User:Uchuflowerzone/What is Sajem Sülem?

So we used to say that Sajem Sülem was the direct ancestor of Sajem Tan (in other words, it was proto-Sajem Tan), which then borrowed heavily from some other languages, notably Xanzite. But recently we've been discussing the possibility that Sajem Tan is actually an international auxiliary language in-world, consciously created based on several languages, including Sajem Sülem. So now Sajem Sülem is not "proto-Sajem Tan", but something different. It will probably need a name change now, since the "Sajem" ("common") in "Sajem Tan" ("common honey") refers to the international nature of the conlang.

Sajem Sülem phonology issues
One of the main things that's been worked on in Sajem Sülem is the vowels. Sajem Tan has the following vowels: /i/ /y/ /ʊ/ /u/ /e/ /ø/ /ʌ/ /o/ /ɛ/ /œ/ /æ/ /ɑ/.

Front Rounded Vowels
You see that Sajem Tan has front rounded vowels: /y/ /ø/ /œ/. Fog's proposal was originally that these arose through umlaut: for example, in a morpheme *suki, the /i/ would cause the /u/ to front to /y/. The vowels /ʊ/ and /ʌ/ were explained by an /ɑ/ in the following syllable. These affecting vowels experienced apocope after the affection occurred. So a full chart for i-affection and a-affection was devised:

As you can see, the i-affection also affected Sajem Sülem /ɛ/ and /ɑ/. (The phoneme /i/ was completely unaffected.) /ɔ/ was added to explain /œ/; its unaffected form eventually merged with /o/.

This was a good system; it even explained Sajem Tan's self-segregating morphology: in Sajem Tan, roots (the main content words, like nouns and verbs) can only contain the vowels /i/ /y/ /ʊ/ /e/ /ø/ /ʌ/ /œ/ /æ/-the affected vowels--while particles (which are used for suffixes, conjunctions, etc) have the vowels /o/ /u/ /ɛ/ /ɑ/--the original Sajem Sülem vowels. This was explained by the fact that the /i/ or /ɑ/ that caused affection was only attached to roots. But there were some problems with this that Fog noticed: what about Sajem Tan words that had both an i-affected and a-affected vowel, such as dûden /dʌden/? It was decided that these were compounds, so dûden was made up of Sajem Sülem *doɸɑ and *dɛni. The /ɸ/ was introduced because Fog believed there needed to be a consonant between the affected vowel and the affecting vowel.

This solution isn't too bad (although it doesn't account for how the Sajem Tan plural suffix /ɑ/ was differentiated from the affecting /ɑ/ that was dropped, and why it and other particles didn't cause affection), but Fog eventually came up with something arguably better.

In several languages, it has happened that back rounded vowels have fronted over time, such as in French where /u/ became /y/. Fog thought to apply this to Sajem Sülem. So /y/ /ø/ /œ/ could come from /u/ /o/ /ɔ/ through basic fronting, and no affecting vowel was needed. /e/ and /æ/ could also be fronted versions of /ɛ/ and /ɑ/.

/ʌ/ and /ʊ/ and Sajem Tan self-segregating morphology
The above solution was elegant, but it left two questions: what about /ʌ/ and /ʊ/, and why didn't this happen to particles?

Fog proposed some solutions on a webpage that can be read here. This issue has never been resolved. However, it may not need to now that Sajem Sülem is no longer proto-Sajem Tan. In fact, none of this may matter anymore.