Adwan

The Adwanic language, (English: Adwan, French: Adouanne, Spanish: Aduána, Adwan: Aðẃana) is an inflecting, isolating language. It is the language of the Adwanic People, or the Chiðaùm Aðẃany.

Features:
 * Adwan is a fusionally synthetic language. This means that words change depending on their usage (I am would be það, yet you are could either be þus or þuš, depending on the number).
 * Adwan also expresses a very agglutinative nature when it comes to verbs, which conjugated by stringing affixes together.
 * Verbs in Adwan are conjugated to four persons, two numbers, three tenses, three aspects, four voices, four moods and three polarities.
 * Adwan lacks auxilliary verbs and modal verbs, instead making extensive use of affixes to change modality, aspect, tense, mood and voice.


 * Adwan is a pro-drop language; the person is conjugated into the verb.
 * Adwan declines nouns for number, and grammatical case. Gender is lost in most nouns, though some can be declined for gender by adding respective affixes.
 * Adwan has 7 cases; nominative, genitive, accusative, dative, ablative, locative and vocative, and 2 numbers; singular and plural.
 * Adwan experiences 6 kinds of phonetic mutations: gemination, nasalization, aspirative lenition, ablaut, glottalization, and palatalization.
 * Loanwords to Adwan are generally rare; about 5-15% of Adwan's vocabulary is shared with other European languages (though something like mesa is found in Spanish, mesa in Adwan means island, while mesa in Spanish means table).
 * Adwan is syllable timed; stress is always put on the penultimate syllable unless stated otherwise (acute accents over vowels show irregular stress rules, which are incredibly common).

Phonology
Adwan empoys 29 consonants and 8 vowels (with a numerous amount of diphthong combinations).

Consonants

 * The phoneme /b/ does not exist in Adwan.
 * The phoneme /ɬ/ is not an allophone of /l/.
 * Bilabial plosives (‹p›), glottal plosives (‹ʔ›), palatal approximants (‹j› ‹ɥ›), velar fricatives (‹h›), velar approximants (‹w›), and alveolar lateral fricatives (‹ɬ›) can never end a word.

Phonotactics
Adwanic words generally follow a (C)(V)CV(CV)N pattern, where N represents a final letter (a,c,d,ð,ď,e,f,g,k,l,m,n,r,þ,s,t,v,z,ž and ż).

Diphthongs in Adwan are considered a single V, rather than VV.

Alphabet
The Adwanic alphabet consists of 37 letters:

A C Č D Ð Ď E F G Ğ H CH I J K L Ł M N Ň O Ö P R Þ S Š T Ť U Ü V W Ẃ Y Z Ž Ż

Consonant-wise, Adwan is completely phonemic. Many letters are left out of the Adwanic alphabet. The phoneme (and grapheme) /b/ (B,b) does not exist in Adwan, which constitutes a problem for English-learning Adwan speakers, which pronounce their b's as v's, or p's.

Latin Alphabet Extensions
Adwan employs 14 letters that are foreign to the basic Latin alphabet. These letters are considered letters on their own, rather than letters with diacritics.
 * ‹Č,č› represents the phoneme ‹tʃ›, as in the English word chocolate.
 * ‹Ð,ð› represents the phoneme ‹ð›, as in the English word therefore.
 * ‹Ď,ď› represents the phoneme ‹dʒ›, as in the English word jam.
 * ‹Ğ,ğ› represents the phoneme ‹ɣ›, which doesn't exist in English. It is a ‹g›, but smoother and in the back of the throat, almost like a ‹g› version of ‹x›; it is represented as in the Greek word γάλα.
 * ‹Ł,ł› represents the phoneme ‹ɬ›, which doesn't exist in English. It is almost like saying ‹š› and ‹l› together but quickly, or blowing while your tongue is curled back. It is represented as in the Welsh word lloyd.
 * ‹Ň,ň› represents the phoneme ‹ŋ›, as in the English word sing. Note that the ‹g› isn't pronounced, and the ‘n‘ is velarized.
 * ‹Ö,ö› represents the phoneme ‹ø›, which doesn't exist in English. The closest sound would be the ou in would, only a bit higher. It is represented as in the French word peu, or the Norwegian word søt.
 * ‹Š,š› represents the phoneme ‹ʃ›, as in the English word cash.
 * ‹Ť,ť› represents phoneme ‹ʔ›, like the pause in the English phrase uh-oh. Note how you don't sayd uhhhoooh together, but you break them apart -- that's what ‹Ť,ť› does.
 * ‹Ü,ü› represents the phoneme ‹y›, which doesn't exist in English. Say ee and round your lips as if saying ‹ö›. It is represented as in the French word tu.
 * ‹Ẃ,ẃ› represents the phoneme ‹ɥ›, which doesn't exist in English. It is like a ‹j› + ‹w› sound (y + w for non-IPA users). It is represented as is in the French word lui.
 * ‹Ž,ž› represents the phoneme ‹ʒ›, as in the English word vision, or as in the French word je.
 * ‹Ż,ż› represents the phoneme ‹dz›, as in the English word cards. 

Acute Accent; Stress
Adwan adds acute accents (and double acute accents to all vowels with umlauts) to all vowels to add stress if the stress isn't on the penultimate syllable.
 * ‹Á,á› represents stress on the ‹a›.
 * ‹É,é› represents stress on the ‹e›.
 * ‹Í,í› represents stress on the ‹i›.
 * ‹Ó,ó› represents stress on the ‹o›.
 * ‹Ő,ő› represents stress on the ‹ö›.
 * ‹Ú,ú› represents stress on the ‹u›.
 * ‹Ű,ű› represents stress on the ‹ü›.
 * ‹Ý,ý› represents stress on the ‹y›.

Grave Accents; Diphthong Formation
Apart from acute accents, hačeks, grave accents are also added to vowels that create diphthongs. As Adwan is a phonemic language, double vowel clusters do not form diphthongs, but are pronounced each. A vowel cluster that has the second vowel with a grave accent creates the diphthong. Note: Diphthongs for the vowels ‹ỳ› are allophones of ‹ì›.
 * ‹À,à›
 * ‹Eà, eà›; represents the sound in the word can, stressed to sound slightly country.
 * ‹È,è›
 * ‹Iè, iè› represents another rounded sound, like ‹ià›. It sounds like a northern Norwegian "e", or like the word "kit", rather like "Kih-et", said in one syllable.
 * ‹Ì,ì›
 * ‹Aì, aì›; [aɪ̯]; represents the sound in kite, or eye. 
 * ‹Eì, eì›; [eɪ̯]; represents the sound in cake, or fate.
 * ‹Öì, öì›; [øɪ̯]; represents the sound of ‹ö› plus ‹y› or ‹i›.
 * ‹Uì, uì›; [uɪ̯]; represents the sound in the Spanish word muy. It's a combination of "oo" and "ee", for non-IPA readers.
 * ‹Ù,ù›
 * ‹Aù, aù›; represents the ow sound in cow.
 * ‹Eù, eù›; represents the eu sound in the Spanish word Europa. Like ew but with an open "e" rather than "i".
 * ‹Iù, iù›; represents the sound in English ew in one syllable.
 * ‹Où, où›; represents the o sound in the English word float. 
 * ‹Yù, yù›; is an allophone of ‹iù›

Ě, the silent one
Other than acute and grave accents, vowels don't have any other diacritics, except for ‹e›. The letter "e" can also have a háček added to it, though the use in this is quite confusing. Quite literally, ‹ě› is what seems to be a "decision" letter, for while every other letter in Adwan is pronounced -- as Adwan is a phonemic language -- the ‹ě› can either be silent or pronounced. The letter ‹ě› has one use.
 * The first main usage is with verb affixes. With the formation of verb affixes, the syllables grow in size and many times, the stress falls upon the e's that separate affixes from having potentially scary consonant clusters. ‹ě›, though it is pronounced the same as a regular old ‹e›, is put in between affixes to not only separate them orthographically, but to indicate that the ‹e› is optional. With verb affixes, if the speaker can pronounce the affixes without the separating ‹e›, then they can, but the ‹ě› is inserted to show that, indeed, an ‹e› can be pronounced. However, the ‹ě› does not appear between an affix that starts with a consonant while the preceding letter is a vowel.
 * 1) Excerpt: "...They should act towards one another..." --> "Dwaþryšěğam". The verb affix -ğam indicates the verb is in the middle voice (and the person is plural). For many, -š- and -ğ- together are not that hard to pronounce, but it makes it easier to have the option, which is where -ě- comes in.

Orthography
Adwan, for the most part, is quite a phonemic language, though it does carry its own writing rules. Mainly everything is written as it is pronounced, and everything is pronounced as it is written. Diphthongs even have special diacritics that show they're diphthongs, because vowel clusters are separately pronounced. One thing Adwan does have, however, is gemination.

Gemination in Adwan can be quite tricky, for just because a consonant is doubled, doesn't mean it should be geminated. In the Polish loanwoard Ďďovnyca, or earthworm, the two ‹d›'s (dʒ), are pronounced.

Gemination is triggered by two things: double consonants, and an accute accent. It does not matter if pronunciation already falls on the vowel, an acute is added to the vowel before the double consonants to produce gemination. Thus, double consonants that are word initial are always pronounced.

Note: gemination occurs in the locative for the first declensions:
 * Afkra ⟶ Áffkrena / Áffkreňa
 * Šuska ⟶ Šússkena / Šússkeňa
 * Arebyna ⟶ Arebýnnena, Arebýnneňa

Phonetic Mutations
===Palatalization ===

Palatalization in Adwan is tricky, as it is not shown in written speech whether a letter that precedes a ‹j› is to be palatalized or not. Vowels are never palatalized, as palatalization only ever happens to consonants. Most of the time, consonants are always palatalized if they precede a /j/. For example: In the word Skjorta (booth), the /k/ is palatalized to /kʲ/, which merges the sound of /k/ with /j/ to form one syllable. The /k/ in skjorta is palatalized because it precedes a /j/. It should be noted that /j/ doesn't palatalize consonants (technically, it would if it ended a word that has a penultimate letter as a consonant, by ‹j› never ends a word in Adwan), and in some dialects goes from /j/ to /ʝ/ (a stronger form of /j/). /J/ is only ever pronounced fully as /j/ when it begins a word. Note: /ɬ/, /w/, /ɥ/, /ʔ/, /l/, /r/, and occasionally /ð/ and /θ/ are never palatalized.

===Aspirative Lenition ===

Aspirative Lenition in Adwan isn't seen as much as Palatalization, or other phonetic mutations, though it is seen extensively in the second strong declension. Essentially, an aspirative consonant breaks diphthongs and vowels in to two. This process is used to indicate plural. Essentially, the vowel is split in half with an aspirative consonant, an ‹h›, in the middle. • Aì → Ahy (note, the "i" lengthens to a "y") • Eì → Ehy • Aù → Ahu • Eù → Ehu • Où → Ohu Etc. However, even single vowels have aspirative lenition. • A → Aha • E → Ehe • O → Oho • U → Uhu • Y → Yhy And of course, there are irregular vowels. • I → Yje • Ö → Uho • Ü → Uje

===Ablaut ===

Ablaut is the least organized of the phonetic mutations in Adwan just because none of them follow a typical pattern. Ablaut in Adwan isn't even considered just to be Ablaut, as it tends to express affrication and spirantization, in which letters like [f] become [v], of [θ] becoming [ð]. Many consonants change, therefore leaving this phenomenon nameless. Ablaut, however, works mainly with vowels as they shift to express grammatical change. Ablaut usually expresses grammatical number, though in the third strong declension, it expresses, along with aspirative lenition, grammatical case. An example of ablaut: • Vöréż → Vörúż (nominative singular to accusative singular).

===Nasalization ===

Nasalization is vital to Adwan, for it expresses a change in number in many declensions. For all of the first declension, vowels are nasalized to show the nouns being plural. The velar nasal consonant represents nasalization to vowels -- as it's only ever found near vowels -- ‹ň›, though many times the velar nasal is only merged with the vowel. • Afkra → Afkraň While a velar nasal is added to the word to pluralize, sometimes the velar nasal disappears in return for nasalization of the vowel. However, even if a velar nasal is still pronounced, vowels are still considered to go through nasalization due to the organized nasalization they all go through for number change.

Thus, with nasalization, afkraň, [afkraŋ] can become [afkrã].

===Gemination ===

Gemination occurs in Adwan mainly in case changes and names. Adwan doesn't geminate too many consonants, though it is exclusive to the locative first strong declension. However, there are specific rules. For a consonant to be geminated, the syllable before it must be stressed and represented with an acute -- or double accute -- accent. Geminized: Ánna = [an:a] Not-Geminized: Anna = [anna]. Note: A geminized ‹CH› does not repeat ‹ch›, but merely adds an ‹h› to it, therefore it would be Káchha, not Káchcha. Káchha = rock.

===Glottalization ===

Glottalization is another distinctive feature in Adwan's phonetics, for it occurs when two vowels, usually a root vowel with the addition of a vowel from an affix, merge but don't create hiatus, a slide, or a diphthong. A very common case is in the prefixes for the conunction "and", and in comparative adjective prefixes (taì, etc). Prefixes tend to carry most of the glottal stops in Adwan due to lack of hiatus, sliding, or creating a diphthong. • Neì + Ánna (... and Anna) = NeìťÁnna [neɪʔan:a], not NeìÁnna [neɪ'an:a]. However, some words do go through glottalization when changing general meanings. • Maìjer (Director) → Maìťer (Direction). This, however, is not terribly common, and is only seen as a form of depalatalization. In Adwan, the glottal stop is represented by the phonemes ‹Ť,ť›.

Syntax & Morphology
Adwan is an inflecting language, where many words change their form depending on their function in a sentence. This may pose a problem for many English speakers, Chinese speakers, or other speakers of analytical languages, for analytical languages depend on word order to convey their meaning, as opposed to morphology.

Adwan, as an inflecting language, inflects verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, numbers, and determiners depending on their function in a sentence, or their case (or person, mood, voice, tense and aspect, for verbs).

Word Order
Because of the inflections that go on in Adwan, word order is generally a lot freer than it would be if it didn't have all those inflections. Adwan generally follows an SVO word order, though many word orders are feasible depending on the mood or emphasis they want to put on the sentence. Many times, word order can change voice and mood to words without actually changing the mood or voice. In the OVS order, the verb should be in the passive voice, but because of the word order, the passive voice is not needed. It is, however, much more common and easier to follow a generic SVO order and use morphology to change meaning, rather than word order.

Cases
Adwan has seven cases to which decline its nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numbers and determiners. They are the nominative, the genitive, the accusative, the dative, the ablative, the locative and the vocative.

The Nominative and the Accusative are subject-object cases. No prepositions govern either case; the verb distinguishes the subject and the direct object; in the phrase Paul eats apples, "Paul" is in the nominative, and "apples" is in the accusative. Nothing ever stands in the way between a nominative and an accusative case, other than the verb, theoretically.

The Genitive case is the case of posession and relation. Since Adwan's ratio of adjectives is low compared to its nouns and verbs, many nouns act as adjectives when used in the genitive. In the phrase The dog house, when compound word usage is not preferred, the genitive case is used, in which the phrase would then mean The house of dogs, in which "dogs" would be in the genitive. the genitive is ideally the "of" case; posessors always follow the nouns, rather than the nouns following their posessors like in other languages. In the girl's cat, the girl is the posessor and comes before the cat; however, in Adwan, the girl comes after the cat, because a possessive noun is like saying "of [a/the]". Therefore, the girl's cat would be the cat of the girl. Note: Irregular prepositions govern the Genitive case, but since there are only a few, the genitive doesn't qualify as a prepositional case.

The Dative, Ablative and the Locative cases are prepositional cases in Adwan; these are the three cases which are governed by prepositions. Many prepositions are alike and must therefore have a distinction to their usage, which is why the three cases come in. The Dative case refers to the indirect object as a recipent of the verb; the ablative case refers to the indirect object as the causative noun, and the locative case refers to the indirect object as a locational noun. The Vocative case refers to a dialogue case, used when addressing someone in specific. It is the least complicated of the cases, and only ever used in day to day dialogue, rather than writing (though it does occur a lot in writing with dialogues). In the phrase Hey, Paul!, "Paul" is in the vocative, because it is being adressed.
 * The ablative case is the most isolated of these three, as its usage differes from the dative and locative. It is the case of instrument and cause, therefore in the phrase Paul eats apples with a fork, "fork" would be in the ablative.
 * The dative case and the locative case share many prepositional uses, but establish a line of distinction when it comes to their usage. The locative case uses prepositions of direction and of location, while the dative uses the same prepositions but doesn't refer to location or direction. In the phrase I'm going to the store, the "store" is in the locative, because "to" refers to a place; however, in the phrase I gave an apple to my mom, "mom" would be in the dative, because it is a recipent of an action. Many times, it is easy to distinguish which preposition and case to use by seeing their usage. If it's not instrument, or location, it's in the dative, most likely.

Prepositions
Prepositions in Adwan govern three cases; the dative, the ablative, and the locative. Each preposition is assigned to only one case, as there is no amiguity, however, many prepositions are copulas of eachother (such as v and ef, which both mean "in" but describe different situations.

Below is a list of all prepositions used in Adwan, listed under their respective cases Italicized prepositions are default prepositions for the respective case; therefore, a case without a preposition is automatically assumed to be that preposition.
 * Dative
 * 1) At - Ła
 * 2) Compared to - Deìnaìpora
 * 3) For - Y
 * 4) Than - Kö
 * 5) To - Šču*
 * 6) Toward - Aì
 * Ablative
 * 1) About - Ðö
 * 2) According to - Voch
 * 3) After - Ďeňkwy
 * 4) Against - Seď
 * 5) Among - Kaìch
 * 6) As opposed to - Vsorysjonšču
 * 7) Because of - Oďy
 * 8) Before - Kpy
 * 9) By - Her
 * 10) Concerning - Ğaù
 * 11) Despite - Or
 * 12) During - Kureùň
 * 13) From - Žeìň*
 * 14) In - V
 * 15) Like - Som
 * 16) On behalf of - Def
 * 17) Regarding - Jar
 * 18) Since - Jeùr
 * 19) Until - Ďeù
 * 20) Versus - Raùch
 * 21) Via - Sery
 * 22) With - Zuþ
 * 23) Without - Saþ
 * Locative
 * 1) Across - Tra
 * 2) Against - Des
 * 3) Around - Naìsle
 * 4) At - Er*
 * 5) Behind - Chva
 * 6) Between - Þ
 * 7) By - Ièt
 * 8) From - Ďa
 * 9) In - Ef
 * 10) In front of - Jeg
 * 11) Into - Šlaù
 * 12) Near - Per
 * 13) Next to - Vel
 * 14) On - Ü
 * 15) Outside of - Daùr
 * 16) Over - Chu
 * 17) To - Al
 * 18) Under - Och
 * Genitive
 * 1) Ago - Doň; used prepositionally, rather than postposionally in English. Three years ago in Adwan would be Doň jaìsar nyhy, or Ago of three years.

First Declension
Šlyna = Child;
 * Note: Look at the "Orthography" and read on Gemination for an explanation on the locative.

Second Declension
Bre = Adult

Third Declension
The first declension deals with words that end in -és, -ér, and -éż, which are typically adjectives. Motér = Strange

Weak Declensions
Declensions shown below mainly consist of suffixes and infixes.

First Declension
The third declension deals with all nouns ending in -ch, -g, -s, and -z. Feaz = Tourist

Second Declension
The fourth declension deals with all nouns ending in -ď, -l, -r, and -ž. Maìr = Mayor

Third Declension
The fifth declension deals with all nouns ending in -c, -ð, -t, and -ż. Kaùleð = Hiker

Fourth Declension
The sixth declension deals with all nouns ending in -n, -k, -f, and -v. Marin = Sailor

Fifth Declension
The seventh declension deals with all nouns ending in -d, -ğ, -m, and -þ. Parm = Road

Verbs
Verbs in Adwan are the most complex part of speech in Adwan due to their agglutinative nature. Rather than change endings to change mood, tense, aspect, person and number, Adwan employs a number of affixes to change such things. The only thing resembling fusional conjugation in verbs are the conjugations per person, which change per conjugation.

Adwan has three conjugations; verbs ending in -an, verbs ending in -en, and verbs ending in -on.

Person
Adwan conjugates to 4 persons, with the 3rd person having an additional 3 genders, thus having a total of 6 persons total. Below is a table for the conjugation for each type of verb and for each person. NOTE: The nominative pronoun is NEVER used in general sentences, as the person is conjugated right into the verb. The nominative pronoun, however, does double as an oblique case, and, when used with a general pause and a comma, does not come off as redundant. Nominative pronouns are only used in oblique usages and when to emphasize certain things.

In Adwan, the first step (and probably only step depending on the context) of conjugating a verb is conjugating it for its person. In Adwan, rather than changing verb endings for each tense, aspect, voice and mood, affixes are added to the conjugated verb.

Tense & Aspect
Tense and Aspect come off as merged in Adwan, for there is no separate affix for each tense and each aspect, but rather, the combination of Tense and Aspect produce one affix (past perfective has the affix -je-, while the past imperfective has the affix -eży-).

Adwan is a language rich with tense and aspect. There are three tenses (past, present and future), and three aspects (perfective, perfect, and imperfective). Tense alone, however, is not enough to express what is going with the actions, therefore, Aspects are employed (and merged with tenses) to change the aspect of the verb. Compare ate with had eaten, etc. Below is a table with the respective affixes for each combination. NOTE: -Ø- means no affix is added.

Question Particle
A trait shared by many languages, Adwan also features the use of an interrogative particle. Not exactly asking where, when, or why, the interrogative particle acts much like the French particle est-ce and the English particle do.

The particle, Jeť, is introduced at the beggining of the question. Note the usage in the dialogue below.

Fatryna: Jeť možus daì afkruň?

Paùl: ''Žádu! Možas daì afkruň. Þaùras ğorju kony!''

Fatryna: ''Jot þyþ šwéllyn. Aùň jeť tu daì al šússkena? ''

Paùl: ''Tacha. Tornaìvas joù. ''

Fatryna: Pólla tornaìvus?

Paùl: ''Pyvloti... pyvloti aìrany. ''

Fatryna: Á...ďuný, dwatas.

Paùl: ''Žaùde. Ďeù jéchhena!''

Notice that the particle jeť is used mainly in yes or no questions. Of course, question asking is not only limited to particles, as interrogative pronouns are also used extensively when asking questions. Below is a translation of the conversation above.

Fatryna: Do you still eat apples?

Paùl: ''Of course! I still eat apples. I like them alot!''

Fatryna: ''That's good. And do you still go to school? ''

Paùl: ''No, unfortunately. I work now. ''

Fatryna: Where do you work?

Paùl: ''A bookstore... Aìrany's bookstore. ''

Fatryna: ''Ah... well, I should go.''

Paùl: ''Me too. Bye!''