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Ch’owatlok language

Ch’owatlok
Ch’owatlok, Choangal olaahli
Pronunciation	[t͡ʃ’owɐˈt͡ɬɔk], [t͡ʃoɐ̯ŋɐl oˈläːɬi]
Created by	Tobias Mosbæk Søborg (ca. 2020–2023)
Setting and usage	Fictional language of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of the Ertebølle culture in Denmark at the turn of the Neolithic Revolution, ca. 4000 BCE, as featured in the movie Stranger
Purpose	constructed languages artistic languages fictional languages Ch’owatlok
Writing system	none (in-universe) Latin script
Sources	constructed languages  a priori languages
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Linguist List	none
Glottolog	None
IETF	none

Ch’owatlok (pronounced [t͡ʃ’owɐˈt͡ɬɔk]) is a fictional constructed language originally made for the 2024 film Stranger. Set at the arrival of agriculture in Southern Scandinavia, the film portrays the culture clash between local Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and a Neolithic invading population of farmers. In the movie, the language is spoken by the local hunter-gatherer tribe, identifiable with the archaeological Ertebølle culture. The language was created by Tobias Søborg, a historical linguist with a PhD in Indo-European linguistics.

Development

Ch’owatlok was created by Søborg as needed for the script of the movie. Ch’owatlok was designed to have a different sound and structure from both modern Indo-European languages as well as from the native language (Khuthuri) of the main character Aathi's family and tribe of invasive farmers, who will eventually take over the area (see Funnelbeaker culture). The language was also designed to fit moviemaker Mads Hedegaard's conception of what the language should sound like in the film and had to be realistically learnable by the actors of the film.

By the time casting for Stranger began, the language was sufficiently developed that actors were required to read and pronounce Ch’owatlok dialogue during auditions. Before and during shooting, Søborg worked intensively with the cast, in workshops and one-on-ones, and was present throughout the shooting period in Hungary where he was able to modify or create new lines on the spot.

Phonology

Consonants

Ch’owatlok has a series of ejective consonants contrasting with plain voiceless stops or affricates. The language is also notable for having several laterals, including a voiceless lateral fricative and both plain and ejective voiceless lateral affricate. There is a glottal stop and series of palatal and labiovelar consonants.

		Labial	Alveolar		Palatal	Velar		Glottal
			plain	lateral		plain	labialized
Nasal		m ⟨m⟩	n ⟨n⟩		ɲ ⟨ny⟩	ŋ ⟨ng⟩	ŋʷ ⟨ngw⟩
Stop	plain	p ⟨p⟩	t ⟨t⟩	t͡ɬ ⟨tl⟩	t͡ʃ ⟨ch⟩	k ⟨k⟩	kʷ ⟨kw⟩	ʔ ⟨'⟩
	ejective	pʼ ⟨p'⟩	tʼ ⟨t'⟩	t͡ɬʼ ⟨tl'⟩	t͡ʃʼ ⟨ch'⟩	kʼ ⟨k'⟩	kʷʼ ⟨kw'⟩
Fricative			s ⟨s⟩	ɬ ⟨hl⟩	ʃ ⟨sh⟩		(ʍ ⟨hw⟩)	h ⟨h⟩
Liquid			ɾ ⟨r⟩	l ⟨l⟩	ʎ ⟨ly⟩
Semivowel					j ⟨y⟩		w ⟨w⟩

Vowels

Ch'owatlok distinguishes short and long vowels, each with a four-vowel system. Of these four vowels, three are in the close/close-mid specter and one in the open/near-open. As could be expected in a limited vowel inventory, there is some variation in pronunciation of these phonemes, especially in the three short close/close-mid vowels with realizations ranging from close and near-close to close-mid. The three differ in vowel height, with the front vowel /i/ varying between close [i] and near-close [ɪ], the central vowel /ɨ/ between close [ɨ] (even better near-close "[ɪ̵]", although the IPA does not distinguish close and near-close central vowels), close-mid central [ɘ] and close-mid back [ɤ] variants (the latter being distinguished from /o/ by not being rounded), whereas the (rounded) back vowel /o/ has no close variant, altering between near-close [ʊ], close-mid [o] and rarely mid/open-mid [ɔ]. Although there is a level of free variation within these realizations, the lower qualities are especially prominent in closed syllables or in proximity to /r/ or labiovelar consonants, while the higher qualities are more common in open syllables. The long vowels are more consistent in their pronunciation, mostly at the extremities of the vowel chart apart from /oː/ which is close-mid, there being no close variant like its short counterpart. There is less variation in the open central vowel, the short version being a near-open [ɐ], while the long version is fully open [äː]. The central close vowel /ɨ/ is written ⟨ï⟩, an i with umlaut. Long vowels are either written with two vowel signs or with a macron over the vowel.

Ch'owatlok short vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close/Close-mid	i ~ ɪ ⟨i⟩	ɨ ~ ɘ ~ ɤ ⟨ï⟩	ʊ ~ o ~ ɔ ⟨o⟩
Near-open		ɐ ⟨a⟩

Ch'owatlok long vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close/Close-mid	iː ⟨ii⟩/⟨ī⟩	ɨː ⟨ïï⟩/⟨ï̄⟩	oː ⟨oo⟩/⟨ō⟩
Open		äː ⟨aa⟩/⟨ā⟩

Diphthongs

There is a set of diphthongs, descriptively consisting of combinations of the four vowel phonemes going toward either [-ɪ̯], [-ʊ̯] or [-ɐ̯], corresponding to the vowels /-i/, /-o/ and /-ɐ/. There are no diphthongs with a second element /-ɨ/. Diphthongs ending in /-o/ have two allophones: generally, they are realized as falling diphthongs in [-ʊ̯]; however, before a stop, /m/ or /w/, they are realized as non-falling diphthongs, i.e. the second vowel /-o/ is as prominent as the first vowel (e.g., [iʊ̯] vs. [i͡o]). This difference is reflected in the spelling: e.g., hliwra [ɬiʊ̯ɾɐ] ‘gray’, chiw [t͡ʃiʊ̯] ‘to/for you (sg.)’ vs. niok'a [ni͡ok’ɐ] ‘(s)he fashions/builds’, lioma [li͡omɐ] ‘clear, free of obstacles’, miowa [mi͡owɐ] ‘small’.

Ch'owatlok diphthongs

Starting point	Ending point
	Front close	Central open	Back close
Front close		iɐ̯ ⟨ia⟩	iʊ̯ ⟨iw⟩ ~ i͡o ⟨io⟩
Central close		ɨɐ̯ ⟨ïa⟩	ɨʊ̯ ⟨ïw⟩ ~ ɨ͡o ⟨ïo⟩
Back close-mid	oɪ̯ ⟨oi⟩	oɐ̯ ⟨oa⟩
Central open	ɐɪ̯ ⟨ai⟩		ɐʊ̯ ⟨aw⟩ ~ ɐ͡o ⟨ao⟩

Morphology

Nouns

Nouns are inflected for numbers and case. A subset of nouns have inalienable possession

Number

The noun has two numbers: singular and plural. The singular is unmarked, while the plural is marked by the suffix -i.

Case

There is a high number of cases, which can be divided into syntactic cases and local cases. Syntactic cases are used to express syntactic relations in the sentence and several non-local adverbial senses, while the local cases express location.

There are 12 syntactic cases: agentive, patientive, genitive, dative, adverbial, instrumental, comitative, abessive, equative, comparative, temporal, case.

Syntactic case suffixes

	singular	plural
Agentive	-∅	-i
Patientive	-t	-i-s
Genitive	-l(a)	-i-l(a)
Dative	-o/-w	-i-w
Adverbial	-k	-i-nak
Instrumental	-ko	-i-ko
Comitative	-kan	-i-kan
Abessive	-kinyo	-i-kinyo
Equative	-na'	-i-na'
Comparative	-nyaw	-i-nyaw
Temporal	-nyii	-i-nyii
Causal	-rsha	-i-rsha

The local cases comprise a system in which each kind of location can be expressed in four types of local relation: location, movement to/toward, movement from and movement through, respectively. inessive, illative, elative, perlative, superessive, supralative, delative, prolative, adessive, allative, ablative, vialis, antessive, terminative, egressive, postessive, postlative, postelative, essive, translative, exessive).