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Rei [FAL]
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Typology Progressing 3,911 words
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Rei
레ᅵ
[reˈʔiʔ]
Registered by [Deactivated User] on 14 October 2017
Language type A priori
Place & SpeakersRei is spoken by a population of around 62,000,000 in Yanay Sovereign Republic.
Species Human/humanoid
About Rei Rei is an East-Highlandic language spoken on the eastern highlands in the Papuan Sovereign Republic. It is heavily polysynthetic and features extensive liaison. Before the arrival of Chinese settlers on Papua in 1761 the language word order was SOV but after wide contact with Chinese languages it has become predominantly SVO, except in verb-adjective frases where the verb stands at the end.
The Chinese started intermixing with the highland natives which formed the mass of speakers of Rei, although the Chinese spoke the creole Qan-Yu as a lingua franca and spoke Nanjing Mandarin in formal occasions. When extensive rice agriculture was introduced to the highlands, the hard farm work was assigned to the mixed race class by their Chinese masters, this made the Papuan Sinic society extremely stratified, with low-class of mixed-race peasants and a high-class composed of ethnic Chinese scholars, bureaucrats and landowners. The Çra people (speakers of Rei) were probably already the langest ethnic group on the highlands, in consequence the mixed race peoples of non-Çra ancestry started coalescing with the Çra and abandoning their native languages (Papuan or Qan-Yu) in favor of Rei.
The language was influenced by the colonial languages like Nanjing Mandarin, English, German and The Fabla, as well as their creoles: Qan-Yu, Tok Pisin and Unserdeutsch and other languages: Korean, Hiri Motu, Persian and many other Papuan languages. However, the language has retained its East-Highlandic character and is substancially conservative.
Language features:
• No gender
• Case prefixes in nouns and pronouns, but not in adjectives
• Person, mood, tense and aspect prefixes
• Sensorial evidential infixes
• Silent prefixes and suffixes that are pronounced after and before vowels, repectively (liaison)
The language is written using Hangul for most native words, with a small number of Hanzi and the Latin alphabet is utilised for loanwords, scientific terms, onomatopoeia ans proper nouns. Korean missionaries introduced Hangul in 1821, marking the start of Rei as a written languange and it soon met widespread use, predominantly in the lower classes, with the higher class Chinese creating a new orthography by mixing Hangul and Hanzi.
The western part of Papua was claimed by the Netherlands since the 1640s, although actual accupation was virtually nonexistent and the Dutch only became aware that an agricultural society lived in the mountains in its interior in 1791. In December 31, 1799 the Dutch East India was dissolved and Western Papua was incorporated into the Dutch East Indies.
In 1883, the British Empire claimed the southeastern part of Papua, the following year the German Empire took possession of the remaining northeast of the mainland and the outlying islands. Both powers enforced the policy of romanization of Rei. In 1945, Meridienne occupied the island and Rei was sidelined in favor of The Fabla in all Papuan Dependency schools.
When Papua became independent in 1973, Rei became one of the foremost runners for the title of national language together with Hiri Motu, as Qan-Yu, Tok Pisin and Unserdeutsch were seen as the shameful products of colonization. It became national official language in February 11, 1975 which became celebrated as National Language Day. After that, standardization and mass education ensued.
It is spoken by around 55 million people in the Papuan Sovereign Republic and about 70% of those have learned it as the only or one of the languages at home, while ~30% has learned it only at school and thus are not as poficient as the F1 speakers. The younger generation of Papua communicates almost entirely in Rei, consequentely, the numerous Papuan local languages are becoming endangered. There is a large community of Papuan immigrants in Meridienne that numbers 1.862.971 counting their close descendants, while there’s also significant Papuan communities in New Zealand (422.487) and the USA (360.638).
The language is also the lithurgical language of the Papuan Salvation, PSR's former state religion. It has about 15-20 million adherents throughout the world beyond Papua and learning the language is an integral part in being accepted as new member. The language is featured above the translations in every sacred scripture.
Sample of Rei[view] j

Forget tomorrow. If you are right, act today.
[view all texts]
Latest vocabulary
žaadjcommon
runtngang
sannumbrella
Language family relationships
Language treeEast-Highlandic
 ⤷ Proto-East-Highlandic
  ⤷ Re
   ⤷  Rei
[view] About East-HighlandicEast-Highlandic is a Papuan language family consisting of Pire and other 3 minor, extinct and poorly documented (2 of them are poorly attested) languages located west of the Blol (Markham) River valey. They are characterised by being heavily agglutin...
[edit] [view] Pare (Port Moresby dialect)The Pare dialect of Mɵzbi-Flis is distinguished from the capital dialect by having /wS/ /zj/ /sj/ /nj/ and /ɲj/ merged with /vS/ /ʑ/ /ɕ/ /ɲ/ and /ɲ/, respectively, but has kept the distinction between /sS/ and /zS/, /ʑS/ and /ɕS/ and it also has dropped final /ɦ/, except when it became [x].
It has also merged final /t͡s/ with /s/.
In the capital dialect the stops are aspirated [pʰ tʰ kʰ] before nasals /m n ŋ/, but in Port Moresby's dialect they became voiced [b d g] in this invironment.
Phonology
ConsonantsBilabialLabio-
dental
AlveolarAlveolo-
palatal
PalatalLabio-
velar
VelarGlottalOther
Nasal m1   n   ɲ   ŋ    
Plosive p2 b   t d       k g ʔ3  
Fricative   [f] [v] s4 z5 ɕ6 ʑ     x [ɣ]7 ɦ8  
Affricate   p̪͡f b̪͡v t͡s [d͡z] t͡ɕ [d͡ʑ]          
Lateral approximant     l9 [l̥]            
Approximant   [ʋ]10 ɹ [ɹ̥]   j11 w     ɥ12
Trill     r13 [r̥]            
  1. /m/ becomes /ɱ/ before /p̪͡f b̪͡v f v/
  2. aspiration of voiceless stops is variable: it's obligatory word initially and optional elsewhere
  3. /­­­­ᆞ/ means its consonant forms a cluster with the next consonant
  4. |ş-| is the non-rhotacising |s-|
  5. coda form of |ㅅ|
  6. /ɕ ʑ t͡ɕ/ are realised as apical postalveolars [ʃ̺ ʒ̺ t͡ʃ̺] before /w/
  7. speakers of some dialects have either dropped final /ɦ/ or merged it with /x/
  8. /ʔ/ is obligatory at syllables /_V/, /C._S|G/ and /V_.CS/ and in words that end in /#V_/
  9. in clusters before voiceless stops and fricatives
  10. allophone of /w/ in clusters before sonorants
  11. /Cw Cɥ Cj/ can also be pronounced as /Cʷ Cᶣ Cʲ/
  12. also described as /jʷ/
  13. /r/ is commonly pronounced with just one contact, except at the start of a word or emphatically
VowelsFrontCentralBack
Close i1 y   ɯ u
Close-mid e2   o
Open-mid ɛ   ʌ3 ɔ
Open   ä  
  1. vowels are lightly nasalised before nasal codas
  2. /ɥe/ /eɥ/ are realised as /ɥø/ /øɥ/, respectively, by some elderly speakers
  3. in some regional dialects /ʌ/ has merged with /ä ɯ ɔ/ depending on its environment (it varies a lot
Syllable StructurePhonetically speaking, the syllable structure is (C)(L)V(C), where C can be any consonant, L can be r, l, ř, j, g or x, V may be any vowel and final C can be any voiceless stop or fricative or any sonorant. However, when one takes into acount the consonants that appear in liaison contexts, the underlying structure might be summarised as (S)(C)(L)V(S)(C).
Stress informationStress is considered either non-existent or negligible in modern Rei by Sorni linguists.
Orthography
Below is the orthography for Rei. This includes all graphemes as defined in the language's phonology settings - excluding the non-distinct graphemes/polygraphs.
 ReiOrthography [edit]
/ɦ/1, [ɣ]2Aa/ä/Ææ/ɛ/Bb/b/Cc/g/Čč/t͡ɕ/Çç/t͡s/Dd/d/Ee/e/Ff/p̪͡f/, [f]Gg/w/
Hh/x/Ii/i/3Jj/j/4Kk/k/Ll/l/Mm/m/5Nn/n/Ňň/ɲ/Oo/o/Ɵɵ/ɔ/Œœ/ʌ/
Pp/p/6Qq/ŋ/Rr/r/7Řř/ɹ/Ss/s/8Šš/ɕ/Tt/t/Uu/u/Vv/ɯ/Ww/b̪͡v/, [v]Xx/ɥ/9
Yy/y/Zz/z/, [d͡z]Žž/ʑ/, [d͡ʑ]­­­­­­­­­­­‐­­­­/ʔ/10/g//n//d//r//m//b//z/
/ʔ//ʑ//t͡ɕ//x//t͡s//p̪͡f/, [f]/ɦ//k//t//p//s/
/ɕ/11/l/12/b̪͡v/, /v//ɹ//ŋ//ɲ//ä//ʌ/13/o//u//ɯ/
/i//ɛ//e/14/ɔ//y/
✔ Shown in correct order [change]
  1. /ʔ/ is obligatory at syllables /_V/, /C._S|G/ and /V_.CS/ and in words that end in /#V_/
  2. speakers of some dialects have either dropped final /ɦ/ or merged it with /x/
  3. vowels are lightly nasalised before nasal codas
  4. /Cw Cɥ Cj/ can also be pronounced as /Cʷ Cᶣ Cʲ/
  5. /m/ becomes /ɱ/ before /p̪͡f b̪͡v f v/
  6. aspiration of voiceless stops is variable: it's obligatory word initially and optional elsewhere
  7. /r/ is commonly pronounced with just one contact, except at the start of a word or emphatically
  8. |ş-| is the non-rhotacising |s-|
  9. also described as /jʷ/
  10. /­­­­ᆞ/ means its consonant forms a cluster with the next consonant
  11. /ɕ ʑ t͡ɕ/ are realised as apical postalveolars [ʃ̺ ʒ̺ t͡ʃ̺] before /w/
  12. in clusters before voiceless stops and fricatives
  13. in some regional dialects /ʌ/ has merged with /ä ɯ ɔ/ depending on its environment (it varies a lot
  14. /ɥe/ /eɥ/ are realised as /ɥø/ /øɥ/, respectively, by some elderly speakers
Typological information for Rei

Definite articleWord for 'this/that' used
Fixed stress locationUltimate (last)
Morphological typologyPolysynthetic
Number of pronominal casesEight cases or more
Syllable structureComplex

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