Kuduk Language
| Kuduk | |
|---|---|
 , Tanatōxa | |
 Tanatōxa written in tano (top) and takara (bottom). | |
| Created by | None |
| Ethnicity | Kuduk (Yaki, Nekomimi etc from Kuduk) |
| Users | 900,000 (2022) |
| Purpose |
|
Early forms | Middle Kuduk; Classical Kuduk
|
Standard forms | Modern Standard Kuduk (Kuduk)
|
| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
The Kuduk Language (Kuduk: Tanatōxa) is a language split into several distinct dialects solely spoken within the Tribal Federation of Kuduk. It is the sole official and national language of Kuduk and is a recognized language of the RCEU. Kuduk's dialects tend to differ in phonology and pronunciation, though rarely differ in grammar. Modern Standard Kuduk (MSK) was created during the 19th century as a bridging language between the differing dialects of Kuduk. There is an estimated 900,000 people who speak Kuduk at a native level.
Kuduk is considered an agglutinative, polysynthetic language with many affixes and few root words with many meanings prescribed to them. Kuduk is also considered a tenseless language, marking time via separate words to establish time references and numbers to represent plurality.
Kuduk is written using two writing systems: a logographic system (Kuduk: tano), and a syllabic system (Kuduk: takara). Tano is the older of the two systems and predates Takara by about a few hundred years. Takara was created, generally by those of lower classes, in order to write the names of people and places and to act as a substitute to lessen the amount of logographs one needed to memorize. Later on, Takara was used to write loan words. Its debated over how many strokes modern Tano has exactly, but many linguists agree that it has at the very least 6 distinct strokes that could make up a logograph.
Kuduk used to be considered a language isolate, but has since been reclassified from a sole language to the Kuduk Language Family which encompasses the several dialects spoken in Kuduk. Although the spoken varieties of Kuduk are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of a single language, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a family. Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Kuduk is ongoing.
History
Ancient and Old Kuduk
Classical Kuduk and Literary Forms
Modern Kuduk
Varieties
It is estimated that there are at least 6 major varieties of Kuduk. These dialects form a dialect continuum, in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced with greater distance. Generally, smaller clusters of tribes such as the Eastern Woodland Tribes and the Southern Heiki Tribes exhibit a larger frequency of differing dialects. The cities, although not officially given a dialectical category, also have a distinct form of speech of their own that usually differs from its tribe. An example would be Naryan, a city with a specific dialect apart from the Manirak Tribe that employs the heavy use of foreign loanwords.
Grouping
Proportions of first-language speakers
Modern varieties of Kuduk are conventionally classified into six dialect groups, largely on the basis of the different evolution of Classical Kuduk:
- Háaka, including Modern Standard Kuduk, Naryanese, and Ayankese
- Heitsuk
- Chóokaneidi, including Codese and Ichinese
- Xunáa
- Huaduk
- Haichuk
Háaka and Modern Standard Kuduk are terms that are often used interchangeably in speech, but there is a distinction between the two. Háaka is a term used to describe all of the new-age dialects of Kuduk, including both Modern Standard Kuduk as well as the city-based dialects. MSK on the other hand refers to a specific dialect of Kuduk created in 1870 with the express purpose of helping the Tribes of Kuduk unite politically by linguistically uniting the country. Because of this, education in Kuduk employs a mandatory course in MSK for its students.