Nawi

Nawi
Nawi
Pronunciation	[/nɑ̀.ví /]
Created by	–
Language family	Nawi Nawi
Dialects	Literary (Toma) Natural

Nawi is a constructed, a priori language that serves two purposes, which shows the dialectal split. The first, the Literary, is a psuedohistory recorded by a monk from inner Africa who moves to Alexandria whose name is recorded as Toma. The purpose of the Literary dialect is to produce vocabulary terms, some grammar, and put the language in a little context. The second variety and purpose is the Natural, which, after the Literary is sufficiently developed, will serve as a metrolang for several languages in a separate project.

Nawi is created and maintained by Burke, and being incomplete it has no real speakers, and chances are it never will have any.

Background

Nawi is a personal project to investigate and incorporate elements of languages that constructed languages often seem to avoid including processes of reduplication, relational nouns, and some other topics. The first form, Literary, will be used to fuel the second, Natural. If any form of Nawi ever does end up spoken in any degree, it will likely be the Literary since it will have the most defined lexicon and strongest prescribed grammar. It also will come with its own writing system behind it.

Phonology

For more information, please go to you local library

Nawi has a fairly simple and restricted sound system. One thing of interesting note is that while it has a palatal stop, it appears to be very unstable. The four vowels shift occasionally based on the preceding consonant, but the vowels changing the consonant is far more common.

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Consonants

Consonant Phonemes
	Labial	Dental	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	p /p/	t /t/	c1 /c/	k /k/
Nasal	m /m/	n /n/		g2 /ŋ/
Fricative		s3 /s/			h4 /h/
Approximant			j /j/	w5 /w/
Flap		r /r/

N.B.: Orthography is noted in bold.

1. /c/ is realized as [t͡s] before /i/ and /ɛ/

2. /ŋ/ is realized as [ʔ] before /i/ and /ɛ/

3. /s/ is realized as [ʃ] before /i/

4. /h/ is realized as [ɸ] before /o/

5. /w/ is realized as [v] before /i/

Vowel Phonemes

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i /i/
Near Close			o /o/
Near Open	e /ɛ/
Open		a /ä/

The syllable is restricted exclusively to the CV pair, where both are required. If it seems like a bare vowel is heard, it is likely a weakened /h/ or a lost velar nasal.

Tone

Nawi has a simple tonal system where one syllable in a word may be marked for high-tone or as a tonal break point, whereby the pitch falls on the syllable immediately following it. This is normally realized by having a slow build up to the high tone syllable and then a sharp drop immediately after it. While tone is the sole dividing feature of many words from each other, it is often not very important since context is typically sufficient to discern which word was meant. There are some puns that center around this difference, but they are usually relegated to grandfathers telling corny jokes.