Esupanyá

Esupanyá is a Spanish-derived language that was spoken on the continent of Nueva Tierra on a planet colonized by 21st century earthlings. It evolves distinctly to other languages of the Hispanian Language Family due to heavy influence mainly from Japanese and later some smaller minority languages. Through its history, the vocabulary absorbed many words from Japanese itself and during later moments when the identity of the Esupanyá people consolidated, it borrowed many words from Epeó, Ifpañul and vice versa.

=Setting=

The conworld for this language as of now is still taking shape, but what can be said is that the settlements of Spanish-speaking populations more or less are found on the continent's north and Esupanyá emerged from a dialect in the east of the settlements. The language has no native speakers anymore but it is well attested, having several texts written with the Roman Alphabet and also considerably less in modified Hiragana and Katakana.

=Phonology=

The sound inventory can be described as a cross between Spanish and Japanese:

Consonants
Consonants are generally spelt phonetically. The exception is 'rh' which is etymological.


 * 'r' is pronounced as a flap or somewhat like 'l', even word-initially.
 * 'rh' formerly was pronounced as a trill but lost that to become a flap.
 * (dz/ts) depending on place of articulation.

Vowels
The 5 ‘pure’ vowels: a, e, i, o, u. Words with a vowel with an accent (á) are long. Vowels with arc (â) have a nasal quality and if it is the only marked vowel in the word, it is long. Note however that depending on the speaker, it’s stress that is refered to or actual vowel length.

=Basic Grammar=

Articles
Articles (the equivalent of English ‘the’) aren’t used in Esuvano. So, while I give dog bone isn’t really grammatical, in Esupanyá Yo-se piro gwiso doy is alright. The word ‘the’ is not needed since word order and subject marking (more on that!) make it clear what word has what role in the sentence. The word ‘a’ (to) can be added to the sentence before ‘piro’ (dog) if it is very necessary to point out that the action is towards it.

The indefinite article ‘uno’ is used basically the same way as in the English ‘a’ or ‘an’ or ‘one’, and doesn’t conjugate for number. Number is explained under Nouns below.

Pronouns
Largely in base to the quite elaborate pronoun system Spanish has (in comparison with English) and the fact that Japanese culture emphasizes different pronouns to reflect the level of familiarity, respect and social status, the pronominal system remained quite elaborate. Some levelling happened with a few but it remains similar, reflecting the nominative, dative, possessive and reflexive roles they have:

One has to notice though that there aren’t distinctions between the former 3rd person singular and 3rd person plural, resembling common Asian languages. Number is distinguished for the 1st and 2nd person, even a gender distinction which equates to English ‘he’ and ‘she’ and the Spanish ‘ellos’, ‘ellas’, ‘vosotros’, ‘vosotras’.

The 1st person plural reflexive became a suffix glued to the end of the verb it inflected as in ‘fwimono’ (we went) to disambiguate with ‘no’ (no) wich usually goes before the verb as this pronoun would.

It’s useful to know that:

The subject row is the equivalent of English ‘I, he, she, we’:

Yo estáy borácho = I am drunk.

Reflexives are used for the object receives, as in:

Me ravo = I wash myself

or Éo me ama = He loves me

Te avo = I love you or Te ava = You love yourself or He/she loves you

Kerivono = We love eachother. or Éo avano = He loves us

As Esupanyá doesn’t distinguish indirect objects from direct ones as Spanish, so reflexive pronouns are used for those.

Zo me/te/re/he biste = You saw me/yourself(fam)/yourself(formal)/them


 * The Comitative case equates to English use of ‘with me’ as in ‘She is with me’ or Spanish ‘Ella está conmigo’. This is acheved by adding 'kôn' to the Object Pronoun, as in 'Kônmi', with me.


 * Possesive doesn’t distinguish between ‘my’ and ‘mine’ which means that a phrase like ‘mio piro’ means either ‘my dog’ or ‘the dog that is mine’.

Mi dió = He gave to me
 * The Object is used as in English, a pronoun preceded by ‘to’, as in:

Verbs
Verbs are much less complex than in Spanish, without the future and past subjunctive moods. Almost all verbs are regular, except for the auxiliary and the ‘to be’. Verbs only conjugate in the plural differently and in the sometimes 1st person.

Regular Verbs
=Dictionary= ...

=Example text=

''Pwibro aomáw-se deváw de ramo Bara disî. Ke avise rhuio-se de pwibro disde kásta esukuchá pwiê disî. Ramo-se tamvî asoshyáw a dramô está.''

A drowned town is said to be underneath Bala lake. It is said that sounds from the town can sometimes be heard from the shore. The lake is also associated with a water dragon.