Wistanian: Difference between revisions

'''Wistanian''' (IPA: /wɪsˈteɪni.ən/), natively known as '''''anigalilaun''''' (IPA: /əˈniɡəˌlilɑn/), is the first constructed language (conlang) by world-builder, writer, and professional amateur Paul A. Daly, written in 2017 and 2018. The language was created for a novel series. The first novel is near completion, but will likely remain unpublished until the author finishes his education.

The language is spoken on the fictional planet Vale, on a large yet isolated island called Wistania. The language belongs to the Talivian sub-family, which evolved steadily throughout the Taliv's existence. After having been settled on by the Taliv for several hundred years, the island became the new home for the Bwolotil people, who had fled to the island to hide a large collection of magical and extremely dangerous ajmastones. The Bwolitil were originally apathetic toward the Taliv until they discovered that the Taliv held one such ajmastone as a central symbol of their culture. The Bwolotil, therefore, engaged in war with the Taliv to apprehend their ajmastone. Three separate people groups also inhabited the island during this war, one of which was the Nati people who allied with the Taliv to win the war. This alliance led to the formation of the Taliv-Nati pidgin, which was later named ''anigalilaun'', which means "the language of peace". During the events of the novel series (about 300 years after the end of the war) Wistanian is the majority language of the island. The language also has a number of influences from the Katapu (sister peoples to the Nati and known for their religious traditionalism), the Uzin (a people distantly related to the Bwolotil who settled the island shortly after the beginning of the war), and the Bwolotil.

Wistanian is typologically an analytical language with elements of agglutination. Its grammar is initially simple to grasp, lacking noun gender and case, and possessing few verbal conjugations, although most of its difficulty is syntactic and lexical. Despite having a rather regular morphology due to pidginization, there are several groups of words within the same lexical category which operate differently from each other. Wistanian is primarily written using the Talivian alphabet, but some alternate scripts do exist, namely the Diwa Alphabet and Nati Abugida.

Wistanian is an auxiliary language spoken on the fictional island nation of Wistania. The language stems from a pidgin created between the Nati and Taliv languages during The Wistanian War. After the peace treaty was signed, the Katapu, who were allied with Nati and Taliv but inactive in the war, documented and refined the Nati-Taliv Pidgin for use in the newly established government. Wistanian features mostly Taliv grammar, Nati vocabulary, Katapu influences, many Bwolotil loan words, and scientific terms, mathematics, and the lunar calendar derived from the work of the Uzin. Wistanian's native name, ''anigalilaun'', is a compound of ''ani'' (language) and ''galilaun'' (peace). It is translated literally as "Peace Language."

As a result, Wistanian is mostly regular, with a moderately small phonological inventory and vast dialectal variation. It is the most spoken and embraced by the Taliv and Nati people groups, and the least spoken by the Bwolotil people group, who often protest the language's difficulty. The other five languages are still spoken, especially the Bwolotil language. Both the Uzin and Katapu have important texts written in their languages, while Taliv and Nati have shifted into archaism, although they are still taught in school.  

Like most first conlangs, Wistanian started as an English relex (but without tense and articles). However, after nearly four mass revisions over a year, Wistanian has become its own unique language. It's influenced by several languages, especially Spanish and Tamil, but their influence is mostly found in the lexicon while contributing only minimally to the grammar.  

# Alveolars (except /ɾ ~ r/) are pronounced laminally.

* /m/, /n/, /b/, /d/, /g/, /v/, /z/, and /l/ are represented with the corresponding IPA symbol.

Wistanian has an alphabet which represents the different sounds in Wistanian. The alphabet was inspired by Latin, IPA, and Greek, but is often described as Armenian-looking. The font, based on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambria_(typeface) Cambria], was created using [https://sketchbook.com/ Autodesk Sketchbook] for the iPad and converted into a font using [https://www.calligraphr.com/en/ Calligraphr] and [https://www.cr8software.net/typelight.html TypeLight].

Wistanian has predominant Verb-Subject-Object word order, modifiers that follow their head (except for possessive pronouns, numbers, and colors), post-positional suffixes, and particles that come before their head. Modifier phrases will usually come at the beginning or end of the sentence.

In imperatives, word order changes to VOS. In polite requests, a speaker uses the irrealis mood conjugation on the main verb and includes a subject noun (usually an honorific). In rude demand, the speaker does not use the irrealis mood conjugation nor includes a subject noun.

Pronouns come in five persons: first, second, third animate (humans and domesticated animals), third inanimate (other animals, objects, concepts), and third person spiritual (ajma, sacred people/places, the dead). These four persons aare split into four grammatical categories: Nominative (used for the subject of the verb), Accusative (used for the object of the verb), Possessive (used as a genitive and modifier), and Adpositional (used when the prnonoun is declined with a loactive).

These aspects also imply certain grammatical features. Indeed, these aspects originally did refer to grammatical aspects a thousand years within Wistanian's history. The stative was once the gnomic aspect, the durative was once the continuous aspect, and the telic and atelic were once the perfective and imperfective aspects, respectively. This shift was slow, however, but it picked up mightily during the pidginization with the Nati, since lexical aspect could allow them to communicate using fewer verb roots, so words such to "to put on" were replaced with the durative conjugation for the stative "to wear".  

Verbs are conjugated for the irrealis mood, which is used in polite requests, questions, and in conjunction with epistemic or deontic particles. This is done with the suffix ⟨-j⟩. Indicative negative verbs are not conjugated as irrealis.  

Particles are words which have a grammatical meaning rather than a semantic meaning. They also do not inflect. Particles always come before their head.  

There are three relativizer particles that are normally expressed before a relative clause and after the noun that relative clause modifies. These can also be used as copula.

As copula, <code>COP</code> equates a subject noun with another noun, possessive pronoun, color, or number; <code>POSS</code> equates a subject noun with an adjective that's not a possessive pronoun, color, or number; and <code>ACT</code> doubles as a sort of gnomic aspect particle for intransitive verbs. Since these are particles, the word order for these particular types of sentences appears to change to SVO and the accusative particle is omitted.

Technically, these are fragments, indicating only a noun and a relative clause. However, they are considered perfectly viable sentences.  

Wistanian has a very exciting honorific system with several unique features. Honorifics are used for almost everyone: familial relationships and close friendships, authorities and superiors, and people who are younger than you. They are often said after a proper noun, take inflectional morphology, and can replace the 2nd person pronouns.

Wistanian kinship is a modified version of the Hawaiian system common in most Malayo-Polynesian languages. In this system, siblings and first cousins share terms with only a gender and age distinction. Mothers are usually given a term of endearment by their children (usually '''''mu'''''), but a child's aunts will also be called "mother" and the father and uncles will share terms as well. Most of Wistanian culture is ambilineal and matrifocal, so that children live and associate closest to their mother and her side of the family. For this reason, a child's mother's brother will often be just as much of a father figure as the child's biological father, who may or may not be involved in the family.  

The Bwolotil people are more nuclear, consisting of only a mother, father, and one or two children. They have their own kinship terms from their language. Some Katapu people share the typical family structure and kinship terms. However, most family structures are extended so that families live amongst the mother's extended family, and fathers are usually present in the home. Most of their kinship terms also come from the Katapu language, but some Wistanian terms are borrowed as well.