The language of the Ak'kúȑȑōs, Žā'ak'kúȑȑōs, was spoken by the men who conquered the Ga’o, and the aristocrats of Ak'kúȑȑōs society retained their language in most official writings, such as laws and mandates. Originally written in a modified version of hattarask, this cumbersome form of writing was abandoned in most writing besides the sacred texts in Sumerian in favor of a more articulate script adapted from what the Ngu Dza had evolved into over the few millennia of its existence, scribes preferring an alphabet for writing in Žā'ak'kúȑȑōs, which would be called nuźaqūrh, “letters.” Papyrus made these other methods of writing that had previously not been possible with only clay and stone quite viable, hattarask being relegated to sacred texts written in Emenir and eventually the rare need to write in Ákīȑotsožyı. Nuźaqūrh was an adaptation of Ngu Dza and hattarask, but its extensive use of curves and abandoning of the so-called “clay line” made it hardly recognizable from its originators, and it was seen by most as a completely different script for a completely different language, and this new alphabet proved to be much more effective for Žā'ak'kúȑȑōs than the syllable-based alphabet of Ngu Dza, which relied heavily on the specific features of Ngu Ga’o.
The Ákīȑotsožyı tongue formed over the couple of centuries following the Ak'kúȑȑōs invasion, blending the Ga’o’s speech with the Semitic language of their conquerors. Ákīȑotsožyı does often resemble Žā'ak'kúȑȑōs, primarily in lexical cognates, but the Ákīȑotsožyı morphology and grammar is much more similar to Ngu Ga’o, and with its fusional features, pitch accents and syllable structure that permits only monophthongs and few codas, Ákīȑotsožyı is hard to consider a Semitic language, or even an Afroasiatic language, though some modern scholars might argue that it belongs in its own place in either of these categories, or somewhere else entirely.
It is arguable whether or not Ákīȑotsožyı is a creole between Ngu Ga’o and Žā'ak'kúȑȑōs; while it certainly presents creolized features, such as the derivation of vocabulary mainly from one language while retaining the underlying structure of another, but it is hard to nail down as a creole language because of the large amount of fusional and agglutinative features found in the language. It is likely a more plausible solution to suppose that Ákīȑotsožyı could have its origins in a proto-Ákīȑotsožyı creole language, but it rather quickly progressed past that point. Approaching the 13th century BCE, Ákīȑotsožyı is spoken almost universally by those residing in the kingdom of Tákīȑotso, Žā'ak'kúȑȑōs being reserved for the aristocracy as a symbol of heritage as well as a physical border between noble and commoner in the ways of official writings, and aristocrats are most often fluent in both languages as well as knowledgeable in Emenir, used in religious practices. Ákīȑotsožyı is also written separate script than Žā'ak'kúȑȑōs or Emenir; originally written in hattarask like Emenir, the mazatso script formed due to the amalgamation of changes imposed on the language over the centuries. Mazatso can most similarly be considered a syllabic script, though its components are not syllables themselves but rather the moras which make up syllables, giving the script more flexibility and reducing the total amount of characters.
This syllabic structure stems from that of hattarask, and while Žā'ak'kúȑȑōs had been written in nuźaqūrh since that writing system’s development, scholars and scribes, who would have known both hattarask and nuźaqūrh, preferred to use hattarask in the few instances in which they needed to write in Ákīȑotsožyı. This preference was two-fold: the syllable structure of early Ákīȑotsožyı made more sense to be written in syllabary given that those writing already knew hattarask, whereas Žā'ak'kúȑȑōs syllables were much more complex and not fit for syllabary, and also, though this reason was relatively less influential, hattarask was more difficult to learn than nuźaqūrh, which in essence made scribe’s careers more secure and kept the masses from growing more educated than a ruler might like. Over centuries, like any language, Ákīȑotsožyı changed, this change occurring relatively quickly due to the general uneducated status of its speakers, and soon hattarask spellings were archaic. Despite this, scribes continued to use the old writing system and old spellings, as writing in Ákīȑotsožyı was still not common enough to warrant an overhaul of the syllabary. This preservation of the status quo began to change, however, as more aristocrats began to speak Ákīȑotsožyı colloquially, reserving Žā'ak'kúȑȑōs, which had previously been the primary mode of communication, for official speak and writings. This lead to a sharp rise in the amount of Ákīȑotsožyı that was being written across Tákīȑotso, and those archaic spellings and writing systems were no longer viable.
This widespread shift and need for reform would lead to the creation of mazatso, which was developed and standardized as the official writing form of Ákīȑotsožyı by King Niňsamilaga Tutu in the 1380’s BCE. The script was developed with inspiration from hattarask, but its symbols, like nuźaqūrh, saw more rounded forms due to the access to papyrus, and most symbols were greatly changed so as to separate the script from its originator, hattarask, which was more or less unofficially sanctioned as the sacred script of worship, Tutu believing that it was disrespectful to have a script too similar to that of the scriptures. Nuźaqūrh also provided some inspiration for the new script, most notably the use of different characters for moras rather than syllables, which made the script more versatile, which suited the language’s ever-changing nature. Official writings were now written both in Ákīȑotsožyı and Žā'ak'kúȑȑōs, rather than just the latter, as it had been formerly, and the mazatso script became an essential for any aspiring scribe to learn.
Mazatso is written in conjunction with gūtūgṑlo, a large and various collection of logographic characters. Gūtūgṑlo developed alongside nuźaqūrh and mazatso, originating as a method by merchants and craftsmen to create shorthand characters for important items as well as attempt to pass lingual barriers, using pictograms to convey information. Most people were (and still are) illiterate, even among the most wealthy of the merchant class, and gūtūgṑlo were easy to interpret without learning an entire script. However, the originally intricate pictograms were difficult to draw, especially for those who had no means to access papyrus and had to use clay or stone, and over time, these pictograms began to grow more simple to draw, the trade off being that they became slowly less interpretable, but their use grew much more widespread during this time, and anyone relatively significant would have known the few characters most important to their livelihood, though there were far too many characters for any one person to learn without an education in the matter. These characters grew more complex in their capacity, extending beyond pictograms into ideograms and logograms, radicals being combined together to make new meanings from, old symbols. Gūtūgṑlo for centuries had developed without much official status, but one who travelled to Ákīȑo markets would have seen many of them, while seeing little to no hattarask or nuźaqūrh, unless it was scripture or law being placed on display. Despite the use of other writing methods by aristocrats, gūtūgṑlo had become ingrained in Ákīȑo trade culture.
Gūtūgṑlo were at first not associated with mazatso, and the purpose of the two was considered fundamentally different: mazatso was able to convey full thoughts and act as a medium of communication between literate Ákīȑotsožyı speakers, while gūtūgṑlo was a shorthand used to quickly tell information across any literacy or lingual boundaries. Despite this, the two proved to be useful when written together: gūtūgōlo made writing quicker if one knew the characters they needed, reducing stroke times, which was useful for scribes transcribing speech. With some modification, namely the creation of grammatical symbols reflecting the cases of Ákīȑotsožyı that were written in mazatso, which were created as simplifications of the mazatso characters for the case endings, gūtūgṑlo began to forge their way into the writings of even the highest stratums of society. This was aided in large part by the cultural perceptions of writing held by the Ak'kúȑȑōs aristocracy and their scribes and advisors; it was thought that writing was in itself a form of art, and rather than desiring brevity in their writing, most from the upper classes sought to create the most beautiful writings. Gūtūgṑlo had formed with brevity as a necessity, but their designs were often considered an artistic medium by the literate. Characters would be painstakingly drawn with beautiful calligraphy, and access to this new collection of symbols made the ways for authors to exhibit self-expression even greater, both in the connotations associated with the gūtūgṑlo and in the physical depiction of those characters, whose calligraphy could be extensively designed and stylized to convey emotion. This artistic use of gūtūgṑlo allowed the characters to be absorbed into mazatso, though it never became quite commonplace in the more “official” nuźaqūrh, and in the years before the Wars of the Crane and the Jackal, King Niňsamilaga Uparaň, grandson of King Niňsamilaga Tutu, began to survey and collect gūtūgṑlo into what would be the beginning of their standardized form, though they would still see some variation outside of the ruling classes. This all culminated in a very vibrant and extensive literary tradition and culture within the lands of Tákīȑotso, which would be carried on by many over the generations.
Submitted January 16, 2019 at 02:18AM by eeeeeu http://bit.ly/2CoV0hv
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