Nawuhu

This page is for the conlang. For the list of all the translated placenames in Wii Sports Resort, see Translated Wuhu Island placenames.

Nawuhu
Nauhu, Wuhu
na’a wúhu
Flag of the Wuhu Autonomous Zone
Pronunciation	[ˀna.a ˈwu.ɦu]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2024
Setting	Wii Sports Resort
Native to	Wuhu Island
Ethnicity	Native Wuhu people
Native speakers	90 (2024)
Language family	language isolate Nawuhu
Early form	Classical Nâuxu
Standard form	Standard Nawuhu
Dialects	Pemaka dialect † Nisulu dialect † Nayohbuk
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Regulated by	Wuhu Autonomous Zone
Development body	Wuhu Island Community Discord
Nawuhu is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.

Nawuhu(na'a wúhu, Nawuhu: [ˀna.a ˈwu.ɦu]), also called Wuhu or Nauhu is a language isolate that was once predominantly spoken by the inhabitants of Wuhu Island(akka wúhu [ak.ka ˈwu.ɦu]). It was spoken primarily by the civilisation that probably encompassed the entire island, the ruins of which can be seen on the southern half of the island. Today, it is only spoken by around 90 native speakers, and Ethnologue marks Nawuhu as a definitely endangered language.

Phonology

Orthography

Nawuhu is written in a form of the Latin script. There is one diacritic: the acute accent, ⟨◌́⟩, which signifies where stress is placed in a word.

Majuscule	A	B	C	K	D	E	G	H	I	J	L	M	N	Ñ	O	P	S	T	U	V	W	Y	Z
Minuscule	a	b	c	k	d	e	g	h	i	j	l	m	n	ñ	o	p	s	t	u	v	w	y	z
IPA	a	b	ɕ	k	d	e	g	h	i	ʑ	l	m	n	ɲ	o	p	s	t	u	ʉ	w	j	z

Note that ⟨Vv⟩ is a vowel, representing the sound /ʉ/.

The digraph ⟨LHlh⟩ represents the phoneme /ʎ/.

An apostrophe marks syllable separation between identical vowels. Thus, /ae/ would be written ⟨ae⟩, but /a.a/ would be written ⟨a’a⟩. The apostrophe is written in a specific form: ⟨’⟩, instead of the more common ⟨'⟩, though in the original specifications of the Mark Mii system, the more common form of the apostrophe was described as being interchangeable with ⟨’⟩.

Variations

The romanisation shown above is the Mark Mii romanisation system, which was developed following the Second World War by Mark Mii, who later became president of Wuhu Island, famously meeting with Richard Nixon at the 1972 Delfino Conference. Although this has remained the standard romanisation system of the language since Mark Mii's tenure, some have called for orthographic reform and in some radical cases a completely new system. For example, one topic of controversy is the use of the letter ⟨v⟩ to indicate a vowel(taken from its original pronunciation in Classical Latin) which many learners, as well as some professional linguists, have expressed disdain towards. The admittedly rather archaic use of ⟨v⟩ to represent a vowel has led many to claim that this contributes to a wider problem with the structure of the romanisation system.

Indeed, the system itself was built quickly out of necessity by Mark Mii as a way to transliterate ancient Nawuhu writing, and he himself admitted he did not take verbal transcription into account when making the system. Nevertheless, it was the first serious attempt of its time, and thus it was rapidly adopted by most of the Wuhu Island archaeologist community, many members of which were personal friends or acquaintances of Mark Mii himself.

Since its establishment as the official romanisation of Nawuhu, some other systems have tried to replace the Mark Mii system. One strong competitor is the Apakäaka system. This system, created by an actual native Nawuhu speaker, is quite different from the Mark Mii system; for example, /j/ is written ⟨j⟩, /ɕ ʑ/ are written ⟨ś ź⟩ and /e/ is written ⟨ä⟩, /ʉ/ is written ⟨ŭ⟩ and the identical vocalic syllable separation is unmarked instead of marked with an apostrophe, with a dash indicating phonemic pre-glottalisation. This system is mostly used by Nawuhu native political exiles, with its creator also being a political exile currently residing in Hawaii due to his opposition towards the Almondrian regime. Thus, this romanisation system is not used officially on the island, though it still appears overseas in research papers of the island.

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Alveolo- palatal	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive		p b	t d			k g
Nasal	pulmonic	m	n		ɲ	ŋ
	pre-glottalised	ˀm	ˀn			ˀŋ
Fricative			s z	ɕ ʑ			h (ɦ)
Semivowel		w			j
Lateral			l		ʎ

/ɦ/ is an allophone of /h/ pronounced in intervocalic positions(between vowels), hence the /ɦ/ in wúhu. However, when a /h/ is stressed, even in intervocalic positions, it is always pronounced /h/, hence the /h/ in puhúno.

Glottalisation

Though glottal stops do not occur phonemically in Nawuhu, some consonants are pre-glottalised at the beginning of a word, usually /n/, /m/ and /ŋ/. This glottalisation is not marked, mainly because Mark Mii, the creator of the Mark Mii romanisation system, never actually noticed the phonemic pre-glottalisation when researching the language. However, subsequent studies that interrogated actual native speakers did note the phonemic difference, with one research paper noting that one participant reportedly joked that a foreigner they had met greeted them with yenita’a ngala! [jenita.a ŋala], meaning "Give the spider!", instead of what the participant believed the foreigner wanted to say, yenita’a *ngala!(The asterisk is a common unofficial way to note pre-glottalisation) [jenita.a ˀŋala], meaning "Welcome [to my home]!".

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ʉ	u
Close-mid	e		o
Front		a

Stress and pitch

Stressed syllables have their vowels marked with an acute accent to denote its stress.

Grammar

Word order

Nawuhu is primarily an SOV(subject-object-verb) language. In a phrase where there is no object, the word order is verb-initial. However, if the object is omitted but still implied, the word order remains as the standard SV. Thus, "I am", would be í ja, lit. "am I", while "I am a person" would be ja pida’a í, lit. "I person-a am".

When forming a question(or a proposition, which uses roughly the same structure), the word order becomes VSO(verb-subject-object). Thus, though "I have a cat" would be ja éppia gvé, the question "Do you have a cat?" would be lhún ádo éppia?.

Null-subject

Though formally not a null-subject language, in colloquial speech many speakers often omit the subject, particularly if it is obvious(though this is not a prerequisite). It is also typically used, even in formal speech, for expressing a phrase in the imperative mood, such as Pyátta’a!, "Move!", instead of Ádo pyátta’a!, "You, move!". However, in both formal and informal speech, a phrase in the jussive mood never has its subject omitted, i.e. Jiyacitási avni, "Let some of them go."

Negation

The word for "no" in Nawuhu is agó. When negating a verb, -ago is added at the end of the word. Thus, "I don't do that" would be ja nis kubuago, or simply nis kubuago.

Nouns

Number

Nawuhu has four categories of grammatical number: singular, dual, paucal and plural. If there is not sufficient context, all nouns in a phrase have to be marked with suffixes denoting their number, including if the noun is singular. If a word ending in -a must be denoted as singular, the suffix -’a is placed instead.

Adjectives do not have to agree with nouns, though verbs do. Agreeing verbs have their own suffixes to indicate number, please see the Verbs section for more information.

Base suffixes for nouns

Singular	Dual	Paucal	Plural
-a	-an	-avn	-ai

Genidative

The genidative case(Latin: casus genidativus) is a popular term used by Nawuhu linguists to refer to the merged genitive and dative case in Nawuhu, marked by an -u. Originally two separate cases in Classical Nâuxu(-eu and -u for the genitive and dative cases respectively), the two cases began to merge sometime around the arrival of initial colonisers, although some linguists argue that the Japanese possessive article の(no), which has similar properties as the Nawuhu -u suffix, could have accelerated the merging of the two cases, though this is still up to debate.

Pronouns

Personal

	Singular	Dual	Paucal	Plural
First	ja	jan	jvn	jaon
Second	ádo	ádon	yuín	neíyo
Third	ain	aina	avni	enawe

There are no gendered third person pronouns in Nawuhu, though some older translations of excavated texts translated the third person pronoun as "he". Today, most translators translate the ain pronoun as "they".

Demonstrative

Demonstrative pronouns are placed after the noun, and have to agree with the grammatical number of the noun.

	Singular	Dual	Paucal	Plural
Proximal	pa	pi’i	piwa	nimu
Medial	co	coi	nva	anca
Distal	nis	eni	hua	miha’a

Proximal refers to things near the speaker("this thing"), medial refers to things near the addressee("that thing near you"), and distal refers to things "over there", as in not near the speaker or the addressee.

Interrogative

Interrogative pronouns in Nawuhu are quite distinct from demonstrative and personal pronouns. They do not agree with grammatical number, and instead mostly follow the English pattern of "what, why, who, when and how", although "when" has variations based on tense.

What	Why	Who	When				How
			Far Past	Near Past	Near Future	General Future
lim	ley	lou	i’ilam	ilam	ewil	ewe’el	li’i

Here are some examples on how to use the variations of 'when':

• "When did this battle take place?"
  • I’ilam kubkubwálo te’esek nis?
• "When did you go there?"
  • Ilam kolauálo ádo egnis?
• "When will you be eating lunch?"
  • Ewil gopak baniksanián ádo?
• "When will the project be completed?"
  • Ewe’el pulojek bakampián?

Verbs

Nawuhu verbs are inflected on mood, aspect and tense. Weak verbs have specific suffixes to indicate mood, tense and aspect. Strong verbs, like oí, "to be", or gvé, "to have", have their own specific mood, tense and aspect conjugations.

Mood

Weak verbs are inflected with mood suffixes.

Indicative	Conditional	Optative	Imperative	Jussive
-	-neá	-ci	-ta’a	-tási

In Nawuhu, imperative indicates commands or demands towards the addressee, while jussive indicates commands or demands to a person aside from the speaker or addressee.

Aspect

There are two aspects in Nawuhu: perfect and imperfect, sometimes called simple and progressive. They are, again, marked with suffixes on weak verbs. To mark perfect/simple verbs, the suffix -sen is used, while imperfect/progressive verbs are marked with the suffix -san.

Tense

Past	Present	Future
-álo	-	-ián

To form perfective and imperfective tenses for past, present and future, the aforementioned the suffixes -sen and -san are placed before the tense suffix. Thus, something like "I do" would be ja kubu(or simply kubu if one chooses to omit the subject), or for emphasis ja kubusen, while "I was doing" would be ja kubusanálo(or kubusanálo).

To be, oí

Oí is the only strong verb in Nawuhu. It has unique declensions based on person and tense.

	First	Second	Third
Past	ya	iyu	ewo
Present	í	ey	oí
Future	iló	we’é	inó

Dialects

Modern

Nayohbuk

Nayohbuk(Nawuhu: na’a yohbukai, lit. "thief talk") is the Nawuhu slang used(or at least known) by most young people in Wuhu Town.

It is significantly more influenced by English than standard Nawuhu, with many Japanese loanwords in standard Nawuhu being replaced by English equivalents in Nayohbuk, such as Nawuhu he'en "bizarre" replaced with Nayohbuk wé'ed, from English "weird".

Nayohbuk speakers also tend to pronounce /l/ as [ɾ], and addressing one another as púno, a shortened form of puhúno, is more common than in standard Nawuhu.