Knaan

The Four Knaans

Jessie's Illustration of an Opossum Saying "Knaan"

Tpaalha has an aggressive series of sound changes that, along with an extraordinarily permissible set of phonotactics, has the capability of producing a plethora of homonyms. During the second season of LangTime Studio, it became a joke that a word pronounced [knaːn] would have a series of different meanings, with sages saying things like, "No! I refer not to the third, but to the fourth knaan!" We decided to see how many different words we could squeeze into the modern phonetic sequence [knaːn] and confidently came up with four, though it might be possible to produce others. We figured four was good, though many opossums would still refer to the mysterious, lost fifth knaan. The word became a kind of meme for opossums and for LangTime Studio in general.

Tpaalha

Etymology 1

From Proto-Tpaalha *knan.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /knaːn/

Rhymes: -aːn

Orthographic Form

(Ancient)

knan

(Modern)

knan 

Noun

knaan (dual knansyi, plural zuknaan)

1. nose

Inflection

	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	knaan	knansyi	zuknaan
Partitive	uknaan	uknansyi	uzgnaan

Derived Terms

• knani

 

Tpaalha numbers ^(edit)

←  188	216
Cardinal: Knaan

Etymology 2

From Proto-Tpaalha *kʌnan.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /knaːn/

Rhymes: -aːn

Orthographic Form

(Ancient)

konan

(Modern)

konan 

Orthographic Numeric Form

(Ancient)

1000

(Modern)

1000 

Numeral

knaan

1. two-hundred sixteen (one thousand in base-6)

Inflection

	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	knaan	knansyi	zuknaan
Partitive	uknaan	uknansyi	uzgnaan

Etymology 3

From Proto-Tpaalha *kǝnan.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /knaːn/

Rhymes: -aːn

Orthographic Form

(Ancient)

knan

(Modern)

knan 

Noun

knaan (dual knansyi, plural zuknaan)

1. truth

Inflection

	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	knaan	knansyi	zuknaan
Partitive	uknaan	uknansyi	uzgnaan

Derived Terms

• knaan a
• knaan nyi
• knanruh

 

Etymology 4

From Proto-Tpaalha *ǝkʌnan.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /knaːn/

Rhymes: -aːn

Orthographic Form

(Ancient)

konan

(Modern)

konan 

Noun

knaan (dual knansyi, plural zuknaan)

1. mystery

Inflection

	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	knaan	knansyi	zuknaan
Partitive	uknaan	uknansyi	uzgnaan

Creation and Usage Notes

The fourth knaan now refers to mystery, in general, as its original meaning has been lost to the mists of time. -David J. Peterson 14:35, 4 September 2024 (PDT)