Yék

Yék is the second youngest of the five original shared human languages.¹ It emerged in 10,510 BP along the shore of Ancyllus Lake in Dnieper-Volga and the Variscides, became one of the most widely dispersed languages in Europe and Asia, splintered into various successor languages, and eventually died out by 7,685 BP.

Origin

The Sandarnans had developed a sedentary culture on the fertile plains exposed around the shores of Ancyllus Lake in 10,597 BP. Life was rich and easy, and clans traded and shared knowledge of toolmaking and building, and in the evenings they told eachother stories. The strong relationships that formed between sedentary clans gave rise to the standardization of communication that became the Yék language.

Development

Sandarnan culture thrived by the water for many generations, not realizing that the rapid rise of ocean levels was creating a dangerous discepency between the level of the ocean and the level of their lake. When the water finally broke through in 9,960 BP it created an enormous influx of water that flooded the entire region, creating Littornia Sea. The Sandarans had built their permanent settlements so close to the shore that most of them were wiped out. The survivors fled toward the west and north into Skáney and toward the east and south into the Sarmatic Plain. Each of these surviving groups brought their own dialects of Yék with them, that subsequently evolved into their own successor languages.

Extinction

The survivors in Skáney integrated with the native culture already there, and their language also evolved into a distinct successor language Ǵéwek. Yék continued to be used by the Kundans during their nomadic phase, but once the population reached the Caucusus, the language of the sedentary people building homes along the shores of Euxine Lake were speaking a new variant of the language, Yékke. The last speakers of true Yék died out some time before 7,685 BP.

Structure

Note: This section on language structure is intended only as a quick overview of a few specific linguistic features, and not a comprehensive description of the language.

Phonology

In addition to many familiar consonants, Yék also had a wider variety of stop placements than many modern languages:

Unaspirated unvoiced stops

p, t, c, k, ʔ

Unaspirated voiced stops

b, d, g, ɟ

Aspirated voiced stops

b^h, d^h, g^h, ɟ^h

Unvoiced frictives

s, x, χ, h, ħ

Nasals

m, n

Liquids

r, l

Interestingly, voiced frictives are not found in yék, although the /s/ phoneme could range from /s/ to palatalized /ɕ/ or /ʃ/ depending on its context. A vocalization of /s/ as /z/ sometimes emerged by accident when the phoneme was surrounded by voiced consonants, such as in the word nisdós ("nest"). However, the voiced frictive did not become a phoneme until successor languages.
The Yék phoneme set was limited to two short vowels (ɛ, ɔ) and two long vowels (e, o), and two surface/frontal vowels (i, u). These were able to combine as dipthongs which are usually expressed using a vowel-semivowel annotation, e.g.: ey, oy, ēy, ōy, ew, ow, and so on.

Morphology

Yék was an inflected fusional language, so that grammatical role and relationships between words was conveyed by conjugations, declentions, and suffixes. Nominal words (e.g. nouns, pronouns) had the morphological categories of gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), number (singular, dual and plural) and case (nominative, accusative, vocative, genitive, ablative, dative, locative, and instrumental). Number was shared with verbs, while gender and case were not. Both noun stems and verb stems were divided into the classes thematic and athematic, the former ending in the thematic vowel. Their inflection partially differed.
This table illustrates the standard (but not universal) nominal inflectional endings in Yék:

numbercase

athematic

thematic

singularnominative

-s (neuter Ø)

-os (neuter -om)

singularvocative

Ø (neuter Ø)

-e (neuter -om)

singularaccusative

-m (neuter Ø)

-om (neuter -om)

singularinstrumental

-éh

-oh

singulardative

-éy

-oey

singularablative

-és

-o'od

singulargenitive

-és

-osyo

singularlocative

Ø

-ey

dualnom / acc / voc

-ih

-oy

dualinst / dat / abl

-b^hām

-ōs

dualgen / loc

-ows

-oħom

pluralnom / voc

-es (neuter -χ)

-ōs (neuter -eχ)

pluralaccusative

-ns (neuter -χ)

-ōns (neuter -eχ)

pluralinstrumental

-b^hi

-ōys

pluraldat / abl

-mós^hi

-oymos

pluralgenitive

-óħom

-o'oħom

plurallocative

-sú

-uysu

This table illustrates standard verb endings in Yék:

numberperson

athematic

thematic

singularfirst

-mi

-oχ

singularsecond

-si

-esi

singularthird

-ti

-eti

dualfirst

-wos

-owos

dualsecond

-t'hes

-et'hes

dualthird

-tes

-etes

pluralfirst

-mos

-omos

pluralsecond

-te

-ete

pluralthird

-nti

-onti

Syntax

The default, unmarked word order in Yék was SOV, for example:

ɣrḗḱs

súhxnum

u̯l̥nhto

king
(nominative)

son
(accusative)

desire
(1st, singular)

Translation: "The king wants a son."
However, morpological markers conveyed so much meaning in Yék that word order was relatively unimportant as a grammatical indicator. Instead, word order was often used for emphasis: people would put the most important word at the beginning of the sentence regardless of whether it was the subject, verb, or object of the sentence. Pitch could also be used for emphasis, allowing for a complex range of ways a speaker could craft a sentence depending on what they wanted to convey.

Vocabulary

Personal Pronouns

Yék had personal pronouns in the first and second grammatical person, but not the third person, where demonstrative pronouns were used instead.

First Person

SingularPlural

Second Person

SingularPlural

Nominative

heǵwei

tuħyuħ

Accusative

hmén̥smé

twéusmé

Genitive

hménensero

teweusero

Dative

hméǵ^hionsmei

téb^hiousmei

Instrumental

hmoínsmoí

toíusmoí

Ablative

hmednsmed

tuedusmed

Locative

hmoínsmi

toíusmi

Numbers

one

χóynos

two

duwóh

three

tréyes

four

ketwóres

five

pénkwe

six

swéḱs

seven

septḿ̥

eight

ɣeḱtṓ

nine

hnéwn̥

ten

déḱm̥

Source Region

Dnieper-Volga, Variscides

Source Culture

Sandarnan People

Spoken by

• Kundan People
• Sandarnan People

Successor Languages

• Yékke
• Ǵéwek
• Kalbà

Used From

10,510 BP

Used Until

7,685 BP

Writing System(s)

none²

Details and Highlights

Homeland of Yék in 10,510 BP

Ancyllus Lake flood zone (9,960 BP)

Yék language migrations after the flood of Ancyllus Lake (7,990 BP)

Euxine Lake flood zone (7,410 BP)

Migration history of the Yék language family

The paths of descendants of the Yék language are shown in green, along with land area losses (blue) due to flooding during the same period of time.

1. A "shared" language is a language that is used by a population larger than one or two extended family clans. Shared languages began to arise among groups of human clans that were sedentary or semi-nomadic, and in settings that incentivized cooperation. This created social pressure to simplify and standardize communication across larger populations. Five shared languages emerged independently among humans at different times and in different regions. These five original shared languages, in order of appearance, were:

• Kx’wi (22,350 BP - 18,950 BP)
• Vadana Lipī (14,500 BP - 8,000 BP)
• Pūraw (12,900 - 9,000 BP)
• Yék (10,510 BP - 4,550 BP)
• Yányǔ (9,900 BP - 4,950 BP)

Although isolated clan languages, unrelated to these shared languages, persisted in pockets of the world for a very long time, every shared language that has existed throughout human history has been either a derivation of or creole between one or more of these five original shared languages.
2. Among the five original shared languages, three (Yék, Pūraw, and Kx’wi) emerged from sound communication and never had a writing system associated with them (although their successor languages did), and two ( Vadana Lipī and Yányǔ) co-developed with their own writing systems from the very beginning. Some people have hypothesized an association between the early development of writing systems and food cultivation, because Kx’wi and Pūraw emerged in foraging cultures while Vadana Lipī and Yányǔ emerged in farming and grain cultivation cultures. Yék does not fit this pattern, however, having not written component yet emerging from a farming and herding culture. Some researchers have suggested that this anomaly might be a side-effect of the disruption of the Samra people by the Euxine Lake Flood, while others are skeptical of the hypothesized connection between farming and writing altogether.

Languages Index

Type Key

• Family Root Language
• Successor Language
• Cross-Family Creole

The Five First Languages

First Shared Languages

Coastlines and climatic conditions are shown for each region as they appeared when the language first formed in that region.