Hwnic

Todo: Structure the page appropriately, make an infobox and add categories. See Balkan as an example.

Hwnic is an a priori semi-naturalistic agglutinative language. It attempts to broadly delineate what natural languages might look like in the future, influenced by sources as diverse as Internet slang, mathematical notations, and programming languages.

Overview

The phonology of Hwnic is mostly unremarkable. Hwnic is a pitch-accent language, and it has 5 vowels, 3 nasals, 7 plosives, 6 fricatives, 1 phonemic affricate, and 3 liquids. The continuants may be syllabic. Syllable structure is (C)(C)V(C)(C), with most word roots taking the form of C(C)V. Connected speech is subject to a set of more complex rules involving use of non-modal phonation.

Hwnic is written with the Latin alphabet. For most consonants, there is a one-to-one correspondence of sound to spelling. For vowels, however, spelling rules are more varied. Some particles also have unexpected pronunciations. Therefore Hwnic orthography is not entirely phonetic. The first letter of the first word in a sentence is capitalized, but native Hwnic names of people and places are not capitalized. Unfamiliar loanwords and technical jargon are in title case. Acronyms and proper nouns retain their capitalization as in the source language. Hwnic can be written with no punctuations other than spaces, where particles and capitalization are employed to denote quotation, change of topic, intonation, and so on; however, an English-like pattern of punctuation is also possible.

The grammar of Hwnic is mostly simple and straightforward. Word order is SOV, but sentences may show up as OV due to pro-drop. Nouns are not declined, but may take affixes that denote number, negation, state, or property. Verbs are conjugated to person, number, and sometimes mood; an auxiliary verb can show tense, aspect, and animacy/volition.

The lexicon of Hwnic is based on concrete concepts. Simple concepts like body parts are covered in a single word, while complex concepts like types of animals may have a two-name system. The lexicon is currently incomplete.

Example text

An example passage in Hwnic and a free translation are presented below.

Rpadpa eqo seiqomiis nr eudnox nr cnosulil ln Qs u kiniup rambor ust velo qanan qamif fisnur lui Tam andacikat u Telvisn mxar ust u mncibok bimir

[My] grandfather has a farm in the countryside near a river. He grows vegetables and keeps geese and ducks. In his spare time, he watches the television and chats with [his] neighbors.