User:Ceige/Sava

Sava (or Cava in the old orthography) is a language isolate spoken in the Savanese archipelago.

Etymology

The name Sava comes from the greeting sava, which is akin to Italian ciao. The rationale behind the name is that someone you say "sava!" to is a fellow speaker of the language, which can have confusing implications when French speakers are involved.

Phonology

Sava has the following prototypical onsets: p, t, c, k, ∅, b, d, j, g, m, n, ng. These form 3 series of consonants which change in certain phonological contexts: C-, -C- and -QC-.

The first series (p, t, c, k, ∅) stay as plosives for C-, become fricatives for -C-, and become plosives (preglottalised, geminated or plain) for -QC- – with the exception of //∅//, which only surfaces for -QC- as a glottal stop 〈'〉; and phonetically //c//, which in recent times is now /s/, /s/ and /cc/.

The second series (b, d, j, g) stay phonologically voiced plosives for C-, become voiced continuants for -C-, and become prenasalised for -QC-.

The third series are nasals, and they stay the same for both C- and -C-, while changing for -QC- into pre-stopped nasals (e.g. pm, tn, kng), or emphatically having 〈'u〉 placed before a geminate form (e.g. 〈-'umm-〉).?

Thus:

C-	-C-	-QC-
p	f	'p
t	th	't
c	s	'c
k	h	'k
b	v	mb