Adwan

Adwanic, or Adwan (Adwanic: Áðẃan, ISO code: AD, ADW) is the language of the Adwanic tribe, which, up until now, was believed to be mythological. The word Áðẃyn means "nomadic", "always-in-motion" or "never-in-one-place" in Adwanic. It is still being researched and studied to see which major language family Adwan fits into. It shows a good deal of relativity to Latin grammar, and has a good number of words borrowed from Latin, English, Spanish, Icelandic, and French. It was always said, in the myths of Europe's people, that the Adwanic tribe was a group of people, no more than a few hundred, that, up until the tenth century; it is still being debated as to where they resided, but it has been postulated that the Adwanic tribe, as stated in their name, were indeed extremist nomads, spending most of the year (10 out of the 12 months in a year) travelling. It has been said they originally hailed from north Russia, in the mountains, and left due to the cold, frigid weather.

Not much is known today about the Adwan tribe, save for the little bit of discovered literature and writings that will, hopefully, guide us to bringing back the mysterious Adwanic culture.

=Phonology= Adwanic is a purely phonetic language. It is unsure how Adwanic runes were transliterated, but it is said that somewhere in the mountains lived a near-extinct population which used the same runes; transliterated from those runes is what Adwan is today. Modern Adwanic speakers (mainly descendants of the Adwanics that are reconnecting with their culture) use a modified version of the Latin Alphabet. Ironically, while Adwanic hasn't been seen to be related to any main language, it does borrow a good deal of words from Latin, Germanic, and Slavic origins, therefore, Adwanic has been said to have a very mixed sound, sounding like a mixture of Icelandic, Czech, Spanish, and Norwegian.

=Adwan's Alphabet (Foskorav Áðẃaneş)= As stated before, the Adwanic alphabet uses an extended version of the Latin alphabet to represent seperate phonemes, or seperate sounds. Adwan is completely phonetic -- there are no such things are Diphthongs or Triphthongs in Adwan, and all pronunciation rules rely on the speaker and the way it's written.

While the Adwanic alphabet may look somewhat intimidating, don't be afraid. Learning the Adwanic alphabet is easier than learning another language's diphthongs, mainly because each letter represents a sound. There are no silent letters, no rules around it; everything is always pronounced as seen.

Stress
Stress in Adwan was never too strict; it all depended on the tone of the sentence. Usually the stress will depend on what the speaker is saying; however, generally, the penultimate (second to last) syllable is always the one to be stressed.

Ex: Sun --> Solęka= Soh-LAY-kah.

=Grammar= To say Adwanic's grammar didn't cause headaches to the average person that didn't speak an inflecting language would be a lie. Adwanic is a heavily inflected language that inflects Verbs for Tense, Mood, Person and Aspect; Nouns for number, and Adjectives, Numbers, Pronouns and Quantifiers.

Declensions, an overview.
To see declension tables for Adwan's Nouns, Determiners, and Adjectives, go here.

Declensions occur in Adwan for a variety of reasons, the main ones to A) mark the function of each noun, adjective, number and quanitifer, and to B) free up word order. The Adwans didn't like limitations much (which can be seen in the incredibly free word order of their language), so having a language with free word order was something they positively needed to have. While nouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, numbers and quantifiers are declined to the same 7 cases in which a lot of European languages use, not all the cases are exactly the same.

The Nominative case marks the subject of the sentence, or the head of the subject phrase. It is the doer of the verb. This is probably the easiest of the cases to learn, as it shares this usability with other languages. Note: Adwan doesn't have first personal pronouns to use in the nominativve (he, she, we, they, I); because of this, it shares its null-subject trait with other null-subject languages, like Czech or Spanish.

The Ablative case is similar to Latin's Ablative case, and also Czech's Instrumental case. Many Adwanic people that settled in what is now The Czech Republic consider this to be the Instrumental Case, but nevertheless, they both mark the same thing. It marks the causive noun. In English, the Ablative is marked by the prepositions "because of", "from" and "of "(not the possessive, though). Ex: The latter broke because of the weight. The weight would be declined in the Ablative, because it is the noun which causes the subject to do the verb.

The Dative case marks the indirect object in Adwan. In English, indirect objects are usually tagged with prepositions, like "to" and "for". It marks the object that was not affected directly. Ex: I bought the teacher a yellow cake. The teacher would be declined in the Dative, because it is not the direct object; the verb's action is directed towards the cake, and the cake is for the teacher.

The Accusative case marks the direct object; the object to recieve the action of the verb. The Accusative and the Nominative usually go hand in hand in many sentences, as there is always a subject, a verb, and an object with is affected by the verb. Ex: The cat hissed at the dog. Who did the cat hiss at? A good question to ask yourself in finding this case is "The subject did the verb to who/what?".

The Genitive marks the possessor of an item with posession. Although most of Adwan has free word order, the basic Genitive case has a rule that the noun in the nominative (the possessor) be put after the item of posession. This rule is nulled when the item of posession is in the nominative, as the subject is generally preferred to be last.. Ex: the girl's car crashed. -> The girl is in the Genitive, because she is in possession of the car. The Genitive also has another usage; the Genitive of Relation, which is the case in which all prepositions of relation use; ex: She was teaching us about the Holocaust. The Holocaust would be declined in the genitive case (with the preposition!). Note: A noun in the genitive without a preposition is automatically assumed to be using the Genitive of Possession. NOTE: most things declined in the Genitive are pronouns, as many cases of using possession are used by pronouns in Adwan (my car... your car... their car...).

The Locative case marks the location. While most prepositions are attached to either the Ablative, the Accusative, or the Genitive, the Locative claims prepositions of distance, and and location. The preposition ‘at’ generally goes towards Locative, as it is generally used with distance or location. She threw the ball at me, although not grammatically correct in Adwan, would claim the Dative, rather than the Locative; however, a sentence like At my house... the house would be declined to the locative (with the preposition ‘at’ would be used with it), and ‘my’ would just be declined to the genitive. 

The Vocative case is the second easiest of them all; it merely points out direct calling and names. "O Father!" would be a great example. The vocative case marks the noun that is being directly addressed. Ex: Mary, I cannot believe you did that. Mary would be in the Vocative, because she is being directly adressed. NOTE: The vocative case agglutinates for most names, and declines for nouns.

Many nouns, adjectives, determiners, and numbers are declined to a case that fits its needs. With everything declined, suffixes will point the direction to what does what. It doesn't matter if the Subject goes before, after, or isn't even near the verb, for as long as it is in the nominative, it won't change the meaning -- atleast not the meaning of who did the verb.

NOTE: Proper nouns such as names and places are NOT declined, but agglutinated.

Syntax
Syntax in Adwan is not very strict at all. Due to the heavy inflections that go on, plus helping rules, many word variations can be used.

For example, "The dog jumps over the fox," in Adwan, using the same proposed word order is "Dogólœv rompy xu martydø." However, with all the inflections that Adwan has gone through, it can be worded as so:


 * Rompy dogóv xu martyt. Jumps-it dog-NOM over fox-ACC.
 * Rompy martyt xu dogóv. Jumps-it fox-ACC over fox-NOM.
 * Xu dogóv rompy martyt. Over-ACC dog-NOM jumps-it fox-ACC.
 * Xu rompy martyt dogóv. Over-ACC jumps-it fox-ACC dog-NOM.
 * Martyt dogóv xu rompy. Fox-ACC dog-NOM over jumps-it.
 * Martyt rompy xu dogóv. Foc-ACC jumps-it over dog-NOM.

It doesn't matter what the word order is in Adwan, as it all means the same thing, for each noun is marked in a special case that tells what the noun does. For example -- it doesn't matter where the subject is, for if it's the first or last word in the sentence, it will always do the verb due to it being declined in the Nominative case.

Now, the same cannot be said for more complicated phrases, but we'll get to that later.

However, the free word order can become some-what of a linguistic anarchy, and the Adwanics did not like that. Generally speaking, a VOS word order was followed throughout the whole of the Adwanic language's history. It was only in poetry and literature, the little of it that was found, that word order was different. Most of the time, a certain mood is attached to a certain word order, general speak being attached to VOS.

Example of VOS; The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Adwanic: Rompy xu laznor dogólœd kafne martyvø.

Direct Gloss: Jumps-it over lazy-acc dog-acc brown-nom fox-nom.

Notice how since the dog and the fox switched motives in this sentence, their endings are different.

About Noun Declensions
Nouns in Adwan are declined according to number and class. Nouns are versatile words, and are typically genderless, for the gender is usually determined by the verb or other adjectives of the like.

There are 4 different classes of nouns in Adwan, and they are all classified on their origin.
 * Words of Adwanic origin end in -KA, and -YN.
 * Words of Romanic origin end in -TA.
 * Words of Germanic origin end in -ÓL.

Every noun ends in one of the above endings, depending on the origin of the noun. Incidentally, these are the classes that nouns are declined to, right beside numbers.

To see the table for Noun Declensions, go to Declension Tables.

About Adjectives and their Declensions
Adjectives are probably one of Adwan's most defining features; they come in many different classes, usually determined by their state and usage, and have the same number of declensions as nouns do, even if they don't decline to number.

Adjectives are important to not only the Adwan language, but to the Adwan culture, for Adjectives were used rather liberally in old Adwanic texts. Adjectives can be categorized into two different types: Descriptives and Predicates. (Note: Most adjectives have two different parts to them, the Descriptive and the Predicates).

Descriptive Adjectives are adjectives that paint a picture; they describe the noun's exterior. For the most part, Descriptives, in English, always precede nouns; funnily enough, Adjectives have no specific word order in Adwan, so long they stay within their respective clauses. Predicate Adjectives are adjectives that describe the subject, for the most part. In English, they almost always follow the verbs. An example of a predicate would be emotions in the past form. However, as stated before, there is not always only one Adjective per type. The Adjective ‘blue’ can be both a Descriptive and a Predicate, depending on the usage. Shown above is an example of the adjective ‘blue’ being used as a predicate, rather than a descriptive adjective. Adjective classifications are incredibly important due to the nature of where they go after declension. If blue was always a descriptive, it could never be used as a predicate, and would always describe the noun, rather than describe how it was. There's definitely a big difference between "The red door turned blue," and "The red blue door turned."
 * The blue door stood in front of the quick fox.
 * The tall, yellow flower blossomed under the bright sun.
 * I am bored.
 * I am cold.
 * She was tired.
 * We are sleepy.
 * The door we knocked on was blue

Descriptive Adjectives will end in either -ÉN, -ÁS, or -ÚM. Note: Between inner type endings, the endings don't necessarily have different changes, more so, they just categorize the descriptive adjectives furthermore; ex: descriptive colors will always end in -ás.

Predicate Adjectives will end in either -ÁT, -RO, or '''-ŃE. '''

The declension of each adjective will depend on the ending and classification of each noun. Brown, kafás, in the nominative, will always be kafne, while groén, big, in the nominative will always be gronor.

Further Information To see declension tables for Adwan's Nouns, and Numbers, Adjectives, go here.
 * Descriptives in -én are usually size related, but not always.
 * Descriptives in -ás are usually color related, but not always.
 * Descriptives in -úm are usually complex and are like the -ing adjectives in English that precede nouns.
 * Predicates in -át are usually size and color related, but not always.
 * Predicates in -ro usually have to do with emotions, but not always.
 * Predicates in -ńe usually have to do with complex adjectives sometimes not known in English (like glyzeravńe, which is like saying ‘wasn't, but is now in the process of being clean´.
 * Eksplotumy glyzeravlœ sy vóšav. (My house, which wasn't, but is now in the process of being clean, exploded.) is a great example of the above mentioned.
 * Predicates and Descriptives ending in -úm and -ńe generally have verbs built in, letting two verbs come into the picture without having to create another clause.

Personal Pronouns
Like in many Indo-European languages (including those that don't even have regular inflection), pronouns are inflected. How would one know when she is the one doing it, or the one having something being done to?

Due to Adwan's conjugations, the Nominative case for Personal Pronouns are lost, merged with the conjugations (Rompan; Rompy = it jumps, Rompo = she jumps, Rompe = he jumps, etc).

Demonstrative Pronouns
Adwan has very many demonstrative pronouns, unlike modern languages like English or French. A demonstrative pronoun can go in many directions, such as Henu, which is "that over there", or "Aénu", which is "the here nearest to him."

Note: Many of indeed fell out of use, but are still understood.

=Lexicon=

Numbers
Numbers in Adwan do decline according to the case it applies to, so you will never actually see a number end in ‘-vo’. (Note, in case you didn't notice, ALL NUMBERS END IN -VO).
 * Zero - Næýð (Nænu, the quantifier/determiner ‘none’ is used rather than ‘zero’. The number ‘zero’ does not exist in Adwan.)
 * One - Nyvo
 * Two: Cavo
 * Three - Tervo
 * Four - Høvo
 * Five - Kynvo
 * Six - Nąvo
 * Seven - Kęvo
 * Eight - Tøvo
 * Nine - Hævo
 * Ten - Cyvo
 * Hundred - Wyvo
 * Thousand - Zyvo
 * Million - Ŕyvo
 * Billion - Śyvo
 * Trillion - Ńyvo
 * Quadrillion - Šryvo
 * Quintillion - Šnyvo

The counting system in Adwan is very much simple.


 * 45 = Høcykynvo. Hø = 4, Cy = 10, Kyn = 5.

The rule for Adwan's numbers are of great importance when counting. If any number between 1-9 precedes a Ten, Thousand, Million, Billion, etc, it is multiplied.
 * Tercyvo. Three ten = Three × ten.

And if a number between 1-9 comes after a Ten, Thousand, Million, Billion, etc, it is added.
 * Cytervo = Ten three - Ten + three.

Notice how Tervo went became Tervam when used in the Accusative, and how Cavo became Canæ. Notice how when Tervo (three) was used in the nominative, the ending ‘am’ from Tervam became ‘næ’, in Ternæ.
 * The two dogs jumped over the three lazy dogs.
 * Rompnyş xu lazne tervam martyt canæ dogóv.
 * The three dogs jumped over the two lazy dogs.
 * Rompnyş xu lazne ternæ martyt cavam dogóv.

=Dictionary= ...

=Example text= -Hello and Goodbye are irregularities in Adwan; the complex verb ‘Voran’ literally means ‘to send greetings’. In the Informal goodbye, ‘Tavora’ is a conjugated way of negating those greetings. In Adwan, it was very common for greetings to be valued as much as the presence of one another, so when departing, one would take his greetings with him or her, there for ‘Tavora u!’.