Zwani

Zwani is a language spoken in the Zwan Kingdom (Zwanas Davigulús), where it is the sole official language of it's entire population of 43 million people. 

General information
Zwani is a synthetic nominative-accusative head-initial language. It is an Imanith language with large influences from Turkish and Spanish, and with smaller, but noticeable, influences from Armenian, Polish, and, more recently, English. Word order is generally SVO, but the subject pronoun can be dropped given that it is personal, not polypersonal, and in the nominative case. Verbs conjugate for person, number, tense, aspect, and mood. Nouns decline for case and number. Pronouns decline for gender, number, case, and person.

History
Modern Zwani has been standardized since the Zwan Kingdom became a constitutional diarchy in 1914. Before this, multiple dialects of Zwani and multiple other Imanith languages were spoken throughout the Kingdom. It was written in the constitution that any official language needed to be standardized by the government, and the first comprehensive grammar of Zwani was commisioned. Many other Imanith languages are still spoken regionally within the kingdom, but few, if any, have more than a million speakers. The notable influence of so many languages on Zwani is due to the many odd alliances, mostly with far-away nations, the Zwan people had throughout their history, many of which still stand to this day.

The language is different from Middle Zwani, which fell out of usage sometime in the mid-1700s, due to the large number of Turkish and Spanish loans, the loss of dual number, the extreme simplification of verb conjugation, the loss of ejective stops and affricates, the higher rate of affixing, the complete loss of the Vocative case (where it would be used historically, the nominative case is now used), the merging of the partitive and genetive cases, and the merging of the dative and the benefactive cases among other small differences.

Consonants

 * A nasal consonant can assimilate to a labiodental or dental before labiodental or dental consonant, but these nasals are not seperate phonemes. Similarly, before a voiced consonant, /θ/ becomes /ð/, but it isn't a seperate phoneme.
 * The letters X and Q may appear in loan words, and are pronounced /ks/ and /k/ respectively.

Dipthongs
All dipthongs can combine with [j] or [w] to form a syllable nucleus.

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

Pronouns
Pronouns are highly irregular and do not follow normal declension patterns as other nouns do. Zwani is a pro-drop language so nominative pronouns are usually omitted. However, 3rd person pronouns are usually not omitted if the gender distinction is necessary.

Polypersonal pronouns
Polypersonal pronouns express the subject and object as a one-word pronoun in Zwani. They agree with the subject and object and can only be used when the subject (nominative) and the object (accusative) are both pronouns. Verbs used alongside a polypersonal pronoun conjugate for the nominative person and not the accusative. When polypersonal pronouns can be used, they are used. Therefore, to say I hate him, cidzuli olu, despite being grammatically correct, is considered incorrect and uneducated. The correct way to say it would be yolu cidzuli. Instances where both persons are the same (such as A1S-N1S: iwo) are reflexive pronouns.

Zwani is the only surviving Imanith language to preserve polypersonal pronouns.

Verbs
Zwani verbs are highly regular. There are two verb classes (weak and strong) which conjugate differently. Verbs actually conjugate only for person, number, and tense but a synthetic "verb" conveys aspect and mood.There are no irregular verbs in Zwani.

The preverb
The preverb fusionally indicates information that the normal verb cannot. This includes aspect, mood, and negativity. The negative particle is ńe which can orthographically stand on its own or written as a verb prefix, but is always pronounced as part of the verb. Tense and mood are both indicated by one fusional suffix, which are all listed in the table below. The final vowel is omitted if the verb begins with a vowel.

Strong verbs
Verbs with the infinitive ending in -k are native strong verbs, but this also encompasses loans from Turkish and rarely English. Historically, strong verbs had an extremely complex conjugation that was sometimes completely different depending on the verb, but this irregularity is lost in Zwani.

Weak verbs
Weak verbs end with -r when in the infinitive. Historically, weak verbs always had a simple conjugation. Weak verbs encompass all loans from Spanish, Polish, Russian, Armenian, and Georgian, but only sometimes English.

Compound verbs
Compound verbs (verbs that are preceeded by an auxillary verb) are fairly simple. The entire verb (ex: start driving, stop playing) requires only one synthetic verb. The first verb (the auxillary) conjugates for person/tense, the second is left in infintive form, and the synthetic verb follows them.

Participles
To form a participle, the third person plural conjugation of a verb is used. The prefix pe- is added to the beginning of a verb if it begins with a consonant and m- is added if it begins with a vowel. Past participles take a purely epenthetic suffix in the form of ''- ç. ''

The gerund
The gerund (a verbal noun) in Zwani is the infinitive form of a verb (-k/r) that declines normally as a masculine noun.

Declension
Nouns in Zwani have three genders, each of which decline differently. Feminine nouns end in a front or near-front vowel, neutral nouns end in a central or back vowel, and masculine nouns end in a consonant. Nouns decline for six cases: nominative, accusative, dative, genetive, insturmental, and locative.
 * The nominative case marks the subject.
 * The accusative case marks the direct object of a clause, but also that of a preposition.
 * The dative case marks the indirect object, but also functions as a benefactive case.
 * The genetive case shows possession or apposition, but also functions as a partitive case.
 * The insturmental case marks an object being used for something. This can be using an object to do something (ex: i write with the pencil) or using a place for a gathering (ex: we had a party at my house). Using the locative case for the latter construction is considered uneducated.
 * The locative case marks location in at or on something. There is no distinction between the three other than context. It is also used to mark certain locative prepositions, but not all.

Masculine declension
Masculine declensions are pretty straight-forward and do not require any truncating whatsoever. Nouns instead, essentially, suffix case endings.

Determiners
Determiners preceed the noun the modify. There is no indefinite article. The noun is assumed indefinite if there isn't a determiner suffixed onto it.

Adjectives
All native adjectives end in a consonant. They precede the noun they modify, can take on a comparative or superlative suffix, and agree with it's case. Adjectives do not agree with noun gender.

Adverbs
Adverbs, like adjectives, preceed the verb they modify. To derive an adverb from an adjecitve, suffix -au, prior to declension.

Vocabulary
 Zwani Dictionary  at ConWorkShop (updated frequently)  

Numbers
Numbers in Zwani almost completely irregular from 0-99. Numbers past 100 are formed simply: by multiplication and addition. A base, such as azac (hundred), cannot represent 100 by itself. Because of this, ef is needed in order to represent 100, resulting in efazac. Two vowels next to each other from forming larger numbers are pronounced with a hiatus. The suffix -wu is added to denote ordinal numbers. Adverbial numbers (once, twice, thrice) are formed by the suffix -lu.

Mathematics
Many math words in Zwani are loans from Turkish. These are verbs and are conjugated as such. In Zwani, numbers are treated as third-person nouns.

Example Text
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 1