Suwáá/New Urban

New Urban Sowaár is an emergent variety of Sowaár spoken by urban middle-class children and teens.

Origins

Compared to other groups, urban women speakers of Sowaár speak somewhat more uniformly, in a less dialectal and somewhat more posh style of speech. Young women being the main drivers of linguistic change, a version of this "gynelect" is on its way to becoming a new, non-posh standard for Sowaár.

Phonology

The phonology is based on High Sowaár, with a few differences.

• Plain unaspirated consonants become fully voiced.
• dr tr tr' sr merge with j c c' x into [d͡ʒ t͡ʃ t͡ʃ' ʃ].
• p may be pronounced [f].
• Stress accent rather than pitch accent (as in Modern Greek).

Morphology

Similar to High Sjowaár

Ablaut

New Urban Sjowaár has 40 ablaut classes, compared to High Sowaár's 57.

Vocabulary

Eevo loanwords are much more common in New Urban Sowaár than in High Sowaár. Many words of Eevo origin are pseudo-Eevoisms or clippings of Eevo words and phrases. High Sowaár used to prefer to borrow from Skellan Eevo, but today Fyxoomian Eevo is the norm for new borrowings.