Suwáá
- Suwáá is highly diglossic; unless stated otherwise, this page describes the modern standard High Sjowaázh register. For the other varieties, see the subpages devoted to individual varieties.
- Suwáá/Classical
- Suwáá/'Onápaañ
- Suwáá/Jikhoó'ii
- Suwáá/Cyamányeñh
- Suwáá/Hosne'éh
- Suwáá/New Urban
- Suwáá/Wordlist
- Suwáá/Swadesh list
- Suwáá/Names
| Suwáá | |
|---|---|
| Sjowaázh dashég | |
| Pronunciation | [/stsʊwɑ̌ɻ tɑʂˑɛ́k/] |
| Created by | IlL |
| Setting | Tricin |
| Official status | |
Official language in | Sjowaázh daSóol (de facto) |
| Regulated by | none |
Forms of Suwáá (English: soo-WAHZH; High Sjowaázh: Sjowaázh da·shég /stsʊwɑ̌ːɻ tɑʂɛ́k/, gloss: Sjowaázh 3pl-language) are the dominant languages in Sjowaázh daSóol in Verse:Tricin/Txapoalli. Sjowaázh is a non-configurational polysynthetic language with a complex verbal morphology.
Suwáá forms a single dialect continuum and is otherwise an isolate, though some speculate that Suwáá is related to the Quame languages.
External history
Sjowaázh is aesthetically inspired by Navajo, Polish, Hungarian and Hmoob. Sjowaázh is intended as the language of a Japan- and Britain-inspired country which is itself very different from Japanese or English. Sjowaázh has a wide variety of accents and dialects in a small area and a posh register associated with the upper class, and it also ablauts verbs; that's where the similarities with English end.
Diglossia
Sjowaázh is strongly diglossic, with the diglossia influenced by social class. High Sjowaázh, the prestige variety, is a mixture of 'Onáp'aañ Sjowaázh and Classical Sjowaázh and is the standard language used in literature, formal writing, newsreading, public announcements. High Sjowaázh plays a similar role to the RP accent in British English: most native speakers of High Sjowaázh are people from highly educated and wealthy families. On the other end of the spectrum, the lower class speak local lects which are sometimes mutually unintelligible. High Sjowaázh is not a static entity; it is defined as whatever the Sjowaázh upper class speaks at the time.
The diglossia is also influenced by gender: urban women are more likely than other groups to use more neutral forms and accents (i.e. closer to an abstract pseudo-High Sjowaázh "gynelect"). Since the 1340s (fT), a greater permissiveness towards regional and "nonstandard" varieties of Sjowaázh has taken hold in education. However, due to greater travel and the mass media, marked features in Sjowaázh varieties have also begun to disappear. Today, a quasi-"gynelect", New Urban Sjowaázh, is slowly emerging as the canonical non-posh colloquial dialect.
The hierarchy of lects is roughly as follows:
- Upper class: High Sjowaázh
- Professional class: accented High Sjowaázh
- Middle class: local vernacular + High Sjowaázh
- Working/lower class: broad local vernacular
High Sjowaázh is the variety taught in Sjowaázh schools and also the variety that is often first taught to non-natives. Though most natives are able to speak the proper language to some extent, they only choose to use it in certain situations, like greeting a customer, or talking to a stranger over the phone.
The language encountered in Sjowaázh pop culture can be much less posh, depending on the region and social class of the characters, and the target audience. The most frequently used Sjowaázh varieties in pop culture are the urban middle-class lects (most creators live in or near one of the major urban centers, e.g. 'Onápaañ, Jighoó'ii, Cyamányeñh). Using more unusual lects mark certain types of characters (e.g. rural lects for country hicks, broad urban lects for hypermasculine bros, a caricatured "gynelect" for ditzy teenage girls, High Sjowaázh for posh villains, ...)
Todo
- Badly irregular ablaut like Navajo
- Some really short roots
- Should be different from Navajo and Roshterian but still polysynthetic
- Some Quame-ish words
i fall in love with you (active counterpart) = shelisjhaágy
do you want reduplication?
sounds ok
how is -in for an attributive clause
or relative clause
verb+in
so it's a nominalizer
clofab intensifies
yeah
shiilyohookh+in = that piles up
😍1
and that could ablaut to -iin or -iín?
in some forms like intransitive attributive
most C(C)oC verbs should inflect like sjhogy
maybe
sjowaazh should be non-config
noun phrases are head-final and they use relational nouns
shiilyohookh would inflect like
khashiilyohookh
akheshiiñlyohookh
khóoshigyoñhookh?
inceptive should use t
yeah
or d
because of quame future
quihumists would relate that to thensarian -tē-
yeah
that "let us soar party" 😀
and for the fun of it...
the t should be an infix!
sjhodagy-
😍1
should mean to fall in love
Phonology
Consonants
High Suwáá has a large consonant inventory of 35 consonants:
| Labial | Dental | Retroflex | Alveolo-palatal | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m /m/ | n /n/ | ny /ɲ/ | |||||
| Plosive | tenuis | b /p/ | d /t/ | gy /c/ | g /k/ | ' /ʔ/ | ||
| aspirated | p /pʰ/ | t /tʰ/ | ky /cʰ/ | k /kʰ/ | ||||
| ejective | p' /pʼ/ | t' /tʼ/ | ky' /cʼ/ | k' /kʼ/ | ||||
| Fricative | s /s/ | sh /ʂ/ | sy /ɕ/ | kh /x/ | h /h/ | |||
| Affricate | tenuis | j /ts/ | jh /tʂ/ | jy /tɕ/ | ||||
| aspirated | c /tsʰ/ | ch /tʂʰ/ | cy /tɕʰ/ | |||||
| ejective | c' /tsʼ/ | ch' /tʂʼ/ | cy' /tɕʼ/ | |||||
| Approximant | w /w/ | l /l/ | zh /ɻ/ | ly /ʎ/ | y /j/ | |||
p' only appears in loans.
Other notes
All consonants are long, compared to English and other Sjowaázh dialects: with plain stops the hold is longer, with aspirated stops the aspiration is longer, and with affricates the frication is longer. The voice onset time of the aspirated and ejective stops is twice as long as that found in most other languages.
- Stops and affricates
All stops and affricates, except for the bilabial and glottal, have a three-way laryngeal contrast between unaspirated, aspirated, and ejective. The aspirated stops /pʰ, tʰ, kʰ/ (orthographic ⟨p, t, k⟩) are typically aspirated with velar frication [px, tx, kx] (they are phonetically affricates — homorganic in the case of [kx], heterorganic in the case of [tx]). The acoustic difference between an affricate and a stop + fricative consonant cluster is the rate of increase in the amplitude of the frication noise (i.e. the rise time); affricates have a short rise time, consonant clusters have a longer rise time between the stop and fricative. There is variation within Suwáá, however, in this respect: some speakers lack strong velar frication having instead a period of aspiration.
Similarly the unaspirated velar /k/ (orthographic ⟨g⟩) is realized as with optional voiced velar frication following the stop burst: [k] ~ [kɣ].
While the aspiration of stops is markedly long compared to most other languages, the aspiration of the affricates is quite short: the main feature distinguishing /ts/, /tʂ/ and /tɕ/ from /tsʰ/, /tʂʰ/ and /tɕʰ/ is that the frication is half again as long in the latter: [tsʰˑ], [tʂʰˑ], [tɕʰˑ]. The ejectives /ts'/, /tʂ'/, /tɕ'/, on the other hand, have short frication, presumably due to the lack of pulmonic airflow. There is a period of near silence before the glottalized onset of the vowel.
- Continuants
Suwáá fricatives are noisier than the fricatives that occur in English.
- Glottal(ized) consonants
Consonants involving a glottal closure — the glottal stop, ejective stops, and the glottalized sonorants — may have optional creaky voice on voiced sounds adjacent to the glottal gesture. Glottal stops may also be realized entirely as creaky voice instead of single glottal closure.
Vowels
High Suwáá has only 4 vowel qualities, although there is phonemic vowel length and nasalization.
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Pitch accent
Standard High Suwáá has a pitch accent system - every word will have at least one high pitched mora but may have more than one, especially in longer words. A mora with high pitch is marked with an acute accent.
Other Sjowaázh lects have different tonal systems or none. For example, the Cyamányeh lect has no tone.
Phonotactics
Sjowaázh allows the following initial clusters: sb sd sj sjh sjy sgy sg /sˑp sˑt sˑts ʂˑtʂ ɕˑtɕ sˑc sˑk/.
Conservative High Sjowaázh
In Conservative High Sjowaázh, the g-series is realized as postvelar, and the gy-series is realized as prevelar. The vowels o oo are consistently [o o:], and a aa are less back [ä ä:] unless adjacent to g-series consonants.
Conservative Modern High Sjowaázh retains vestiges of the Classical Sjowaázh 3-tone system in its intonation, thus Conservative High Sjowaázh is often said to be more melodic than Modern High Sjowaázh.
Orthography
All varieties of Sjowaázh are written in the Sjowaázh alphabet, which was originally developed as a phonetic notation system like the IPA.
Sjowaázh uses two letters for /pʰ/ p and two letters for /h/ h. This reflects the merger of Old Sjowaázh /pʰ/ with /v/ and Old Sjowaázh /h/ with /f/ respectively.
Writing vernaculars
Sandhi
All Sjowaázh lects have extensive sandhi systems. The following describes High Sjowaázh sandhi.
Consonants and vowels
Tone
Morphology
- Main article: Sjowaázh/Morphology
Sjowaázh is strongly head-marking, like many indigenous languages of North and Central America.
Syntax
Word order
High Sjowaázh is non-configurational. Noun phrases are head-final.
Clitics
Most conjunctions and clitics obey Wackernagel's law; they come after the first syntactic phrase or the first stressed word in a clause.
Relative clauses
Nominalized relative clauses are formed by attaching the nominalizing clitic =in after the clause (one of the few exceptions to Wackernagel's law). On the other hand, verbal nouns are not used.
Examples:
- lisjhógy /lɪ̀ʂtʂʊ́c/ = 'I love you' > lisjhógyin /lɪ̀ʂtʂʊ́cɪ̀n/ = 'the fact that I love you'
- shiilyohóokh = 'they pile up forming a line' > shiilyohóokhin = (a type of scale used in Sjowaázh music)
Vocabulary
Sjowaázh, in addition to native words, uses many loans from Naquic and Tsimulh languages. Borrowed words are almost all nouns.
To abbreviate words, Sjowaázh uses clipping.
Study by non-native speakers
Due to the popularity of Sjowaázh pop culture across the globe, Sjowaázh is commonly learned by Sjowaázhophile otakus. Sjowaázh is considered one of the most daunting languages for speakers of most Northern languages, due to its morphological complexity and high degree of diglossia.
Poetry
Sjowaázh poetry uses quantitative meters, like Sanskrit.
(LLLLSLLSSSSSSLLSLLSLL)
(LLLSSLSLSSSLLLSLLSL)
Lyoóshaañt’ ólo·sjecyida'eech’ óna' da·sk’onyáad shéb (LLSSSSSLSSSSLS)
Gáadeéñcyok’ ooñ·táshojyekaad wehacóozh bijháalyin (LLSLSSSLSSLSLS)
Phrasebook
- 'Áa'weh nyéh, mehonolyi'é? = Hello, how do you do? (lit. Good place, are you in peace?)
- Lisjhógy /lìʂtʂʊ́c/ = I love you.
- Nóch'ahgalyá be'saañbójy. Ghoñh 'ésjol be'saañbocyáyee'. = "All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others."