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Today is apparently espeon day, so I drew an espeon for the occasion.

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Ok fine I’ll update all my Cattic language drawings sense I’m done updating the languages.

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We all have that one cat

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I decided to post my sona on here. It’s based on my first cat, it has a translator collar because it can only speak Chattish (but it can still understand English), and don’t worry, I’m not miserable, I just look like that :).

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I believe I am done with editing my Cattic languages and I think I should redo my showcases of them. Each individual language explanation will be short as I’m doing all four in one post so here we go.

Cattic Languages

The Cattic languages are a group of four closely related languages spoken by house cats. They descend from the Afroasiatic language family (related to Semitic, Berber, Cushitic, etc.). When cats were being domesticated in the Middle East, language was also being invented. So in this universe, cats evolved language comprehension and learned the language of their domesticators, with their dialect spinning off into its own language family that would spread across the world as cats did.

Traits all the Cattic languages share, they all;

• Lack labial consonants and rounded vowels, since cats don’t have lips.

• Use a clitic-heavy grammar rather than full case systems (with some exceptions).

• Count in base-8 (octal), because cats have four digits per front paw.

• Favor simple morphosyntax.

As for each language individually:

Arilog

Spoken across: the Mediterranean

Word order: VSO

Phonology:

Arilog is very unique among other languages, lacking normal /t, d, s, z/ sounds, but having rare sounds like /ʡʜ/ and syllabic /ɹ̩/. At the same time Arilog is also somewhat linguistically conservative, retaining the VSO word order and some consonants shared with other Afroasiatic languages, as well as also having few loan words, making the language more “pure”.

Chattish

Spoken across: Europe and the new world

Word order: SVO

Phonology:

Chattish is the most spoken Cattic language. It was heavily influenced by European languages, even having loan words that go as far back as Proto-Indo-European. The European influence can be seen with the grammar as it is more complex than its sister languages. For starters, this language developed a genitive case thru clitic fusion (i/u-). The genitive case marker has two different forms because due to Uralic influence, Chattish has strict vowel harmony. However, the most unique thing Chattish has that the other Cattic languages don’t is a gender system. Their gender system is different from other languages however as instead of distinguishing by masculine and feminine, it distinguishes by human and feline (and there’s also an inanimate gender). This is because for the cats that speak this language, it became more important to distinguish concepts by “human” and “cat” than it did to distinguish concepts by “male” and “female”. This language is also the only one of the Cattic language to use definite articles (tãũ/te/tût, distinguished by gender).

Necogan

Spoken across: Asia

Word order: SOV

Phonology:

Necogan has the smallest phoneme inventory of the Cattic languages, not having any approximates or even distinguishing between /l/ and /ɾ/. In addition, it has an aspiration distinction between consonants instead of a voicing distinction. What Necogan does have however is tones. Combined with vowel length, there are functionally five tonemes (level ◌̄, rising ◌́ /◌̌/, long rising ◌́◌́ /◌̌ː/, falling ◌̀ /◌̂/, and long falling ◌̀◌̀ /◌̂ː/). It’s clear Necogan was heavily influenced by Asian languages, even borrowing from Proto-Sino-Tibetan.

Kipakan

Spoken across: East Africa

Word order: SOV

Phonology:

Kipakan is the least spoken Cattic language and is considered endangered. Genetically its more closely related to Necogan than the other two, however, this language is the most different from the other Cattic languages. From looking at the phoneme inventory, its the only Cattic language to have ejectives and prenasalized consonants. The African influence is strong, having also borrowed heavily from the Nilo-Saharan languages. The biggest difference from the other Cattic languages is that it dropped the clitic system entirely. Like Chattish, the genitive clitic became a genitive case, however unlike Chattish, it didn’t end there, as the conjugational clitics also fused with words, turning Kipakan into an agglutinative language. Even the word for “not” can be used as a negation prefix.

Comparison

All the Cattic languages descend from a shared ancestor, and you can still see the family resemblance in their basic vocabulary (along with other Afroasiatic languages):

Finally, here’s an example sentence translated into all four languages:

English:

Thank you all for reading this, I hope you all enjoyed!

Arilog:

cälcäl öt wäñ qêl añöt kkäl hää, üülöd añ añöt kkäl deg lidöhr!

Chattish:

tsälîtäl ant kal haut wein jîl ha-o, an hilît ant kal dîg lutûr!

Necogan:

chāràrí ànō kārí hā àdò žān qárí, àn ànō kārí tìgù rīdùrí húrídò!

Kipakan:

sālāl ànts kāl hā k’ādz žhèyínk’ál, àn ànts kāl dìghìlīzùz húlíz!

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Happy Pride Month!

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On the hunt

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I learned recently that Scottish Folds are in constant pain because of the mutation that gives them their ears. Their bones are literally dissolving, giving them arthritis. It’s ashame what we’ve done to them.

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Also, if anyone has noticed, I have tried to update my showcase posts as I continue to work on my languages. Now I will cease this and leave those posts to be outdated as its to much constant work to update those. If any new posts show something different from those showcases, this is why.

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Its been a while (haven’t been able to draw), but now I’m back. I decided to make an animated map of how the Cattic languages spread across the old world. There are some unrealistic things (like that its still only 4 languages) but I tried my best for it to make sense.

Edit: Slightly outdated, Africa is inaccurate and Arihuran is now called Arilog

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lidöhr lökh sän!

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Drew a sprigatito speaking Chattish, they don’t know why either.

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Got a commission to show off more of Arihuran. Without knowing the language, you can tell this cat is going through it 😔.

Artist: (https://x.com/tyistooshort/)

Edit: Text is outdated

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Happy Halloween

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Wanted to make something with my Necogan speaker

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I’ve updated my conlangs pretty extensively, so I’ve updated my one page comics and images to be accurate to how the languages are now.

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