RK English

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Part of the Random Kingdom factbook. RK English, the official language of Random Kingdom, is a heavily modified version of English used internally and usually informally in Random Kingdom.

Usage

RK English as governed by the Academy of RK English (or RKE Academy for short) is the constitutional official language of Random Kingdom, however British English is typically used in diplomatic proceedings and on the international level.

Differences from English

RK English includes several concepts from other languages, mostly the Romance languages.

Pronunciation

  • All vowels, unless forced to become long by other pronunciation rules, are generally short.

Spelling and Sound Representation

  • Vowel sounds that would be represented in British English by a doubled vowel (ie boon) are instead represented by a single macron-accented vowel (ie bōn)
  • The letters K, Q and X are obsolete:
    • The letter K is replaced by Ĉ;
      • In cases of the digraph <ck>, the digraph is replaced by Č (consider the phrase "I ĉnočed the brič over")
    • The letter Q (and therefore the digraph <qu>) is replaced by the digraph <cu>;
    • The letter X is replaced by the "jota" or ĵ, which is equivalent to the Spanish letter j (pronounced as a rolled "huh" sound)

For example, when written in RK English, the phrase "Xavier, being the quickest pupil in the class, beat the lunch queue easily" would be written "Ĵavier, being the cuičest pupil in the class, beat the lunch cōe* easily". (* See below for the reason this is spelt differently)

Major spelling differences

In order to make RK English easier to spell, many words are spelt differently (usually phonetically)

  • Queue is spelt cōe and pronounced "cooe".

Phonetic letter names

  • Ĉ is pronounced phonetically the same as its predecessor K.
  • Č is pronounced "cuk".
  • Ĵ is pronounced the same as its Spanish counterpart, "ĵota".
  • W is pronounced "double V".

Deviation

The use of accents on substituted letters is slowly becoming a formality. Whilst the RKE Academy still mandates the individual letters Ĉ, Č and Ĵ in order to distinguish for etymological purposes, many people have merged them with the standard letters C and J. Also, many diplomatic and international documents still use British English, and most loanwords from other languages still use their respective spellings (for example Quechua and Quiché); however, the Academy constantly issues "RK-ized" versions for words that have no easy translation.

Some people also, when writing the sound "oo", shorten it to ū, not ō.

The Academy is also considering replacing words that look "ugly" in the new spelling format with more easily-written ones.

Grammar

  • "Academy" RK English mandates the use of inverted question and exclamation marks, for example ¿How are you?.
  • Indirect pronouns are acceptable either in Verb-Object-Pronoun (I gave the objects to him) or Verb-Pronoun-Object (I gave to him the oranges)
  • A third third-person pronoun is used for indetermined gender objects, "hon", which is modeled in the following way:
    • Identification: hon (eg That telephone belongs to hon.)
    • Subject: ho (eg Ho's coming)
    • Possessions: hos (eg It's hos telephone)