japanese. Taki is also agglutinative, and ergative.
[edit] Orthography
Itza is written in hieroglyphic logograms, arranged in two-block columns, read left to right and top to bottom. The glyphs which comprise the logograms generally correspond to complete concepts, and are also read left to right and top to bottom. The language's line can be traced back to Proto-Taki, Yixil, and ultimately Proto-Itza, which both branches stemmed from. Itza uses rebuses to form many different concepts from a limited vocabulary.
[edit] Sounds
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[edit] Some basic glyphs and pronunciations
- qaj - land (from the "squelch" sound that it makes when wet, and also from the solid sound it makes when thumped)
- ak - I
- ot - he
- ey - she
- eq - that
- ix - you (singular)
- ich - you (group)
