Ombesh

Ombesh is the language of the Omban people and others closely affiliated with them. It was the core language of the Omban Empire and also its various successor states. It is probably spoken as a first language today by perhaps 15 million people, and as a second language by another couple million. It is the primary language of all of the Omban successor states, and is also spoken in Ashnabis, Luetka, and Umnaka to a significant degree.

History

Old Omban was the original language spoken over 1,000 years ago by a group of militaristic agricultural societies living in the area that now ranges from southern Khutu through western Hasmala, roughly centered on the city of Omba. By 215 BE, the Dedication of Urpeska shows the first historical evidence of linguistic changes that would be recognizable in later Ombesh. As the Omban monarchy extended its reach into Taizi, Daligash, Basai, and Choradan, a new political order emerged that spread the Ombesh language with it.

The Imperial era established a widespread language area, then, ranging from western Choradan through northern Basai. The conquest of Nulu in 161 introduced Ombesh there, though the local Thu Parsh language remains commonly spoken there. Malfan, which had been relatively sparsely inhabited before the Empire, eventually came to be home to a range of disaffected Ombans, and so Ombesh came to be spoken there even before the Empire conquered Malfan in the third century. The conquest of the Umnakan city of Jinto, and sporadic occupations of the high northern Luetkan coast, brought some Ombesh speakers into areas not under formal Imperial control, and then the Osnabi campaigns of the early fourth century brought Ombesh west of the Filija Mountains, where it would eventually become Aummesh.

After the fall of the Empire in 338, some fragmentation of Ombesh has occurred, but less than might be expected, because the ability to speak with Ancestors keeps radical change somewhat in check. Nevertheless, it is clear that there are regional and class-based differences in Ombesh speech, as there always have been.

Dialects

Omban dialects today can basically be divided into three broad regions: western (Choradan, Malfan, western Daligash); central (eastern Daligash, Taizi, Khutu, Omba, Hasmala); and northern (Basai and Nulu). In Ashnabis, Aummesh is spoken by the local population but a variety of Ombesh heavily influenced by the Choradani dialect is widespread. In parts of Luetka, a creole of Ombesh and Luetkan is spoken by many people. In northern Umnaka, especially the city of Jinto, an increasingly divergent Ombesh dialect from any of these has begun to emerge over the past century or two.

Phonology

Ombesh has twenty-one phonemic consonants, five phonemic vowels, and one diphthong. It is often described by learners as guttural, probably because of its wide range of fricatives.

Consonants

b	/b/	as in ball
m	/m/	as in map
n	/n/	as in now
p	/p/	as in pill
t	/t/	as in ton
d	/d/	as in down
k	/k/	as in kill
g	/g/	as in guy
ch	/tʃ/	as in church
j	/dʒ/	as in jog
f	/f/	as in fit
v	/v/	as in vat
s	/s/	as in sad
z	/z/	as in zip
sh	/ʃ/	as in shoe
zh	/ʒ/	as in measure
kh	/x/	voiceless velar fricative; as in Scottish pronunciation of loch
gh	/ɣ/	voiced velar fricative; like a voiced ‘kh’
h	/h/	as in house
r	/r/	as in rod
l	/l/	as in lip

Vowels

a	/a/	as in fall
e	/e/	as in hey
i	/i/	as in kiwi
o	/o/	as in bone
u	/u/	as in food
ai	/aj/	as in buy

The basic syllable structure of Ombesh is (C) V (C) (C), which is to say that there is a vowel, which may have zero or one consonants in front of it, and zero, one or two consonants at the end of it. Consonant clusters do not occur at the beginning of words or syllables. Where there is a consonant cluster in the middle of a word, the syllable breaks between the two sounds. There is a restricted subset of consonants permitted word-finally.

For more on learning how to pronounce Ombesh, watch this tutorial.

Morphology

Ombesh is a highly agglutinative language, which means that nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. are stems (root words) with a number of affixes (mainly suffixes) that modify its meaning, with each suffix adding an additional single element of meaning. It has a rich complement of suffixes that apply to verbs, in particular.

Plurals

Pluralization of nouns is characterized by three different noun classes.

Class 1: By far the most common class. These nouns are pluralized by reduplicating the word's last consonant (not necessarily its final letter), then adding e, e.g. bubun --> bubunne; ula = ulale. For some fricatives and affricates, the combination changes the vowel, e.g. zh+zh = zz; kh + kh = kk; gh + gh = gg; sh + sh = ss; ch + ch = tt.
Class 2: Another common noun class. For some words ending in a vowel, simply add r after final vowel, e.g. ebu --> ebur
Class 3: This is an erratic class of words, with no predictability. Mostly they are words where the final vowel of the word (either the last letter, or the vowel preceding the last consonant) is turned into a diphthong, 'a' --> 'ai', e --> 'ei', and u --> 'ui', e.g. ovre - ovrei

There is also a grammatical dual form, to refer to exactly two of some thing, which is normally -tu or -tur at the end of the word instead of the plural. 'Eye', 'priest', 'twin', 'hand', 'voice', 'partner/spouse', 'leg', 'friend', and a few others are among nouns that have distinct dual forms, along with the pronouns. These were customary in the Ombesh of the Imperial period but are now falling out of use in many of the Omban successor states, especially in Choradan and Daligash, where they are replaced by the simple plural.

While Ombesh does not have consonant length (gemination) in root words, morphological changes, especially those caused by pluralization, result in long / doubled consonants, which are basically pronounced by holding or lengthening the consonant sound.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns are divided by gender (male/female) to refer to single persons of known gender and by number (singular/dual/plural). The third-person has both personal and impersonal pronouns, with the impersonal used for individuals or groups of unknown or mixed gender.

Verbs

Ombesh verbs are conjugated by tense and aspect, with a strong emphasis on time and duration. The main tenses are present, immediate past, past, immediate future, and far future. The main aspects are perfective (bounded), continuous (ongoing), habitual (repetitive), inchoative (becoming), cessative (ending), and semelfactive (momentary). Each tense other than present, and each aspect other than perfective, has a distinct ending. There is also an extensive set of endings that apply to verbs that affect its meaning, such as the causative (make X), agentive (one who Xes, Xer), excessive (out-X, over-X), and so on. Old Omban and very early Ombesh had a subjunctive mood ending to express conditionals and counterfactuals, but this disappeared by the early years of the Empire and is retained only in the most archaic contexts.

Aspects

Ending	Aspect	Meaning
None	perfective	completed or bounded actions
gai	progressive	ongoing or continuous actions
lai	repetitive	happening frequently or multiple times
vai	habitual	happening customarily or typically
chai	semelfactive	happening momentarily or just once
or,dor	inchoative	becoming, in transformation
nai	inceptive	actions just starting or beginning
ur, nur	cessative	actions ending or ceasing

Numerals

1	jos
2	tol
3	bekh
4	zun
5	vash
6	agh
7	shol
8	tora
9	jora
10	um
11	jontom
12	tontom
13	bentom
14	zunaitom
15	vantom
16	aghnaitom
17	sholnaitom
18	toranaitom
19	joranaitom
20	tom
100	galaf
1000	hukh
10000	umlai

Glossary

Ombesh glossary