User:IlL/Okopi/Lexicon

New Urban Sjowaázh is an emergent variety of Sowaázh spoken by urban middle-class children and teens.

Origins

Compared to other groups, urban women speakers of Sowaázh speak somewhat more uniformly, in a less dialectal and somewhat more posh style of speech. Young women being the main drivers of linguistic change, a version of this "gynelect" is on its way to becoming a new, non-posh standard for Sowaázh.

Phonology

The phonology is based on High Sowaázh, with a few differences.

• Plain unaspirated consonants /p t c k ts tʂ tɕ/ become fully voiced [b d dʑ g dz dʐ dʑ].
• Word-initial /sC-/ clusters become voiceless unaspirated stops.
• gy ky ky' merge with jy cy cy'.
• ly merges with y.
• p may be pronounced [f].
• Stress accent rather than pitch accent (as in Modern Greek).

Morphology

Similar to High Sjowaázh

Ablaut

New Urban Sjowaázh has 40 ablaut classes, compared to High Sowaázh's 57.

Vocabulary

[Skellan]] loanwords are much more common than in High Sowaázh. Many words of Skellan origin are pseudo-Skellanisms or clippings of Skellan words.