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
Wuhu / Nauhu / Naufu
na’a wúhu
Flag of the Wuhu Autonomous Zone
Pronunciation	[na.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 †
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, [na.a ˈwu.ɦu]), also called Wuhu, Nauhu or Naufu is a language isolate that was once predominantly spoken by the inhabitants of Wuhu Island (akka wúhu or Akka’a [ak.ka.a]). 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 Apakeaka system. This system, created by an actual native Nawuhu speaker, is quite different from the Mark Mii system; for example, /ɕ ʑ/ are written ⟨sh zh⟩, /ʉ/ is written ⟨ü⟩ and the identical vocalic syllable separation is marked with a diaeresis on the second vowel with stress generally not being marked unless contrastive , so na'a wúhu becomes naä wuhu. 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	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	p b	t d		k g
Nasal	m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Fricative		s z	ɕ ʑ		h (ɦ)
Semivowel			j	w
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.

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 nvki formally or ago informally. 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. The negative copula is also simply ago.

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
	nom.	gen.	nom.	gen.	nom.	gen.	nom.	gen.
First	ja	jo	jan	janu	jvn	jun	jon	jonu
Second	ádo	ádu	ádon	ádun	wín	ínu	né	néyu
Third	ain	añu	aina	año	avni	avñu	enawe	enau

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".

Like adjectives, genitive pronouns are placed after the possessee, so "my car" is jido jo lit. "car my".

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	pwa	nimu
Medial	co	coi	nva	aca
Distal	nis	eni	hua	mya

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

Vocabulary

Swadesh list

No.	English	Nawuhu
0	Nawuhu	na’a wúhu
1	I	ja
2	you (singular)	ádo
3	he	ain
4	we	jon
5	you (plural)	né
6	they	enawe
7	this	pa
8	that	nis
9	here	papa
10	there	nini
11	who	lou
12	what	lim
13	where	lio
14	when	ilam
15	how	li’i
16	not	ago
17	all	ana
18	many	nyenye
19	some	nye
20	few	nyago
21	other	aya
22	one	a
23	two	an
24	three	míneng
25	four	ipo
26	five	gámi
27	big	di’i
28	long	nabuta
29	wide	teo
30	thick	teote
31	heavy	duku
32	small	lhí
33	short	buta
34	narrow	sisi
35	thin	ehe
36	woman	boi
37	man (adult male)	bogwa
38	human being	bo
39	child	ota
40	wife	jeki
41	husband	jeki
42	mother	mau
43	father	bau
44	animal	ñv
45	fish	sempe
46	bird
47	dog
48	louse
49	snake
50	worm
51	tree
52	forest
53	stick
54	fruit
55	seed
56	leaf
57	root
58	bark
59	flower
60	grass
61	rope
62	skin
63	meat
64	blood
65	bone
66	fat
67	egg
68	horn
69	tail
70	feather
71	hair
72	head
73	ear
74	eye
75	nose
76	mouth
77	tooth
78	tongue
79	fingernail
80	foot
81	leg
82	knee
83	hand
84	wing
85	belly
86	guts
87	neck
88	back
89	breast
90	heart
91	liver
92	drink
93	eat
94	bite
95	suck
96	spit
97	vomit
98	blow
99	breathe
100	laugh
101	see
102	hear
103	know
104	think
105	smell
106	fear
107	sleep
108	live
109	die
110	kill
111	fight
112	hunt
113	hit
114	cut
115	split
116	stab
117	scratch
118	dig
119	swim
120	fly
121	walk
122	come
123	lie
124	sit
125	stand
126	turn
127	fall
128	give
129	hold
130	squeeze
131	rub
132	wash
133	wipe
134	pull
135	push
136	throw
137	tie
138	sew
139	count
140	say
141	sing
142	play
143	float
144	flow
145	freeze
146	swell
147	sun
148	moon
149	star
150	water
151	rain
152	river
153	lake
154	sea
155	salt
156	stone
157	sand
158	dust
159	earth
160	cloud
161	fog
162	sky
163	wind
164	snow
165	ice
166	smoke
167	fire
168	ash
169	burn
170	road
171	mountain
172	red
173	green
174	yellow
175	white
176	black
177	night
178	day
179	year
180	warm
181	cold
182	full
183	new
184	old
185	good
186	bad
187	rotten
188	dirty
189	straight
190	round
191	sharp
192	dull
193	smooth
194	wet
195	dry
196	correct
197	near
198	far
199	right
200	left
201	at
202	in
203	with
204	and
205	if
206	because
207	name

Conversation

English (na’a ingélu)	Nawuhu (na’a wúhu)	Pronunciation
Yes	Pi	[pi]
No	Nvki, Ago	[ˈnʉki], [ago]
Of course!	Tiéma!	[tiˈema]
Hello!	Peku! (informal) / Pekutéleki! (formal)	[peku]; [pekuˈteleki]
Goodbye!
Cheers!	Kal!	[kal]
How are you?	Li’i? (informal) / Li’i ey? (formal)	[li.i]; [li.i ej]
Good day!	Pi tupi!	[pi tupi]
Good morning!	Pi tupi! / Pi tupi’ikélo! (lit. "What a good sunrise!")	[pi tupi]; [pi tupi.iˈkelo]
Good evening!	Pi tupi'iyáki!	[pi tupi.iˈjaki]