Hoyu

Haiju (海语) is a language spoken in Haigwo, an island nation south of China, where it is the sole official language of Haigwo's 9 million residents. It is a language isolate written with Chinese logograms, adopted specifically for the language, called Toshiwa  (图写七).

General information
Haiju is the native language of the Hai people in the South China Sea. It is a verb-heavy language with an agglutinative grammar. Word order is usually SVO, but it can be flexible due to the high level of inflection. The Hai people use the Chinese logography to write their language. However, for ease of teaching, a phonetic Latin alphabet was standarized. Occasionally, among younger Hai people, the Latin alphabet used for teaching Haiju is used, though this is uncommon. Because of the nation's long history of trade with the Chinese, there are many loanwords from Chinese in the Haiju language.

Etymology
The word Hai, which is representative of the Hai people, is a Chinese loan (海 Hǎi) and it literally means "sea." Historically, many Chinese were surprised to find an island nation south of their land and talked of it appearing from the ocean overnight and referred to it as the sea nation (海国 Hǎi guó), which is where the nation gets its modern name from. Haiju (from Chinese 海语 Hǎi yǔ) means "sea language." Residents of Haigwo are called Haireneb (sea people) in Haiju, which is taken from the Chinese phrase for sea people (海人 hǎi rén).

Monophthongs

 * 1) /i/ is only realized as /ɪ/ in diphthongs or triphthongs, it is realized as /i/ on its own

Latin Alphabet
The Latin alphabet is not the primary orthography for Haiju. It is primarily used for teaching the language or for phonetic representation of Chinese logograms. However, younger Hai people use the Latin alphabet for communicating on social media or among themselves, but are taught to use the Chinese logography in school.
 * 1) /ŋ/ can not occur in the syllable onset so there is no majuscule form

Chinese logograms
The Hai people adopted the Chinese logograms (called 图写七 Toshiwa - figure writing in Haiju) hundreds of years ago. The most prominently-used Chinese logogram in Haigwo is 海 Hǎi - the chinese character for Sea, which is featured on the nation's flag and all government-affiliated documents. The simplified and traditional scripts are not used for Haiju as they are used for Chinese. Two traditional-simplified cognates can mean very different things in Haiju, despite meaning the same thing in Chinese. For example, the character 龙 means pizza. In Chinese, pizza is 比萨. 龙 is actually the simplified Chinese character for ''dragon. In Haiju, the character used for dragon'' is the traditional Chinese character: 龍.

Rules of Use

 * Noun cases are indicated by Chinese characters for prepositions.
 * Chinese numerals are never used as numerals. Latin numerals are used instead.
 * Pluralization is indicated by the Chinese character for two (二) following the noun.

Phonotactics
(C)(C)V(C)(C)

A word may be a single vowel, which can be a mono-, di-, or triphthong. Any single consonant can occur in the syllable coda other than /ɲ/. Any consonant other than /ŋ/ can occur in the syllable onset.

Syllable-onset consonant clusters
/sk/, /sl/, /sm/, /sn/, /sɲ/, /sp/, /st/, /sv/, /br/, /dr/ /ðr/, /fr/, /gr/, /kr/, /pr/, /ʃr/, /θr/, /ʃk/, /ʃl/, /ʃm/, /ʃn/, /ʃɲ/, /ʃp/, /ʃr/, /ʃt/, /ʃv/, /gl/, /fl/, /kl/, /bl/

Syllable-coda consonant clusters
/ks/, /ls/, /ms/, /ns/, /ŋs/, /ps/, /rb/, /rd/ /rð/, /rf/, /rg/, /rk/, /rp/, /rʃ/, /rθ/, /rʃ/, /lʃ/, /mʃ/, /nʃ/, /ŋʃ/, /pʃ/, /rʃ/, /vʃ/, /nt/, /nd/, /ft/, /kt/, /ld/, /lt/, /lp/, /lb/, /lk/, /lf/, /lv/, /rt͡ʃ/, /lt͡ʃ/, /mp/, /mf/, /nz/, /ŋk/, /pt/, /ŋθ/

Structural Agreement
Haiju words must all agree in structure. The structure of all words is CVCVCV... where C is a consonant or permitted consonant cluster and V is a vowel or di/triphthong. Because of this, Haiju has many epenthetic particles, which can be different depending on the affix it is attached to. Consonant epenthetic particles are left out if the beginning of the next syllable is a di- or triphthong.

Verbs
Haiju conveys much information through verbs. A verb root can take prefixes or suffixes to convey speaker (person, gender, number, clusivity), mood, tense, and voice. All affixes are one or two letters. In the jussive mood, the subject marker becomes the object. The Chinese character for each affix is listed below or next to the Latin affix.

Subject prefixes
There are three non-grammatical genders in Haiju: masculine, feminine, and inanimate. They always agree with the subject; that is, a chair would be inanimate, one's sister would be feminine, and one's father would be masculine. If the subject or every subject (if plural) can agree to a gender, the gender must be included on the verb. There are three persons: first, second, and third person, and two numbers: singular and plural, which produces a total of 6 person+number markers.

Tense Markers
Haiju has three tenses. If the tense marker does not structurally agree with the verb stem, an epenthetic -s- is added.

The verb stem
Verb stems in Haiju are always one syllable and do not undergo any conjugation. However, modern loan words can be more than one syllable. Take, for example, "kompjut" or "kalkjulait."

Verb Stacking
In Haiju, there is a phenomenon called "verb stacking." In instances where one would say "am playing" or "begin playing," the two verb stems stack together as if they were one stem. If the two verb stems do not agree structurally because one starts and one ends with a consonant, an epenthetic -i- is added, and if they do not agree structurally because one starts and one ends with a vowel, a epenthetic -g- is added. For example, the verb r inaligifogo (she begins to eat) is glossed as FEM.3SG.PRS.begin.E.eat.IND. The "E" in the gloss is the epenthetic -i-. However, the "E" is usually omitted in glossing.

Another instance of verb stacking is in a sentence like "The shoes are blue," where an adjective indirectly modifies the noun. The adjective, similarly, stacks after the verb. "If they were blue" is expressed as   anaweidemiħo,  which is glossed as   3PL.PRS.be.blue.SJV . The rules for epenthetic particles remain the same.

The final instance of verb stacking in Haiju is with adverbs, adjectives with the adverbial suffix, but  not  nouns in the adverbial case. They stack exactly the same as other verbs or indirect adjectives: right after the verb. Again, the rules for epenthetic particles remain the same. "I will die quickly" is expressed as imi sěkwaikigo  with a gloss of 1SG.FUT.die.quick-ADV.IND. Note that there is no epenthetic particle between the verb and adverb.

Mood markers
If the verb root does not end in a consonant, the mood marker adds an epenthetic -g- in between the end of the verb root and the beginning of the mood marker.

Indicative
The indicative mood is used for factual statements, such as in the examples listed below.

Subjunctive
The subjunctive mood is used to express desires. It translates into English as "want to."

Abilitative
The abilitative mood conveys the ability to do things. It translates into English as the verb "can."

Nouns
The noun is the second most important thing in Haiju. Most nouns are one syllable, but two nouns can be combined to represent a single idea. Loanwords from English for modern ideas, however, can be multiple syllables, such as "computer," which is spelled as "kompjutor" in Haiju.

Noun cases
The nominative case is almost always unmarked, but gerunds will always take a case ending and, as such, will take on the nominative suffix given that a gerund is the subject. The genitive case, along with showing possession, takes the function of a partitive case as well, with the numbers taking on the "partitive" suffix. The dative case, similarly, also takes on the role of the benefactive case (when one would say something like I opened the door  for tom ). All noun cases have two suffixes for structural agreement.

Determiners
Determiners are affixes attached to the beginning of the noun. The possessive article takes on affixes similar to the verb to show gender and plurality. An epenthetic -n- is added if the ending of the determiner does not structurally agree with the noun. Possessive determiners, like all determiners, attach to the beginning of the noun. An epenthetic -i- is added if the ending of the determiner does not agree structurally with the noun. To form possessive pronouns (mine, yours, his, hers, its, etc), the posessive determiners listed below take on the nominative case ending.

Adjectives
The rules concerning adjectives are simple: they precede the noun they modify and do not undergo any inflection for case. As stated earlier, when the verb "be" and an adjective appear in a sentence together, and the adjective is not directly modifying a noun, the verb and indirect adjective are stacked and treated as a single verb.

There is, despite adjectives not declining for case, an adverbial suffix that is attatched to the end of an adjective. To turn an adjective into an adverb (hungry > hungrily), the suffix -i which takes an epithetic -k- for structural agreement, is suffixed onto the adverb ( cuťim >  cuťimi). There are a few exceptions, however, and not all adjectives undergo this change. The adverbial suffix is represented by the chinese logograph 千, but many adverbs are represented by a single chinese logograph.

Vocabulary
 Haiju Dictionary at ConWorkShop (updated frequently)