Zwani

Zwani is a language spoken in the Zwan Kingdom, an island nation in the Mediterranean, where it is the sole official language of it's entire population of 32 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 monarchy 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, 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 distinction of the post-alveolar and retroflex fricatives, the loss of ejective stops and affricates, the loss of a distinction between aspirated and unaspirated consonants, the higher rate of suffixing, the loss of grammatical gender, the complete loss of the Vocative case, 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, dental, or retroflex nasal before labiodental, dental, or retroflex consonant, but these nasals are not seperate phonemes. Similarly, before a voiced consonant, /θ/ becomes /ð/, but it isn't a seperate phoneme.

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

Alphabet
The letter Ńń represent both /ɲ/ and /ŋ/. Word finally, it will be /ŋ/ and everywhere else, it is /ɲ/. However, after declension or suffixing it will not represent /ɲ/, it will stay representing /ŋ/. Also, before another velar consonant, it will be /ŋ/.

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

Pronouns
Pronouns are 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.

Declension
There are three types of nouns in Zwani and each noun type has a different declension pattern. Type one nouns end in a front or near-front vowel, type two nouns in a central or back vowel, and type three nouns end in a consonant. Nouns decline for seven cases: nominative, accusative, dative, genetive, insturmental, locative, and ablative.
 * 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).
 * The locative case marks the object of a locative or a motion preposition, or when used without a preposition, shows location in at or on something. There is no distinction between the three other than context.
 * The ablative case is a rare exception to the locative case. It shows movement away from something or acquisition from something.

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

Determiners
Determiners are suffixed onto the noun after declension. All suffixes have two forms and the one that gets used depends on whether the declined noun ends in a consonant or a vowel. There is no indefinite article. The noun is assumed indefinite if there isn't a determiner suffixed onto it.

Verbs
Zwani verbs are very complex. There are two types of verbs: verbs with the infinitive ending in -k and verbs with the infinitive ending in -r or -l. Each type has a different conjugation. Verbs actually conjugate only for person, number, and tense but a synthetic "verb" conveys aspect, mood, evidentiality, and negativity. However, evidentiality is only conveyed in the past tense of a verb. There are no irregular verbs in Zwani.

-k infinitive verbs
Verbs with the infinitive ending in -k are native verbs, but this also encompasses loans from Turkish or Georgian, but sometimes English.

-r/l infinitive verbs
Verbs with the infinitive ending in -r or -l are usually loans from Spanish, but also loans from Polish, Russian, Armenian, and rarely English.

The synthetic verb
The synthetic verb conveys information that the simple conjugated verb cannot. It goes directly after the verb in a sentence. The synthetic verb can only be omitted when speaking or writing if it conveys both gnomic/simple aspect and indicative mood. If the synthetic verb is included alongside a verb that is to be negated, the synthetic verb can take on a negative suffix instead of the conjugated verb.

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.

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

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.

Example Text
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 1