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.