Čusak language

Čusak (pronounciation: /ˈtʃu.sak/; Čusak: Mauke ke Čusak) or Standard Čusak is a fictional language created by Masato. It is part of the Čusath language family, which is part of the Proto-Olsath superfamily.

History
The word čusak means "hope", what Masato exactly did while he was creating the language: hoping for a world in which its people will use the language.

Construction of the language
The language was first created in the early months of 2016, when Masato started to think about a whole new language based on lots of different languages from around the world, mainly from Europe and Asia. The first months of creating a language wasn't so easy, because he was busy in his work.

First, the phonology of the language was created. Masato didn't want semi-vowels for his language and instead used vowels in place for the semi-vowels /w/ and /j/. For the word order, he decided to use the VSO word order, since he thinks that verbs are the most important word in a sentence and so chose a verb-initial order. Then, the grammar was made: verbs first, then nouns, and then the modifiers and other parts of speech.

Thereafter, he created other languages to make a language family.

Linguistic history
Čusak evolved from Middle Čusak, which in turn evolved from Old Čusak.

See Čusak sound shifts for details in sound shifts.

Čusak has undergone many very comprehensive sound shifts, mainly the /θ/ → /k/ shift. The semi-vowels "w" and "y" were replaced with "u" and "i", respectively by the time of Middle Čusak. Old Čusak originally had eight vowels, but it has evolved into the five vowels in Middle Čusak. All digraphs except "ng" and "th" were removed in Modern Čusak.

Phonology
See Čusak phonology for more details.

Čusak has a total of 21 phonemes: 17 consonants and 5 vowels. The vowels /i/ and /u/ may become /j/ and /w/ respectively depending on their position.

Stress, along with glottalization, is a distinctive feature in Čusak and can change the meaning of the word. Stress can occur in the ultimate or non-ultimate syllable and glottalization may or may not occur. The most common stress occurs at the penultimate syllable of the word.

Grammar
See Čusak grammar for more details.

Čusak is an ergative-absolutive language, meaning that the agent of a transitive verb and the core argument of an intransitive verb take the same form, and together form the absolutive case. The patient of the transitive verb is in the ergative case.

Čusak also has grammatical cases. Fifteen cases are still used in Modern Čusak, while three cases are defunct from Middle Čusak and four from Old Čusak.