Zamgrh

zamgrh or kiZombie is the language spoken by zombies with Death Rattle (known in kiZombie as grhzamz). Unlike Zombish, Zombese, and Zomban, kiZombie is not a code for representing English sounds-- instead, it is a unique language that can be used to express anything and everything that a zombie wishes to say. As kiZombie is primarily a spoken language, it uses a completely phonetic orthography. kiZombie bears strong resemblence to other human creoles.

Phonology

Phonemes

Much like English, Zamgrh consists of a phonetic alphabet in which a letter or combination of letters may take several tones. Previously it was theorized that there were only 21 distinct phonemes available. In written language these can be denoted by the following characters: z, a, m, g, r, h, n, b, and ! serving as letters in the English sense, with -, ., ,, ?, and ! serving as punctuation. By combining the basic sounds the modern zombie is able to communicate additional sounds.

The use by zombies of the ! as a glottal stop or "i" sound does require the careful attention of humans to make sure that they're interpreting kiZombie correctly. Some zombies have been found to inhale when making the !, making it sound more like an "I" in English would sound.

z	h	g	b	r	m	n	!	a
z!	h!	g!	b!	r!	m!	n!	!!	!	!
za	ha	ga	ba	ra	ma	na	!a	a	a
zn	hn	gn	bn	rn	mn	n	!n	an	n
zm	hm	gm	bm	rm	m	nm	!m	am	m
zr	hr	gr	br	r	mr	nr	!r	ar	r
zb	hb	gb	b	rb	mb	nb	!b	ab	b
zg	hg	g	bg	rg	mg	ng	!g	ag	g
zh	h	gh	bh	rh	mh	nh	!h	ah	h
z	hz	gz	bz	rz	mz	nz	!z	az	z

The following is a basic chart of possible sound combinations that a zombie might use when forming words. The yellow and blue colored squares offer additional meaning as "replacement letters" that zombies use to replace survivor sounds that they cannot pronounce. This chart is by no means complete. It does not take into account the other sound combinations that can be made such as "hra" or "ahz".

Phonological constraints

1. A vowel may never be pronounced in isolation. Any isolated vowel will have the sound "hr" prefixed.

e.g.: a zambah --> hra zambah

2. Words ending in "r" will have "h" suffixed.

e.g.: Gahgar Marr --> Gahgarh Marrh

3. "Clicks" or the English punctuation characters may never be uttered in isolation, and are always preceded by a consonant, vowel, or other click.

Trans-phonation Chart

p

b

t

d

tS

dZ

k

g

f

v

T

D

s

z

S

Z

h

m

n

N

l

r

w

j

n

x

x

n

m

x

m

r

x

x

r

b

x

x

x

x

x

b

g

(x)

x

x

x

x

x

g

h

x

x

x

h

z

(x)

x

x

x

x

x

x

z

a

x

x

a

p

b

t

d

tS

dZ

k

g

f

v

T

D

s

z

S

Z

h

m

n

N

l

r

w

j

Given that most zombese is largely an adjustment on American English (AmE) or British English (BrE), field studies have yielded the following chart. It is hoped that the casual user of the internet in Malton will find this rubric useful in dealing with zombies in Malton.

Ahz rangraaz hab Zambahz ahn Marban gan aaz zaz hab zam garg ahz harmanz, arzah. (We linguists hope zombies in Malton can use this to help them speak with humans, also).

This table has been formulated using X-Sampa. A careful user will notice that the list occasionally has an "x" in two places, signifying the use of both sounds. For example; dZ shows b and z as sounds to be used, thus the kiZombie usage would be bz.

Any questions should be addressed to the Linguistics Department of Oxford which has spent specific effort on the Malton Zombie problem.

Recent field work has discovered that the "t" sound of English is sometimes associated to a "g" sound, and sometimes to a "z". If unsure, use "g".

Syntax and Morphology

kiZombie follows a loose Subject-Verb-Object syntax. Questions can simply be suffixed with a ? or have the verb and subject inverted. Verbs can be conjugated, however a full lexicon of verbs is not available at this time (see Zombie Lexicon for up-to-date vocabulary).

Basic Syntax

• Active

 SUBJECT    VERB    OBJECT       OTHER
 harmanz    arh     har.
 Humans     are     here.
 

A more advanced example:

 ah         barg    brahnz       har.
 I          eat     brains       here.

Zombies are known to drop helping verbs at times when they can easily be inferred, yielding the following examples:

 SUBJECT    VERB    OBJECT       OTHER
 harmanz    *       har.
 Humans     *       here.
 

A more advanced example:

 Mah Zambah bargz   brahnz       har.
 I          eat     brains       here.

• Alternative word order

 har        arh     harmanz.
 Here       are     humans.

Adjectives

Adjectives precede the nouns that they modify. In this example we use the first-person possessive adjective "mah":

 mah zambah az har.
 I am here (or literally "My Zombie is here").

Nouns can also be used to modify other nouns while being modifiedby the first-person possessive. This is a more complex example:

 mah zambah rabah grabz mah manbagz.
 My zombie lover grabs my testicles.

Proper Nouns

Zombies may choose to address each other or survivors by name. Names are capitalized and a suffix is added to determine the status of the addressee. zam refers to a zombie, man refers to a survivor, and bar refers to a building.

 Bahbzam, arh habbah?
 Bob, are you happy?

Questions

A present tense verb can be conjugated into a question by adding the ? to the end of a sentence or by inverting the verb and subject.

 "Zah bang bang man gan bam mah?"
 "Ganna bam mah bang bang man?"
 "Will the Zombie Hunter attack me?"

Negative

Verbs can hold opposite meaning by compounding the subject and verb with the click ! as seen in the logical statements that survivors use. Or the word nah may be used between the subject and verb to conjugate negatively.

 mah zambah nah barg gramma brahnz.
 mah zambah!barg gramma brahnz.
 "I do not eat grandma's brains."

Negative questions can be made to infer additional meaning:

 harman nah ganna bam mah zambah?
 Are you not going to attack me human?

Future

Any verb can be conjugated into the future tense by adding the word ganna infront of the verb.

 ah ganna gangbang harmanz zammarrar.
 I will utterly destroy humans tomorrow.

As a question:

 ganna gangbang harmanz zammarrar?
 will you utterly destroy humans tomorrow?

Nonfuture

Zombies have a hard time distinguishing between the past and the present, and the grammar of their language reflects this. Any verb not conjugated in the future tense refers to an action that began some time in the past and which may or may not still be going on at the present time.

 mah zambah barg harmanz brahnz.
 I am eating human brains / I ate human brains.

However, if an action has been completed the auxiliary haz may be preposed before the verb.

 mah zambah haz barg harmanz brahnz.
 I have eaten human brains. 

Conditional

Conditional statements are made by using the ? character as a suffix to the end of the phrase and comma.

 harmanz bam mah zambah,? ah ganna zmazh harman manbagz.
 If humans attack me, then I will smash human testicles.

Imperative

The imperative form of verbs is conjugated by adding arz as a suffix. Note that the sentence structure stays the same. This is different from English where the subject gets transplanted to the end of the sentence.

 mah zambah brazzaz barmarz zah barragahz!
 Attack the barricades my zombie brothers!

Advanced Sentence Structure

Contrary to popular survivor theory zombies ARE capable of complex thought and communication in their own language. Here is an example:

 mah mamma bam mah ahn Gagarh Marrh, an ah grh mamma, "mamma az hra bang bang man".
 Mah zambah!az habbah, an ah grh, "gragh." (also seen as 'mah zambah az nah habbah')
 My mom attacked me in Caiger Mall, and I told mom, "Mom is a Zombie Hunter."  
 I am not happy, and I say "Gragh".

This is an emotional zombie saddened by the internal rift of family by the survivor mentality of "kill zombies" where even mothers would attack their own children.

Orthography

kiZombie has no standard capitalization or punctuation. Capital letters indicate a rising tone which often signals a change in meaning, and the 'punctuation' marks actually indicate various grunts, which also carry specific meanings.

All utterances are preceded by a short silence, which is orthographically represented by a space. So 'I am a zombie' is spoken not *"ah z zam" but rather " ah z zam"

Lexicon

KiZombie has a dictionary and a lexicon. Both are incomplete at present, but viewed as reliable resources.

Numbers

To help zombies in speech, some linguists have proposed a punctuation based number system.

kiZombie would thus have a base 5 numbering system:

.	!	?	-	,	!.	!!	!?	!-	!,	?.	?!	??	?-	?,	-.	-!	-?	--	-,	,.	,!	,?	,-	,,
0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24
!..	!.!	!.?	!.-	!.,	!!.	!!!	!!?	!!-	!!,	!?.	!?!	!??	!?-	!?,	!-.	!-!	!-?	!--	!-,	!,.	!,!	!,?	!,-	!,,
25	26	27	28	29	30	31	32	33	34	35	36	37	38	39	40	41	42	43	44	45	46	47	48	49
?..	?.!	?.?	?.-	?.,	?!.	?!!	?!?	?!-	?!,	??.	??!	???	??-	??,	?-.	?-!	?-?	?--	?-,	?,.	?,!	?,?	?,-	?,,
50	51	52	53	54	55	56	57	58	59	60	61	62	63	64	65	66	67	68	69	70	71	72	73	74
-..	-.!	-.?	-.-	-.,	-!.	-!!	-!?	-!-	-!,	-?.	-?!	-??	-?-	-?,	--.	--!	--?	---	--,	-,.	-,!	-,?	-,-	-,,
75	76	77	78	79	80	81	82	83	84	85	86	87	88	89	89	91	92	93	94	95	96	97	98	99
,..
100

Note that due to the base 5 system, 5 is the first number that has two digits, and 25 (5²) the first to have three digits. 125 (5³) would be the first number to have four digits.

Number Prefixes

In kiZombie, numbers are never spoken in isolation but always with a prefix.

Default Prefix

The default prefix is [b]

For example:

manz b?!? z hrh

human.PL NUM.57 be here

'57 humans are here'

ah habh b!!.

1.SG have NUM.30

'I am 30 years old'

Cardinal Directions

There are four prefixes for each of the cardinal directions: N (north), A (south), M (east), Z (west)

hambargarz N!!

human.eat.IMP NORTH.6

'Eat the humans six blocks to the north'

barbamarz A!Z!.

barricade.attack.IMP SOUTH.1.WEST.5

'Attack the barricades one block south and five blocks west.'

Corpus

A corpus of zombie texts can be found at Texts.

Participants in the kiZombie/Zamgrh Project

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{{zombielinguist}}

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