Classical Doccábh

Classical Doccábh
doccáibh dirr
Pronunciation	[do.ˈka:βʲ dʲi.r̩ʲ]
Region	Originally in northern Yazland, and the zone of influence of the Doccábhan Empire.
Ethnicity	Doccábh
Era	fl. 2200CY
Language family	Yasgan Greater Doccábhan Archaic Doccábh Classical Doccábh
Early form	Archaic Doccábh language
Range of the Doccábhan Empire, under which Classical Doccábh was the official language

Classical Doccábh (doccáibh dirr [do.ˈka:βʲ dʲi.r̩ʲ]) was a language spoken in northern Yazland, originally by the Doccábh people, and later by multiple groups under the Doccábhan Empire. Today it largely survives as a language for international communication, as well as science and academia, although it is largely being supplanted. Despite this, few to no native speakers of the language exist.

Before the fall of the Doccábhan Empire, it had largely evolved into colloquial forms spoken across the various provinces of the empire, which later evolved into different modern languages. These are largely minority languages today, although some countries in the Gintem Confederation use them as an official language. Classical Doccábh itself is still common in literature and institutions, and is standardised by TODO.

Classical Doccábh had a large effect on the languages around it, with many words being borrowed into the surrounding Yasgan, Ashno-Verethian, and Milevic languages, especially in the areas of law, science, theology, and medicine, as well as many placenames.

Classification

Classical Doccábh developed from Archaic Doccábh, especially the northern and eastern dialects, making it a part of the Greater Doccábhan language family and thereby a member of the Yasgan language family.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Velar
					plain	labial
Plosive	voiced	b	d		ɡ	ɡʷ
	voiceless		t		k	kʷ
Fricative	voiced	(β~v)	(ð)	(z)	(ɣ)	(ɣʷ)
	voiceless	f	(θ)	s	(x)	(xʷ)
Nasal		m	n		(ŋ)	(ŋʷ)
Rhotic				r

All consonants could also have palatalisation applied to them in any position, although this palatalisation spread throughout clusters.

Lenition

Some consonants were lenited after vowels:

Plain	Lenited
t	θ
k	x
kʷ	xʷ
b	β~v
d	ð
g	ɣ
gʷ	ɣʷ
s	z

This also applied to palatalised consonants.

Tense and lax sonorants

The consonants /m n r/ could be either tense or lax. Lax sonorants were generally pronounced as plain sonorants, but could have a softer pronunciation after vowels, similar to lenited consonants. Tense sonorants were generally pronounced closer to a geminate, and could be found only medially and finally; finally, they were usually realised as a syllabic consonant, but other dialects might still use the geminate pronunciation. The tense sonorants were usually doubled in spelling - e.g. mm, nn, rr.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	iː i		u uː
Close-mid	eː e	(ə)	o oː
Open-mid	ɛ: ɛ		ɔ ɔː
Open		a aː

The existence of [ə] is disputed and unclear.

The open-mid vowels were rare, especially /ɛ ɛ:/. They were usually spelled with ei and ao, with long variants éi and áo.

Orthography

Classical Doccábh was written in Doccábh script, an alphabet which originated from the Rausin alphabet.