Suwáá/New Urban

New Urban Sowaár is an emergent variety of Sowaár spoken by urban middle-class children and teens. It is characterized by:

• a vocabulary and grammar that is a mixture of formal/standard Sowaár and informal/basilectal Sowaár, where formal Sowaár is used for high-register words and concepts
• a non-posh accent

Origins

Compared to other groups, urban women speakers of Sowaár 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 Sowaár.

Phonology

The phonology is based on High Sowaár, with a few differences.

• Plain unaspirated consonants become fully voiced.
• dr tr tr' are affricate [d͡ʐ t͡ʂ t͡ʂ'].
• dlr tlr tlr' łr become velar laterals gl kl kl' khl.
• nr r are much less retroflex than in High Sowaár.
• p may be pronounced [f].
• w may be pronounced [v] or [ʋ].
• Stress accent rather than pitch accent (as in Modern Greek).

Morphology

Similar to High Sowaár

Ablaut

New Urban Sowaár has 40 ablaut classes, compared to High Sowaár's 57.

Discourse affixes

Discourse affixes are used heavily, unlike in High Sowaár.

Vocabulary

Eevo loanwords are much more common in New Urban Sowaár than in High Sowaár. Many words of Eevo origin are pseudo-Eevoisms or clippings of Eevo words and phrases. High Sowaár used to prefer to borrow from Skellan Eevo, but today Fyxoomian Eevo is the norm for new borrowings.