Evie
Introduction
Evie /ivi/ (Евье сал Атегге, Ewye sal Ategge [ˈeʋʲə saɫ ˈatʰekːə], “the Evie language”) is a language spoken in Western Siberia. While a descendant of the Ivugi language, which originated in Siberia circa 1000 CE, it is not considered mutually intelligible with the other Ivugean languages.
The speaker pool of Evie is estimated at around 250,000 speakers, mostly living throughout the Russian federal district Tyumen Oblast, and a small pool of speakers living within the city of Tyumen itself. Pockets of speakers are scattered throughout much of Europe, of which are mostly immigrant families.
Evie is a nominative-accusative, analytic language with SOV (subject-object-verb) word order and no grammatical gender, grammatical case, or verbal conjugation. Despite its low pool of speakers, Evie has significant dialectal variation. Although this is mostly seen regarding pronunciation and such variations shall be noted in this article.
Phonology
Orthography
While Evie has no standardized orthography, early speakers adapted the Russian variant of the Cyrillic alphabet in order to write the language, which has been reformed haphazardly over time. This is evident by a lack of written distinction between /r/ and /ʀ/, with both being written as <р>. Or even the lack of a written distinction between /x/ and /h/ (both as <х>), which have been phonemically distinct for hundreds of years.
Russian speakers may find the some of the conventions to be a bit confusing, as, for example, <ж> is used to represent /ɰ/ rather than the expected /ʐ/. Other than these small discrepancies, the current orthography is rather shallow, and the pronunciation is almost always easily discernible.
Consonants
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Consonants |
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Bilabial |
Labiodental |
Alveolar |
Palatal |
Velar |
Uvular |
Glottal |
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Nasal |
Plain |
н /n/ |
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Palatalized |
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м /nʲ/ |
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Plosive |
Aspirated |
п /pʰ/ |
т /tʰ/ |
к /kʰ/ |
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Plain |
б/p/ |
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д /t/ |
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г /k/ |
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Palatalized |
пь /pʲ/ |
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ть /tʲ/ |
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кь /kʲ/ |
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Fricative |
Plain |
ф /f/ |
с /s/ |
ш /ç/ |
x /x/ |
x /h/ |
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Palatalized |
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фь /fʲ/ |
сь /sʲ/ |
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хь /xʲ/ |
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Affricate |
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ц /t͡s/ |
щ /c͡ç/ |
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Laterals |
л /l/ |
ль /ʎ/ |
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Approx. |
Plain |
в /ʋ/ |
й /j/ |
ж /ɰ/ |
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Palatized |
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вь /ʋʲ/ |
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э /ɥ/ |
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Rhotics |
Plain |
р /r/ |
р /ʀ/ |
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Palatalized |
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рь /rʲ/ |
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- /n/ is realized as [m] before /u/ and /ɔ/; нут, nýt "disgusted" [mut]; ноке nokye "to bury" [ˈmɔkʲe]
- /l/ is realized as [ɫ] in all positions.
Vowels
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Vowels |
Front |
Back |
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Close |
и /i/ |
у /u/ |
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Close-mid |
э /e/ |
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Open-mid |
Ѧ /ɛ̃/ |
о /o/ |
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Open |
а /a/ |
Ѫ /ɑ̃/ |
Ѫ /ɒ̃/ |
- Some speakers merge /ɒ̃/ and /ɑ̃/, pronouncing both as [ɑ̃]. Others have raised /ɛ̃/ to [ẽ].
- Other speakers realize the nasal vowels as [ɛw̃], [ɔw̃], and [ɑw̃], similar to Polish.
- There exists broad free variation concerning the back vowels, /u/ can be realized as [ʊ~ʉ~y], and /ɔ/ as [o~ɒ~ø].
- /e/ is typically reduced to [ə] in word final syllables, open or closed.