#koman

The family looks phonologically quite compact really, but low on cognate vocabulary: 25% Swadesh list counts between the two main branches and 20% with poorly attested outlier Gule. Probably though this is not really due to the family having an age of 4000+ years as given by glottochronology estimates, when the sound correspondences are mostly transparent. My spitball take would be closer to 2000 years old and heavy relexification due to low sociolinguistic status. Per Otero, the Koman speakers have apparently for long suffered of slave raiding and land theft by their bigger neighbors. For that matter, maybe loanwords from adjacent languages could explain why the family has been for long thought to be a part of Nilo-Saharan? That other 75% of basic vocabulary has to come from somewhere.

Shoutout in particular to Gwama for showing multiple interesting sound changes:

word-initial *ɓ *ɗ > /pʼ tʼ/

tone-conditioned devoicing: word-initial *b *d *g > /p t k/ before low tone (however *ɟ > /z/ always, without devoicing to /s/)

in-progress word-medial chainshift with /b d g/ > [β ɾ ɣ] and /pʼ tʼ kʼ/ > [b d g]

*s and *ʃ merge before high vowels according to ±ATR: as /s/ before /i u/, as /ʃ/ before /ɪ ʊ/

This is the boat we sailed back across Koman Lake at sunset on, sailed by the brother of our mountain guide. We learned so much in our short time in the Albanian Alps, like how beautiful but remote a place can be.

Tomorrow night you'll be able hear the stories of two people we visited in the Albanian Alps, living hours from the nearest town with no access to roads or healthcare.

On our second day in the mountains, we hiked for three hours to reach the most remote people we could find, but on arrival things don't go too smoothly and we are forced to abandon our plans and head back.

Part II of our time spent in the wild mountain villages of Northern Albania airs tomorrow night.

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“Hida province: Koman” (1845), Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861)