Dictionary:About Besoh
This page documents the dictionary's practice for Besoh (Bëson, code YCQ-BE), the earliest attested language of the Andusian family and the first attested member of its South Andusian branch. Unlike its reconstructed ancestors, Besoh forms carry no asterisk.
Entry conventions
- Entries currently live at romanized titles. Besoh has its own script; once its type is prepared for the wiki, entries will move to native-script titles with romanized redirects, following the practice of Ancient Hertic.
- The spelling is conservative: Besoh is not pronounced as written. Each entry's Pronunciation section gives the estimated spoken form; the laws behind it are below.
- Nouns carry a Declension section (
{{YCQ-BE-decl}}), verbs a Conjugation section ({{YCQ-BE-conj}}). The bare plural of a noun has its own entry (a non-lemma form, without etymology); other table forms do not.
Development from Proto-South-Andusian
The written language reflects five laws:
- Low-mid merger: *ɛ, *ɔ > e, o — five vowel qualities, short and long.
- Contraction: *h between identical vowels > a long vowel (*hehe > hë “grandmother”).
- Gemination: an oral stop assimilated to a following obstruent (*biktu > bittu “fear”; *hɔkfo > hoffo “moon”).
- *w > v (*hɛw > hev “weep”).
- Lenition: intervocalic *f, *s > v, z (*asume > azume “other”).
Orthography
Plain letters have their expected values. Distinctive values: ś ź = ʃ ʒ · c j = ʦ ʣ · ñ = ɲ · n = ŋ (Besoh has no plain n) · ĥ ĝ = x ɣ · ǵ = ʁ · ' ' = ʔ · ä ë ï ö ü = the long vowels.
Pronunciation
Ten further developments are spoken but never written; entries' Pronunciation sections and the inflection tables apply them.
- Stress falls on a heavy penult (long vowel or closed syllable), else the antepenult.
- Final unstressed e, o > [əː] (medo [meðəː]).
- b d g > [β ð ɣ] between vowels.
- e o > [ɛ ɔ] in closed syllables — the old low-mids return as allophones.
- ĥ > [ç] before front vowels (kovĥiu [kɔvçy]).
- ǵ is [ʁ] throughout.
- Final ' is a glottal catch on the vowel ([ˀ]); before a following vowel it revives as full [ʔ] (ña'on [ɲaʔõ]).
- Final n survives only as nasality on the vowel (san [sã]; the [ŋ] returns under suffixation: sanu [saŋu]).
- iu > [y].
- Obstruents assimilate voicing regressively and devoice word-finally (gisbo [gizbə], hev [hɛf]).
Grammar
- SOV, postpositional. No gender or noun class; no person agreement.
- Nouns: plural -u, after vowels -'u (he'u “women”, śizu'u “villages”); locative -on / -'on; dative with the postposition bi; the plural locative collapses -'u'on to -'on, merging with the singular for vowel-final nouns. Genitive with the postposition jen (“of”), dependent first: konso jen ruve “the hunter's child”.
- Verbs: the stative in -va (also the passive: humva “be woven”); perfect with the preposed particle va' ; inchoative and future with ke; negation with so' before the verb, or before a noun to negate it alone.
- Adjectives are stative verbs: before the noun they attribute (agge śiześ “a big house”); clause-finally they predicate (śiześ agge “the house is big”).
- Example: Konso jen ruve ña'on vo' om. — “The hunter's child sees the crocodile in the river.”