Difference between revisions of "Ubu"

Revision as of 00:52, 11 October 2005

Ubu is the national language of Ubep. It is classified as a "Southeast Caucasian" language spoken principally in the Republic of Ubep on Earth and surrounding areas along the Caspian Sea coast, or, alternatively, in the Republic of Ubep in Woe Unto Us and among any group of foreign Ubu nationals, who refuse to learn the local languages of their adopted countries.

Ubu is not related to any language, though Pandemonian is said to sound similar.

Phonology

This article will, for now, use X-SAMPA for phonetic transcriptions.

Ubu contains the following consonant phonemes:
/p t k b d s ɕ tɕ ʂ h z ʐ ɣ ɾ l ɭ m n/

• the articulation of /t d n l/ is dental, as in Spanish.
• [w] and [j] may be regarded as allophonic variants of /u/ and /i/, occuring at the beginning of a syllable.
• /tɕ/, spelled <tx>, is usually treated as a single phoneme.
• [ɾ] and the retroflex [ɭ] occur in complementary distribution but are written in Ubu with two separate letters, <l.> (l with a dot underneath) and <r>, thus:

       tamar [“ta maɾ], but

       tamal.ent [ta “maɭ ent]

As is seen here, [r] occurs only in the syllable-coda; [ɭ] elsewhere (i.e., [ɭ] only before a vowel).
• /d/ only occurs in foreign words borrowed since the early 19th century (i.e., more or less as Ubep was first opened up to the outside world, ushering in an influx of foreign influences). Historical /d/'s had all become /z/ or /t/ by the Late Middle Ages.

The vowels are as follows:
/a ɛ i o u/, plus nasal /a~ e~ o~/.
• For convenience /ɛ/ will be marked here as /e/ in phonemic transcriptions.
• /e/ finally or before final /r/ is normally pronounced [ə], thus:

       xomex [“ɕo mɛɕ], but

       xomer [“ɕo məɾ]

This does not apply to monosyllabic words, or nasal /e~/. • The nasal vowels tend to be lengthened.

Orthography

Ubu is conveniently written in the Roman alphabet. The standard spelling used for the consonants as listed above is as follows:

p t k b d s x tx s. h z z. g r l l. m n

The letters shown with dots following them should properly have the dots underneath. The Leadership Council regards it as a slap in the face to European governments that the Ubu people have managed to jettison the "unnecessary" letters <c f j q v w y>.

The alphabet is normally written in the following order:
a b x d e g h i k l l. m n o p r s s. t u z z.

If the nasal vowels are included (written as <a e o> with tildes on top), they are simply stuck on at the end.

This alphabetic system is largely unambiguous, though the student of Ubu should take stock of the oddities noted above in the "Phonology" section. A rare true ambiguity is that <z> represents the sound [dz] in some Latinate and Greek words such as internazional.

Use of the Cyrillic alphabet is violently supressed.