Suwáá

Suwáá is highly diglossic; unless stated otherwise, this page describes the modern standard Adísheg register. For the other varieties, see the subpages devoted to individual varieties.

Suwáá/Classical

Suwáá/'Onápaam

Suwáá/Jikhoó'ii

Suwáá/Cyamányeh

Suwáá/Hosne'éh

Suwáá/New Urban

Suwáá/Wordlist

Suwáá/Swadesh list

Suwáá/Names

Suwáá
Sowaázh dashég
Pronunciation	[/sʊwɑ̌ɻ tɑʂˑɛ́k/]
Created by	IlL
Setting	Tricin
Language family	language isolate
Official status
Official language in	Sowaázh daSóol (de facto)
Regulated by	none

Forms of Suwáá (English: soo-WAHZH; Adísheg: Sowaázh da·shég /sʊwɑ̌ːɻ tɑʂɛ́k/, gloss: Sowaázh 3pl-language) are the dominant languages in Sowaázh daSóol in Verse:Tricin/Txapoalli. Sowaázh 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

Sowaázh is made for a Japan- and Britain-inspired country in Tricin but is intended to be very different from Japanese or English. It is aesthetically inspired by Navajo, Polish, and Hungarian. Sowaázh 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

Sowaázh is strongly diglossic, with the diglossia influenced by social class. The prestige variety Adísheg (Sowaázh: /ɑtíʂɛk/ 'high language') is a direct descendant of Classical Sowaázh with some reborrowing from Classical Sowaázh, and it is the standard language used in literature, formal writing, newsreading, public announcements. Adísheg plays a similar role to the RP accent in British English: most native speakers of Adísheg 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. Adísheg is not a static entity; it is defined as whatever the Sowaázh 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-Adísheg "gynelect"). Since the 1340s (fT), a greater permissiveness towards regional and "nonstandard" varieties of Sowaázh has taken hold in education. However, due to greater travel and the mass media, marked features in Sowaázh varieties have also begun to disappear. Today, a quasi-"gynelect", New Urban Sowaázh, is slowly emerging as the canonical non-posh colloquial dialect.

The hierarchy of lects is roughly as follows:

• Upper class: Adísheg
• Professional class: accented Adísheg
• Middle class: local vernacular + Adísheg
• Working/lower class: broad local vernacular

Adísheg is the variety taught in Sowaázh schools and also the variety that is often first taught to non-natives. Though most natives are able to speak the proper language from learning it in school, 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 Sowaázh 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 Sowaázh varieties in pop culture are the urban middle-class lects (most creators live in or near one of the major urban centers, e.g. 'Onápaam, Jikhoó'ii, Cyamányeh). 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, Adísheg 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
Sowaazh 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:

Consonant phonemes in High Suwáá

		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 Sowaázh 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.

High Suwáá oral vowels

	Front		Back
	short	long	short	long
Close	i /ɪ/	ii /iː/	o /ʊ/	oo /uː/
Open	e /ɛ/	ee /ɛː/	a /ɑ/	aa /ɑː/

Tone

Modern High Suwáá has a two-level tone 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 Sowaázh lects have different tonal systems or none. For example, the Cyamányeh lect has no tone.

Phonotactics

Sowaázh allows the following initial clusters: sb sd sj sjh sjy sgy sg /sp st sts ʂtʂ ɕtɕ sc sk/.

Conservative Adísheg

In Conservative Adísheg, 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 Adísheg retains the Classical Sowaázh 3-tone system in a simplified form, which moderners may perceive as overdramatic.

• Classical Sowaázh: á, a, à, áa, aà, aá, aa
• Conservative Adísheg: á, a, à, áa, aá, aa
• Modern Adísheg: á, a, áa, aá, aa

Orthography

All varieties of Sowaázh are written in the Sowaázh alphabet, which was originally developed as a phonetic notation system like the IPA. Adísheg spelling is based on Conservative Adísheg.

• no dot: mid tone
• one dot below: high tone
• two dots below: low tone (unpronounced)

Sandhi

All Sowaázh lects have extensive sandhi systems. The following describes Adísheg sandhi.

Morphology

Main article: Sowaázh/Morphology

Sowaázh is strongly head-marking, like many indigenous languages of North and Central America.

Syntax

Word order

Adísheg 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 Sowaázh music)

Vocabulary

Sowaázh, in addition to native words, uses many loans from Naquic and Tsimulh languages, and recently, Skellan. Borrowed words are almost all nouns.

To abbreviate words, Sowaázh uses clipping.

Transliterating Skellan words

• /m n ŋ/ = m n ny
• /p t k/ = b d g
• /pʰ tʰ kʰ/ = p t k
• /ts tʃ/ = c ch
• /f θ ç χ h/ = p d sy kh h
• /v ð j/ = w d y
• /s ʃ/ = s sh
• /z ʒ/ = s sh
• /w r r̥ ʟ/ = w zh sh kh

Study by non-native speakers

Due to the popularity of Sowaázh pop culture across the globe, Sowaázh is commonly learned by Sowaázhophile otakus. Sowaázh 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

Sowaázh poetry uses quantitative meters, like Sanskrit.

(LLLLSLLSSSSSSLLSLLSLL)

(LLLSSLSLSSSLLLSLLSL)

Lyoóshaant’ ólo·sjecyida'eéch’ óna' da·sk’onyáad shéb (LLSSSSSLSSSSLS)
Gáadeéncyok’ oon·táshojyekaad wehacóozh bijháalyin (LLSLSSSLSSLSLS)

Phrasebook

• 'Áa'weh nyéh, mehonoly'é? = Hello, how do you do? (gloss: good place, 2SG-CONT-peaceful-INTERR)
• Khahonolyíi. = reply to Mehonoly'é? (gloss: 1SG-CONT-peaceful-TVF)
• Lihosjhógy = I love you.
• Nóch'ahgalyá be'saambójy. Khoñh 'ésjol be'saambocyáyee'. = "All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others."

Sample Texts

UDHR

Literally: All people from being born are free; their dignity and rights are equal to each other. They-can-TELIC-think=NOMZ and they-can-know-good=NOM, they can use it, they must thus move themselves in the face of each other as if they were brothers.

Serenity

Literally: May I be at peace with what I cannot change, boldly change what I can change, and by thinking wisely, tell the two situations apart.