Capital Ryka [ri̹ka] is an Asiulen Rykaic language of the Rykaic language family. It is one of the two official languages of the Asiulvesacam, the other one being Asiul. Capital Ryka is the standard variant spoken on the Black Island, the northern parts of the White Island, in the Capital (hence the name) and for official purposes. Its dialect sibling White Ryka is spoken in the south and west of the White Island, where Asiul is also not as widespread. The short term Ryka usually refers to the Capital variant unless stated otherwise.

History

Proto-Rykaic was developed by the Asiuluiam as a code language when they were held as slaves by the Dakiuzuiam after their return from the Free Dimensions. It was the first symbolic language on the Llof. After they had successfully driven away the Dakiuzuiam, the Asiuluiam continued speaking and writing Rykaic until Asiul was invented. Asiul completely replaced Rykaic in most regions of the Asiulvesacam, but it continued to be spoken in the western and sourthern parts of the White Island, especially in the Shiniyae, where it evolved into White Ryka.

When the Asiuluiam later chose to revive Ryka in the whole country, they did not adopt the still widely used White Ryka due to the tensions between the Capital and the Shiniyae mayors, and also because White Ryka was at that time considered (by the Easterners) to be a washed-out, impure variant of Ryka. Instead, they reconstructed the variant spoken on the Black Island at the time before the introduction of Asiul and revived that as Capital Ryka. Because of this, Capital Ryka is generally more conservative than White Ryka, which has diverged quite rapidly due to the lack of standardization and official support.

Conlanging background

Ryka is probably my main conlang and as such the best developed one. It’s not the oldest (that’s Asiul), but the first one I started working on with some linguistic background.

Phonology

Ryka has 15 phonemic consonants. In Ryka’s own phonological theory, there are five consonants (labial, dental, alveolar, velar and glottal) that can come in three modes: The plain earth consonants (voiceless stops and the alveolar trill /r/) can transform into water (voiced stops/fricatives and /l/) and wind mode (voiceless fricatives) to form a total of 14 consonants (the water glottal has been lost). In addition, there is a nasal /m/ that is considered a vowel by Ryka speakers and used to be vocalic in an earlier stage of the language, but is now actually a consonant. There is mode harmony between the consonants (except /m/), which means that only clusters of consonants in the same mode are allowed inside a word.

The vowel system is a regular 5-vowel system consisting of /a/, /ɛ/, /i/, /ɔ/ and /u/. The high front vowel /i/ can be half or fully rounded under certain circumstances. Most combinations of vowels are possible as diphthongs.

Writing system

Ryka is written using an abugida script, a type of syllabary. It has 25 base glyphs for all possible combinations of earth mode CV(C) syllables. Diacritics are used to change mode and overwrite the inherent vowel /a/. The nasal /m/ is also represented by a vowel diacritic rather than a base consonant.

On this website, I usually use the latin romanization of the Ryka script to write Ryka words for lack of technical support.

Grammar

Ryka is an agglutinative language with mostly suffixes as well as some infixes and prefixes encoding grammatical features. It uses a stative-active morphosyntactic alignment, which means that the cases used to encode subject and object differ depending on how actively involved the subject is in the action denoted by the verb. This has evolved from an absolutive-ergative system in Old Ryka, which is why its cases for the more active verbs are still called absolutive and ergative. Its default word order is VOS, though this is rather flexible due to the elaborate case system. Verbs may be combined into long serial verb chains to express sequential or combined actions.

Apart from that, Ryka has a few more exotic grammatical features, such as its four nominal genders (nature, Rasvrisu, animal, thing), the two obligatory verbal particles dal and khen that carry one of the six moods, and its unique verbal feature called affect, the expression of emotional stance towards the proposition described.

Language sample

Pjo hewpa qjullaqor ta Babbela	The Tower of Babel
Pjohur rykajd qakohur lath dal katthanb ko turragakshy.	One language and one TONGUE existed in the whole world.
Khen hanllyteru hojsh thyanpor, khen betthanb ke dangbush ta Shytnarry qekha qadal gworokror pepy.	When people where moving to the east, they found a plain in Shinar and started living there.
Khen rykan pek aqejkh herpor. Qjekhen kejro kekh dekhankh qaqjedal shyroth hewph tajsh. Khen tequrn kekh dekhankh hekpy kekh qankha qake khaqekyrtug hekpy ke tublaposha qejkh.	They said this to each other. We shall make bricks and burn them. They used bricks instead of stones and tar instead of mortar.
Qapresh khen rykan pek qejkh. Qjekhen rubalattyk jo bishta tajsh shynkul tasha jo qjullaqorpan, perkylyp ko shal, thykkul khebyn kejddy jo jug shynkul tasha tajsh, shojkresh pakto peresh khej tewtekashal tash ko kowla pukatan ko tarragakha.	Then they said this. We shall build a city for ourselves with a tower that touches the sky, so that we may make a name for us, or else we might be scattered across the skin of the whole world.
Qapkat khen kyphaln ta Lortoj, lutthakul pjo bishta qapjo qjullaqor, ruttynkrylyp tukh hojsh.	But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.
Khen rykan pek ta Lortoj. Shojkresh qekh, thekhulut uhur holyn qakhen rykakyt johur rykajd, khen qunporor pak, peresh khebu quporestho kop pettenllyp qejkh.	The Lord said this. If they, who are one people and speak one language, have started doing that, then they will not stop doing what they planned.
Khebu kyrophal qakhebu rurokulury pjo qekha rykajd loj, thykkul qjedal lalekhjorpedlesh aqekh hera.	I will go down and confuse their language, so that they will hopefully not understand each other anymore.
Pekyd khen tewbeshaln qekh ta Lortoj pepesh ko turragakthan qakhen rubettynkresh pjo bishta qejkh.	So the Lord scattered them from there over the whole world and they stopped building the city.
Pektal dal thettha pjo hewpa jug ta Babbel, thyktal pepy khen rubekuluryn pjo kowla rykajd ko ragakha ta Lortoj. Pepesh khen teweshal qekh ta Lortoj ko kowla pukatan ko tarragakha.	Because of this, its name is Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the world. From there the Lord scattered them over the skin of the whole world.

Resources

• The Grammar of Ryka (PDF) – an unfinished, horribly neglected grammatical description of the Ryka language