| Vanawo Vanawo | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Semi-agglutinative | ||||||||||||
| Alignment | Ergative-absolutive | ||||||||||||
| Head direction | Head-final | ||||||||||||
| Tonal | No | ||||||||||||
| Declensions | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Conjugations | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Genders | Three | ||||||||||||
| Nouns decline according to... | |||||||||||||
| Case | Number | ||||||||||||
| Definiteness | Gender | ||||||||||||
| Verbs conjugate according to... | |||||||||||||
| Voice | Mood | ||||||||||||
| Person | Number | ||||||||||||
| Tense | Aspect | ||||||||||||
| Meta-information | |||||||||||||
| Progress | 0% | ||||||||||||
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| Creator | [[User:|]] | ||||||||||||
Classification and Dialects
Vanawo is a primarily suffixing agglutinative Southern Onderthaurnan language that bears heavy influence from Shihik languages. It occupies a niche similar to Latin in medieval times in the conworld of Onderthaurn.
As it was once a lingua franca of the entire continent, many dialects exist. However, they have mostly centralized to a single dialect as other languages took over, though one, the Cresenda dialect, is almost a language in its own right.
Vanawo uses eight cases: nominative/absolutive (unmarked), accusative/ergative (which also functions as a dative), lative, locative, ablative, comitative, instrumental, and genitive. Due to these cases, it is fairly topic-prominent in sentence order; however, a SOV is considered neutral and VOS is strictly enforced in questions.
Phonology
Consonants
| Bilabial | Labio-dental | Dental | Alveolar | Post-alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Epiglottal | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||||||||
| Plosive | pʰ p b | tʰ t d | cʰ c ɟ | kʰ k g | ʔ | |||||||
| Fricative | f v | s̪ | s z | ʃ ʒ | ç | x | h ɦ | |||||
| Affricate | t͡s d͡z | |||||||||||
| Approximant | l | j ɥ | ɰ w | |||||||||
| Trill | r | |||||||||||
| Flap or tap | ɾ | |||||||||||
| Lateral fric. | ||||||||||||
| Lateral app. | ||||||||||||
| Lateral flap |
Vowels
| Front | Near-front | Central | Near-back | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | ɯ u | |||
| Near-high | |||||
| High-mid | e | ɤ o | |||
| Mid | ə | ||||
| Low-mid | |||||
| Near-low | |||||
| Low | a |
Note: /i/ is often realized /ɨ/ on an unstressed syllable.
Phonotactics
Vanawo enforces a strict (C1)(R)V(C2) syllable structure, where C1 is any consonant, R is one of [w l r ɾ], and C2 is not a plosive.
[ʃ ʒ d] are commonly realized [t͡ʃ d͡ʒ ð̞] intervocally.
[h n] becomes [ɦ ŋ] during a syllable coda.
Stress is typically on the first syllable unless that syllable's vowel is /ə/, in which case the second syllable is stressed. Rarely, stress breaks these rules, in which case an acute accent represents this stress. A vowel that is already accented uses a double acute (i.e. a -> á, ù -> ű). Fricatives often geminiate and vowels often lengthen on stressed syllables, but this is not phonemic.
Orthography
| Letter | Aa | Bb | Cc | Chch | Cccc | Dd | Ee | Èè | Ff | Gg | Hh | Ii |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sound | /a/ | /b/ | /c/ | /cʰ/ | /ɟ/ | /d/ | /e/ | /ə/ | /f/ | /g/ | /h/, /ɦ/ | /i/, /j/ |
| Letter | Kk | Ll | Mm | Nn | Ññ | Oo | Òò | Phph | Pp | Rr | Rhrh | Ss |
| Sound | /k/ | /l/ | /m/ | /n/ | /ɲ/ | /o/ | /ɤ/ | /pʰ/ | /p/ | /r/ | /ɾ/ | /s/ |
| Letter | Śś | Shsh | Thth | Tt | Uu | Ùù |
Vv |
Ww | Xx | Yy | Zz | Źź |
| Sound | /ʃ/, t͡ʃ | /s̪/ | /tʰ/ | /t/ | /u/ | /ɯ/ | /v/ | /w/, /ɰ/ | /x/ | /j/, /ɥ/ | /z/ | /ʒ/, /d͡ʒ/ |