Hoyu

Haiyu (Haiyu: Hoʻjantư) 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.

General information
Haiyu 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 preferably SOV in basic sentences, but in interrogative sentences, there is a rigid VSO word order. It is written with the Latin alphabet. Because of the nation's frequent contact with the Chinese, French, and Vietnamese, there are many loanwords from these languages in the Haiyu language.

Etymology
The English name for the language, Haiyu, is a direct loan from Chinese (海语 Hǎi yǔ) and literally means "sea language". When the Qing Dynasty discovered Haigwo in 1651, it was officially reported to the emperor that the people spoke a strange "sea language" that was impossible to understand. The Hai people and their homeland, Haigwo, are also called so because of this.

The native name for the language, Hoʻjantư [hoʔʒantɯ̽], is a middle Haiyu word meaning "what we speak" and is composed of the verb stem jan, a subject-object marker oʻ, and the nominalizing circumfix h(a)-'' -tư. If the same thing is said in modern Haiyu, it is slightly different: oʻjant'ư ''[oʔʒantɯ̽].

History
Much of the languages phonological and grammatical changes are unknown due to the poor written history of Haiyu. Prior to the French contact (and the subsequent French annexation of Haigwo) with the Hai people, it was unwritten. A few known major phonological changes took place between 1703 and 1931: initial /x/ became /h/, final /x/ was lost completely, /ɮ/ was lost completely and merged with /ɬ/, and /f/ merged with /v/. These changes are reflected in the orthography. During the same time period, a few major grammatical changes occured: circumfixes were shortened to suffixes, noun root reduplication to show plurality (which only occured in vowel-final nouns) was lost, marking of the nominative case was lost on nouns, plural marking was lost when a noun was modified by a numeral, and the interrogative mood marker was lost on verbs.

/x/ and /h/ remained in allophonic variation for quite some time, but by the 1986 proposal to remove x from the orthography, /x/ had merged completely with /h/.

Vowels
All vowels have stressed and unstressed phonemes, and certain vowels change word-finally as well. Vowels can be rhotacized if they directly preceed / ɹ/. Most speakers pronounce word-final /i/ and /e/ as [i] and [ə] respectively, instead of [ ɪ] and [ ɛ].

Consonants

 * Stops are unreleased at the ends of words. For example, /p/ > /p̚/.
 * Stops and affricates are aspirated before another stop or affricate across a syllable boundary.
 * Nasals assimilate to a following consonants place of articulation across syllable boundaries.
 * Unvoiced consonants become voiced before another voiced consonant and vice-versa. For example, /f/ is an allophone of /v/ before an unvoiced consonant and /ɮ/ is an allophone of /ɬ/ before a voiced consonant.
 * /ɸ/ and /β/ are allophones of /v/ after (not before) an unvoiced and a voiced labial consonant, respectively.
 * The velar series /ŋ k g x/ are palatised to /ɲ c ɟ ç/ before a front vowel or before /j/.

Writing System

 * Affricates are written as follows:
 * t͡s > ts
 * t͡ʃ  > tc
 * q͡χ > qħ
 * t͡ɬ > tł

History
The first written record of Haiyu is from 1703 in a Latin alphabet introduced by French missionaries. It was written without diacritics and based on the French alphabet: /k/ was represented by c, /ʃ/ was represented by ch, /t͡ʃ/ was represented by tch, /x/ and /h/ were both represented by h, /χ/ was represented by qh, /q͡χ/ was represented by qqh, /ŋ/ was represented by ng, /ɬ/ was represented by lh, /ɮ/ was represented by lz, /t͡ɬ/ was represented by tl, /w/ was represented by ou, /ɤ/ was represented by the digraph eo, and /ɯ/ was represented by iu. The glottal stop was unwritten. All other consonants (including the now-lost /f/) were represented by their IPA equivalents. The modern alphabet was introduced in 1931. However, a minor reform was introduced in 1993, eliminating the letter Xx.

Verbs
Haiyu conveys much information through verbs. A single sentence can be one verb. The only necessary elements in a Haiyu verb is the verb root and the subject-object prefix. The subject and object are indicated in one prefix, but there is, however, null-object prefixes. Everything else is only included if needed. The present tense, simple aspect, indicative mood, and active voice are all implied.

Subject-object prefix
The subject-object prefix is the only required part of a verb other than the root. It and the indirect object prefix are the only prefixes found in the entire language. The fourth person translates as an unknown person, i.e. "one should..", "someone did", "everyone should". The vertical axis represents the subject and the horizantal axis represents the object.

The verb stem
Verb stems in Haiyu 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 "kalkjuleit."

Verb Stacking
In Haiyu, 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 (r.in.a.lig.i.fo.go)  (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 anaweidemala (an.a.wei.dem.ala), which is glossed as  3PL.PRS.be.blue.COND . The rules for epenthetic particles remain the same.

In the same sense, a preposition can be stacked in the same way an indirect adjective is. An example would be imětanitongo (im.ě.tan-itong.o), which is glossed as 1sg.pst.talk-with.ind. The rules for epenthetic particles still remain the same. Despite this, a preposition becomes a postposition and is therefore placed after the noun if the object of a preposition is not the direct object in the sentence. The noun then takes on the prepositional case ending instead of the nominative. Even still, if the preposition being used is "on" or "at", the noun takes on the locative case suffix.

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. The indicative, subjunctive, abilitative, necessitative, deliberative, and dubitative moods can take on the interrogative suffix -mi- ( 吗) after the mood suffix.

Nouns
The noun is the second most important thing in Haiyu. 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 Haiyu.

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. All noun cases have two suffixes for structural agreement.

Case stacking
In Haiyu, there are two instances of case stacking. In order form reflexives, the subject will take on the nominative case ending and stack the accusative case ending after it, resulting in either -wan or -iwan (七把) being suffixed onto the noun depending on structural agreement. A benefactive reflexive (when the subject does something for itself), will take on the nominative and the benefactive case suffixes, resulting in either -waz or -iwaz (七為) being suffixed to the noun depending on 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 genetive case ending.

Pronouns
Subject pronouns are part of the verb, so you will never see these pronouns by themselves. Pronouns always have a case ending attached to them to form words such as him, which, in Haiyu, would be ibi ( 男 把), the third-person singular masculine pronoun with the accusative case suffix. Another example is mine which would be imu ( 我 的), the first-person singular pronoun with the genetive case suffix.

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.

You can change an adjective into an adverb (which is inserted into the verb itself) by suffixing -(k)in (千)

onto the adverb.

Vocabulary
  Haiyu Dictionary at ConWorkShop (updated frequently)  

Numbers
Numbers in Haiyu are very straightforward. The Hai people do not use Chinese numerals in writing - they use Perso-Arabic numerals. Ordinal numbers add -li- as a suffix, with -i- included epenthetically for structural agreement. Ordinal numbers are represented in Toshiwa by writing 廿 after of the number. To form frequency numbers (once, twice, etc), -wi- is suffixed if the number ends in a vowel, and -awi- if it ends in a consonant. Frequency numbers are formed by adding 仨 after the number. When building numbers, -i- and -k- are used epenthetically, such as in kazilo (12), which is built from kaz (10) and lo (2). Bigger numbers form long words, such as 412,520, which is savibaikazilotisanifefibailoz in Haiyu.

Math Words
The word for "plus" is also the word for "and". Equals, despite being a verb, does not take on affixes in mathematical use.