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 planet of Newosweik was colonized by 21st century humans, and one of the first settlements was in the continent of Nueva Tierra (named after the unoriginal proposal of early explorer Gustavo Eisenbaum). Esupanyá as a language flourished in the east coast of the Central Gulf of Nueva Tierra when populations of Spanish speakers and those of Japanese speakers merged.

The language has no native speakers any more but it is well attested, having several texts written with the Roman Alphabet and also considerably less in modified Hiragana and Katakana called Shîbûsho, in addition to a number of descendants. In some parts of Newosweik up to our days, the language is still held in high esteem and many borrowings from it happen, even though other more recent languages are challenging Esupanyá's place among scholars.

=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.


 * '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 referred to or actual vowel length.

Phonotactics
The main constraint on Esupanyá is large consonant clusters that get broken down into smaller ones. For example, 'estrella' (star) -> 'esturea'.

Nasal vowels, if word-finally, use a linking 'n' with the next word if it begins with a vowel. This, means that the following is pronounced this way:

araô asó (blue cotton) /ara'õna'so/,

where the two words were divided by an epenthetic 'n'.

=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 each other. 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.


 * Possessive 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:

Relative Pronouns
Ké covers "that", "which", "who", "whom" and the null pronoun in their functions of subject and direct-object relative pronouns.

The letter (that) I sent you was long (referring to direct object) (Letter that you.directObj sent.1st.past long was)
 * Kárita ké te mâni rárao ira

People who cannot read or write are called illiterate (referring to subject)
 * Raîne ké no rí o eskurivi have anarufaveta he yavâ

That person, whom I know very well, is not to be trusted
 * Se persana, ké yo muy bî konásuko, konyávre no é.

Demonstratives
An interesting development is the separation between demonstratives into the traditional Spanish ones that had 3 levels of proximity, used according to the proximity of the person/object being described, and 3 Japanese ones that mean the same but took the role sociolinguistic role of humbleness or respect towards the person who's being addressed. Thus, there is 3 kinds of demonstratives divided into politeness, making a total of 6:

The original usage of the Japanese demonstratives fit roughly with the Spanish one and little problem came from incorporating them. Historically they were more common with the higher class speakers.

Interrogatives
They are as follow:


 * ke - what
 * kavo - what
 * kî - who
 * dâne - where
 * poruki - why
 * pa - which

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.

As this is not a creole language or a pidgin but more of just a Spanish dialect that became increasingly influenced by the Japanese phonology and eventually creeping through vocabulary into the syntax and morphology until the language started showing characteristics alike those of East Asian languages. The verb conjugation was greatly simplified over time and new ways of conveying meaning appeared.

The typical infinitive form of the verb ends in –á, -i: está, "to be", or keri, "to love, adore" illustrate this. (English equivalents given are only approximate.)

Irregular Verbs
Two notable irregular verbs both mean 'to be', and in a fashion similar to French, have merged somewhat, as the infinitive 'está' stands for both.

This first verb is used to describe something an object is and it’s essence, such as in ‘This rock is hard’, while the second one is used to describe a state the subject is in, such as in ‘He is tired’.

Está (essence)
As one can notice, on several rows of the first three columns, the verbs are conjugated the same, and the pattern created extends in the future: verbs for 1st, 2nd or 3rd person singular are all conjugated the same and differently to the plural conjugations, that normally remain different.

Está (state)
This verb is not conjugated for the imperative, as seen.

Regular Verbs
As seen from above, even the irregular verbs have some pattern most of the time. They are listed as following:
 * 1st person is conjugated the same in Imperfect and Conditional for all.
 * 1st person plural (we) always ends in -avo or -ivo.
 * 3rd plural always ends in a nasal vowel (estâ, estsubirô, estarâ, estávâ, estariâ)

2nd person plural is not entirely predictable at face value but often ends with -e, -é, or -ay.

An example of a regular verb is 'kovi' (to eat), which conjugates as following:

The Subjunctive Mood
Unlike Spanish only one Subjunctive mood is used, and it's formation is as follows: One uses the Imperative/Subjunctive verb conjugation and prefixes to it the function word 'hi' (not pronounced like the English greeting!). When it is used for the "If..." part of a sentence, the "something would've happened" part uses the Conditional mood. Examples are the following:

Boy not so curious if were, not himself hurt-would.
 * Ninyo no tâ kuryaso hi hia, no he rastivaria.

"If the boy weren't so curious, he wouldn't hurt himself."

The Subjunctive mood is also used in situations where eventuality comes into play:

House prepared is, if rains.
 * Kokyó purepará está, hi yweve.

"The house is prepared in case it rains."

Adjectives
Unlike it's ancestor, Spanish, Esupanyá does not inflect the adjectives for gender as it was lost with the disappearance of articles from common speech (likely attributed to the influence of Japanese). Most of the adjectives are derived from the masculine forms they had in Spanish but a handful of irregularities come from feminine inflections in them. Therefore, the contrast between Spanish and Esupanyá is the following:


 * El perro tonto (masculine) -> Piro tâno (The stupid dog)
 * La mosca tonta (feminine) -> Másuka tâno (The stupid fly)

Adjectives are not inflected for number either.

Prepositions
Most Esupanyá prepositions come directly from Spanish without much semantic change, but a few new ones have appeared. The following are the most important:


 * a - to, towards
 * âne - before, in front of
 * baw - under
 * kô - with
 * kôndra - against
 * de - of, from
 * disde - from
 * zurâne - while, at the moment of
 * ê - in, at, on
 * êndre - in between, among
 * ashya - towards
 * asta - until
 * medyâne - by means of, through, using
 * para - for
 * hemû - according to
 * shî - without
 * havre - about, on top of, over
 * dra - after, beyond

Formulating Questions
A particle borrowed directly from Japanese was 'ka', which unchanged, is added to the end of an utterance to turn it onto a question. It can be compared sometimes to the English 'do' added to questions. Examples are:

Te ruta yusta ka? (Do you like fruit?) Pesukáw koshináw está ka? (Is the fish cooked?)
 * Te ruta yusta. (You like fruit)
 * Pesukáw koshináw está. (The fish is cooked)

HOWEVER, the interrogative particle is never used before words such as 'who,'why', as that would be redundant. See next section for an example.

Formulating Answers
While in Spanish, 'porqué' is used for both for 'why' and 'because', Esupanyá's equivalent for 'because' is yake, which literally used to mean 'now that'.


 * Poruki pesukáw coshináste? (Why did you cook fish?)
 * Yake cô ambre estava. (Because I was hungry. Lit., I was with hunger.)

Syntax
The sentence structure of Esupanyá is normally a Subject Object Verb one, with the modifier before the modifier.

Also like in Japanese, the typical speaker of Esupanyá would prefer short sentences to long ones. This comes from the way a lot of omission is done when a word is clear from the context in which it is. Normally, pronouns are omitted, also much like in Spanish (with the difference that in Spanish they were implied in the verb too).

=Vocabulary=

Most of Esupanyá vocabulary derives from Spanish but roughly an eighth according to some estimates comes from Japanese and traces of words from languages such as Irish and Indonesian appear scattered. This has led to some words that have synonyms originating from more than one language:

And so we can say 'árito matayo', 'árito ki', 'árubo ki', and so on, each one with a slightly different shade of meaning.

=Dictionary=

As it's huge, the dictionary can be found here, at the Esupanyá dictionary.

Numbers
It is thought by expert linguists on Esupanyá that the numerals's separate morphemes started blending into each other and the previously agglutinative nature of them became a synthetic one. This theory explains the reason why many numerals in its descendant languages are unpredictable sometimes at face value.


 * 1 - uno
 * 2 - da
 * 3 - dri
 * 4 - padro
 * 5 - shînko
 * 6 - he
 * 7 - shite
 * 8 - ácho
 * 9 - nwive
 * 10 - chi
 * 11 - ônse
 * 12 - dase
 * 13 - drise
 * 14 - katarse
 * 15 - kînse
 * 16 - chishisé
 * 17 - chishishite
 * 18 - chishyacho
 * 19 - chishinwive
 * 20 - dana
 * 21 - danayuno
 * 22 - danayda
 * 23 - danaydri
 * 24 - danaypadro
 * 25 - danayshî
 * 26 - danaysé
 * 27 - danayshite
 * 28 - danayacho
 * 29 - danaynwive
 * 30 - drena
 * 31 - drénayuno
 * 32 - drénayda
 * 33 - drénaydri
 * 34 - drénaypadro
 * 35 - drénayshînko
 * 36 - drénaysé
 * 37 - drénayshite
 * 38 - drénayacho
 * 39 - drénaynwive
 * 40 - parîna
 * 41 - parênayuno
 * 42 - parênaydá
 * 43 - parênaydri
 * 44 - parênaypadro
 * 45 - parênayshînko
 * 46 - parênaysé
 * 47 - parênayshite
 * 48 - parênayacho
 * 49 - parênaynwive
 * 50 - shînpîna
 * 51 - shînpênayuno
 * 52 - shînpênayda
 * 53 - shînpênaydri
 * 54 - shînpênaypadro
 * 55 - shînpênayshînko
 * 56 - shînpênaysé
 * 57 - shînpênayshite
 * 58 - shînpênayacho
 * 59 - shînpênaynwive
 * 60 - hesîna
 * 70 - hetîna
 * 80 - ochîna
 * 90 - novîna
 * 100 - shî
 * 110 - shînoji
 * 200 - doshîno
 * 220 - doshînodana
 * 300 - dreshîno
 * 400 - padroshîno
 * 500 - kiñîno
 * 600 - héshîno
 * 700 - heteshîno
 * 800 - ochoshîno
 * 900 - noveshîno
 * 1000 - mi

=Example texts=

Folklore
''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.

Written Records of the Esupanyá
During their time, the Esupanyá people had little time for literature and the arts, as they were busy rebuilding a society that they lost when they disappeared from Earth and landed on Newosweik. One of the most famous pieces of writing surviving from the early centuries of the language was a rather peculiar letter between two people in charge of setting up a new colony next to a river:

On the building of Koa Etowa
Erira-sâ:

Fûno kô eóromo ke estudyá arya hiruka de Koa Etowa a apirudo ke una párite ke aparîna huruo bwî pwísta ê mejishyô a prânaprâna de ruta de nárite está yemávo y chira bwina chine para greshivîno de ine y atro yasai... [ ] ...matiryá para kônsuturukishiô kokyó mucho sâ y orumima youkî estará de nochishya haví. He remisutra tamvî ke hi rhimo de nashivîno greshîno côninúa, consturui da ma de kasa de pêsáw nesesitará, y tôse propuso ke ruiâne disde Okawa pudira’no fwirsa de uvâno para draváw neseshitáa dá. Ê kaso de árumo fwira de kovû o fukate, re saví ari y mejishyô îndicá chiskuchirivo.

Ke Dyo re ayue,

Anônyo Matsumishî

Approximate translation:

Dear Mr. Erira:

Alongsidde a fellow geologist who has been studying the area of Koa Etowa, I have reached the agreement that one area specifically is well situated in respect to the northern fruit plantations and it possesses soil adequate for the cultivation of rice and other vegetables... [ ] ...materials for the construction of houses are abundant and the workers will be happy to know the news. It is informed that if the birth rate keeps growing, twice as many homes as previously foreseen would be needed to be built, so it was proposed that helpers from the town of Okawa providing us with the human labour needed for such a task. In case of anything unforeseen or any inconvenience, I will make you know and we shall discuss the appropriate measures.

God be with you,

Anônyo Matsumishî

= Links =

The official entry for the planet where Esupanyá was spoken.