Fuano

Fuano
fuano, lan fuan
Pronunciation	fwano
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2024
Native to	Fuano Island
Ethnicity	Fuano Creole people
Native speakers	600,000 (2024)
Language family	French-Spanish Creole Fuano
Official status
Official language in	Democratic Republic of Fuinoa

Fuano is a French and Spanish mixed language(with some grammatical elements of Portuguese) spoken natively on Fuano Island by around 600,000 Fuanos.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial/ Labiodental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Velar	Palatal
Plosive	p b	t d		k g
Nasal	m	n		ŋ	ɲ
Fricative	f v	s z	ʃ ʒ	x
Approximant	w	l			j

Vowels

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

Sound changes

From French

/ʁ/ after a consonant becomes /w/ (borrowed from Haitian Creole)

• (fromage > fuomaj)

intervocalic /ʁ/ becomes /r/

• (fréro > fuero)

(applies to both spanish and french) /ʁ/ before a consonant is often deleted

• (barbu > babu)

/ʁ/ in any other position is usually deleted (apart from rue which becomes ru)

• (racine > asin)

/ə/ and /ø/ become /e/

• (feuilleté > feyte, œuf > efe)

/ɛ/ and /ɔ/ merɡe with /e/ and /o/, /wa/ becomes /we/

• (forêt > fore, soirée > suere)

From Spanish

/oj/ becomes /uj/

• (estoy > estuy, doy > duy, soy is an exception and remains the same)

/tra/ becomes /ta/ (trabajo > tabaho > baho)

/v/ and /b/ merge, /θjon~sjon/ becomes /son/ (revolución > reboluson)

/ks/ becomes /ʃ/ (contradicción > kontadixson > kontadixon)

(applies to both spanish and french) /r/ before a consonant is often deleted (barba > baba)

Grammar

Articles

Fuano has no indefinite particles. Singular definite particles are derived from French while plural definite particles are derived from Spanish, though they bear resemblance to the Portuguese plural definite particles due to the dropping of the initial /l/.

	Masc.	Fem.
Sing.	le	la
	l'
Pl.	os	as

With de

When de is combined with an article, a new preposition is formed. These bear resemblance to their counterparts in Portuguese, though they are inherited from Spanish.

	de
le	del
la	da
os	dos
as	das

With possessives

In French and Spanish, possessive pronouns are not preceded by articles. However, in Portuguese, they are. So Fuano combines these by not including articles if the possessive is singular, but including them if they're plural.

			ma	ta	su	notue	votue	luere
Word	sapato	Sing.	ma sapato	ta sapato	su sapato	le notue sapato	le votue sapato	le luere sapato
		Pl.	me sapatos	te sapatos	so sapatos	os notues sapatos	os votues sapatos	os lueres sapatos
	bolsa	Sing.	ma bolsa	ta bolsa	su bolsa	la notue bolsa	la votue bolsa	la luere bolsa
		Pl.	me bolsas	te bolsas	so bolsas	as notues bolsas	as votues bolsas	as lueres bolsas

Pronouns

Demonstrative

Fuano demonstrative pronouns are entirely inherited from Spanish, though the purposes of esto/eso and este/ese are swapped, while the distal demonstratives are entirely dropped.

		Masc.	Fem.	Neut.
Prox.	Sing.	esto	esta	este
	Pl.	estos	estas	estes
Medial	Sing.	eso	esa	ese
	Pl.	esos	esas	eses

Personal

Person	Singular			Plural
	nom.	acc.	gen.	nom.	acc.	gen.
1.	yo	me	ma	nos	nu	notue
2.	tu	tue	ta	vos	vu	votue
Masc.	el	lue	su	os		luere
Neut.	iel
Fem.	ea	eya		(as)		(luare)

as and luare are bracketed to show that they are rarely used even in appropriate context. For example, though it would be grammatically correct to refer to a group of women or girls as as, a native speaker is realistically more likely to still refer them to as os out of convention.

vos holds the same purpose as French vous, in which it simultaneously acts as a plural and a formal second-person pronoun.

iel is a more modern pronoun borrowed from French to act as a gender neutral singular pronoun, similar to singular they in English. However, unlike its country of origin of France, iel has been widely embraced in common speech in Fuano, even by older native speakers.

The accusative forms are also used as vocative forms, as in Y lue, k'el pansa? "And him, what does he think?"

The genitive forms can also be used as dative forms when placed after the noun, e.g. don la luere mesa "give their table" vs don la mesa luere "give the table to them"