Izugo

Izugo (出雲語 Izumo-go), or Izumese, is a language spoken by about 830 million speakers, primarily in Izumo, where it is the national language. It is the second-most used language in the world, after Zhongyu.

Izugo is is an agglutinative, mora-timed language with simple phonotactics, a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent. Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure is topic–comment. Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or make questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender, and there are no articles. Verbs are conjugated, primarily for tense and voice, but not person. Izugo equivalents of adjectives are also conjugated. Izugo has a complex system of honorifics with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned.

Izugo has no genetic relationship with Zhongyu, but it makes extensive use of Zhongyu characters, or kanji (漢字?), in its writing system, and a large portion of its vocabulary is borrowed from Zhongyu. Along with kanji, the Izugo writing system primarily uses two syllabic (or moraic) scripts, hiragana (ひらがな or 平仮名?) and katakana (カタカナ or 片仮名?).