Teshduh

Teshduh is part of the Teshpen language family. Languages derived from Teshpen are notable for their individualized and collective approach to pronouns, color-based noun classes, and agglutination.
Teshduh is spoken by Kugma and Iwati people who understand any given singular body to be full of multiple individual entities. Common expressions and everyday conversations involve frequent mixing of singular and collective first person pronouns. The language also marks for clusivity, making it clear whether "we" means "everyone" or "only everyone in the body family."

language at a glance

• agglutinative
• head-initial
• color-based noun classes
• cases include nominative, accusative, genitive, locative, comitative, and ablative
• numbers are singular, plural, and collective
• topic prominent
• clusivity marking

body family terms

• "bûrs," collective monochrome noun, "body family"
• "yu," singular rellow noun, "member of a body family"
• "basûm," collective monochrome noun, "inner world"
• "amb," singular monochrome noun, "outer world"
• "yîng," verb, "to front, to experience the outer world"
• "mentr," verb, "to switch between fronting and not fronting"

colors

There are three important color groups that also function as noun classes. The groups divide the color wheel into three parts: nuztû for red and yellow (rellow), wadh for green, blue, and purple/pink (cool), and îrkt for black, white, and gray (monochrome).
The word for gray is also used as a descriptor for a color's saturation (a "gray" yellow is a desaturated yellow), and the words for black and white can be used to describe the relative darkness of the color ("black" blue is darker than "white" blue).

nuztû (rellow) colors

• 1. red: dhushk /ðuʃk/
• 2. orange/brown: însaw /ɪnˈsɔ/ (related to the word for nut or seed)
• 3. yellow: yays /jæjs/ (related to the word for grass)

wadh (cool) colors

• 4. green: îrkt /ɪrkt/ (related to the word for nose)
• 5. blue: zhûlt /ʒʊlt/
• 6. purple/pink: shandzh /ʃændʒ/

thirn (monochrome) colors

• 7. black: wawdankt /wɔˈdænkt/
• 8. gray: ûtpri /ʊtˈpri/ (related to the word for mountain)
• 9. white: dendl /dɛndl/

pronouns

People create their own pronouns using pronoun prefixes and a noun or adjective. When talking about someone whose pronouns are unknown the speaker, they use a special set of pronouns without a personalized suffix. In the third person, pronouns used to refer to things that aren't people also don't use personalized suffixes.
Pronouns are considered a form of individual expression and can function like second names. Common choices for suffixes are colors and animals. Because colors are gendered, color suffixes are associated with certain genders. Occasionally, people use their name as a suffix or don't use a suffix at all, using just the pronoun prefix.
Personalized pronouns are handy when multiple entities in a body family are speaking at the same time. With multiple "I"s speaking, using different suffixes helps everyone understand who's the speaker.

family

There is said to be a mountain family "for each mountain in the Kugma mountains." Individuals in a mountain family do not necessarily have a tie to the location, but it refers to the lineage traced through the egg-laying parent's side.
Kinship terms are based on gender and age, with unique terms used for the egg-laying parent and the egg-laying parent's own egg-laying parent. There are gendered terms for siblings and all cousins from the egg-laying parent's side are also considered siblings. Uncle and aunt relationships are only traced on the egg-laying parent's side and have gendered terms.

key

Shapes with the same color use the same terminology. The light brown square is the person whose family tree this is.

• Square: person of any gender
• Circle: nuztû (rellow) gender
• Triangle: wadh (cool) gender
• Rhombus: thirn (monochrome) gender

writing

Teshpen, the language Teshduh evolved from, used a horizontal line to indicate word breaks and a vertical line for sentence breaks. Over time, this developed into the symbols in the Teshduh abugida writing system having special forms when they appear at the end of a word.
Sentence breaks are still denoted with a vertical line, but as the primary writing method switched from engraving in clay to ink and paint on parchment, people began to emphasize the sentence breaks with more flourishes. Doodlers might end up with a final sentence in their notes that has a final line decorated to look like a gorgeous tree with many branches or to look like the leg of a furry animal.

numbers

There are three grammatical numbers in Teshduh: singular, plural, and collective. The way to mark the plural is to reduplicate the first part of the first syllable of a word. The word for animal, "mûrk," becomes "mûmûrk" in the plural. The collective number is used to describe a group of something, such as describing an entire herd or an entire body family, and is normally marked with a prefix derived from the Teshpen word for the body family.
Teshduh uses a base 6 numbering system. For very large numbers, a base 36 numbering system is used instead.

Spelling & Phonology

Consonant inventory: b d f g h j k l m n p r s t v w z ð ŋ ʃ ʒ θ

↓Manner/Place→	Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Palato-alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m			n			ŋ
Stop	b p			d t			g k
Fricative		f v	θ ð	s z	ʃ ʒ			h
Approximant						j
Trill				r
Lateral approximant				l

Co-articulated phonemes

↓Manner/Place→	Labial-velar
Approximant	w

Vowel inventory: i u æ ɑ ɔ ɛ ɪ ʊ ʌ

	Front	Back
High	i	u
Near-high	ɪ	ʊ
Low-mid	ɛ	ɔ ʌ
Near-low	æ
Low		ɑ

Syllable structure: (C)V(C)(C)(C)
Stress pattern: Ultimate — stress is on the last syllable
Spelling rules:

Pronunciation	Spelling
æ	a
ɛ	e
ɑ	o
ɔ	aw
ʊ	û
ʌ	uh
ɪ	î
θ	th
ʒ	zh
ð	dh
j	y
ʃ	sh
ŋ	ng