Gao-Indralan languages

The Gao-Indralan language family is the easternmost extant branch of the Superseleyan super-family of languages. It consists of three language groups: the Han, Showan, and Tukarian. The Gao-Indralan languages occasionally go by the term "Gao-Showan languages", since they are spoken by the Gao-Showan peoples. The speakers of the Proto-Gao-Indralan language, the hypothetical Proto-Gao-Showans, are usually associated with the 1st millennium BCE Peshapur and Qingdao-Xanadu cultures of Central Seleya. Their expansion towards Dovani is believed to have occured around the 1st century CE. Most of these languages have been strongly influenced by Classical Gao-Showan, the official language of the Empire of Gao-Soto, and the oldest attested Gao-Indralan language.

Subdivisions

 * Han Languages
 * Indralan
 * Misharan
 * Lurathan
 * Moro
 * Đinh
 * Showan Languages
 * Classical Gao-Showa (extinct)
 * Standard Gao-Showa
 * Manshu language (extinct)
 * Kyo
 * Tukarian Languages
 * Shrinian Languages
 * Tukarese
 * Panmuanic Languages
 * Panmuan
 * Lao-Tze
 * Shi-Tze
 * Tze-Tze

Characteristics
Characteristic of most Gao-Indralan languages is a particular syllable structure involving monosyllabic morphemes; phonemic tone; a fairly large inventory of consonants, including phonemic aspiration; few or no clusters at the beginning of a syllable, other than clusters ending in a glide consonant; and a small number of possible distinctions at the end of a syllable, including no clusters, no voice distinction and unreleased stops. Phonemic tone is one of the most well-known of East Asian language characterstics. Indralan and Đinh, as well as Classical Gao-Showan, are tonal languages. Kyo, Standard Gao-Showa, and Tukarian languages do not have phonemic tone,but they do have a pitch accent.

Gao-Indralan languages are highly analytic languages. Words are not obligatorily marked or inflected for gender, number, person, case, tense, or mood. Instead, these properties can optionally be indicated by adding independent, invariant modifier words and particles that are sometimes not even bound morphemes. Showan and Tukarian languages do have suffixes for properties of the verb itself like aspect, mood, and tense, but agree with Han languages in not marking gender, number, or any other properties of the verb arguments on the verb itself. A quite specific feature of the Gao-Indralan languages is the existence of a well developed system of classifiers or measure words, used to classify the referent of a noun according to its meaning.

Personal pronouns in most Gao-Indralan languages are open class words rather than closed class words: they are not stable over time, not few in number, and not clitics whose use is obligatory in grammatical constructs. New personal pronouns or forms of reference or address can and often do evolve from nouns as fresh ways of expressing respect or social status. Another way of viewing this phenomenon is that these languages do not have personal pronouns in the Western sense. This derives from the complex politeness system typical for most of the languages of this family. Linguistic systems of politeness, including frequent use of honorifics, with varying levels of politeness or respect, are well-developed in these languages. Gao-Indralan speakers may use different words with the same meaning, but with varying degrees of politeness, in different contexts. For example, bác, chú, dượng, and cậu are all Đinh terms that all refer to different statuses of "uncle".

Writing systems
With the adoption of Classical Gao-Showan as a literary language, the areas that were under tha cultural influence of the Empire of Gao-Soto, which include most speakers of Gao-Indralan languages, adopted the Gaoji script to write their own languages, thus influencing the development of a national written language based on the previously unwritten local language. The Kyo have created their own (phonetic) writing system, partially derived from Gaoji, called Kyogul. Starting with the 16th century, when Gao-Showans first entered contact with the West, the Latin script has been adapted for writing Gao-Indralan languages. Today, Tukarian languages and Đinh are entirely written in Latin script. Standard Gao-Showan also uses two syllabary scripts, derived from Kazulian runes, called kana.