The people of the planet Chooz all speak a common language, which they call Chuzekk.
Structure[]
Chuzekk is an alphabetic, agglutinative language. Writing is done from left to right, in rows. The letters are made up of scratch-marks which the Chuzekk people traditionally make with their claws.
Speech and Writing[]
Chuzekk is normally spoken in an aggressive, almost explosive manner which frequently leads foreigners to think the speakers are angry.
Writing is traditionally done without a pen or stylus by placing claw marks on a multilayered tablet. This scratches away the top layer of the tablet, creating letters by revealing the contrasting color of the underlayer. But in modern times, most writing is done electronically.
Phonetics[]
Chuzekk uses most of the same sounds that English does, plus more. Some sounds that most English-speakers would describe as "the same ones pronounced a little differently" (what linguists call allophones) are considered distinctly different sounds in Chuzekk and are represented by two different letters.
Alphabet[]
The Chuzekk alphabet is made up of 27 letters, of which 6 are vowels and the rest are consonants. The chart at the right shows the alphabet out of order, to make it easier for English-speakers to use.
Grammar[]
Vocabulary[]
Some Chuzekk nouns:
- jadd
- shass
- gashh
A word borrowed from English:[]
- aberikekk: American. It can refer to either the American people or the English language. The root, aberik-, is a transliteration of America, with the m changed to its Chuzekk allophone b and the a dropped to facilitate the use of grammatical suffixes. The suffix -ekk is the Chuzekk equivalent of -an and means, roughly, belonging to. Americans were the first English-speaking people the Chuzekks encountered, which is why they call the language "American" instead of "English" as we do.