Walaan

Walaan is a mixture of Estorva's creativity, Mandarin, and Japanese. I felt somehow familiar when creating this language since my mother tongue is actually Mandarin, :P.

General information
Walaan is a language using syllabary. With 86 syllabograms and 1 diacritic the system covers all possible syllables in Walaan.

Writting System
The writting system of Walaan is syllabary. There is also some romanizated systems. The most common and accepted one is Barleimann. But another romanization system, Darlis-Perol, is also well known.

Here's all possible syllables in Walaan. Inside a cell, the upper one is Barleimann while the lower one is Darlis-Perol. The argument of these romanizations continues nowadays, but Barleimann is common in European and USA, while Darlis-Parol is well known and most used in Asia.

Since voiced consonants are not distinguished from voiceless ones, Barleimann tends not to use any voiced letter (such as d, g, v) to represent those unaspirated consonants. It used a letter "x" instead. Whereas unaspirated consonants are referred to by voiced letter in Darlis-Parol. For new learns, the term "txa" would be hard to read and "da" is more easy to pronounce, but he would never know that "da" isn't actually voiced in Walaan. "da" is unaspirated and sounds like the actually "d" in English, but not voiced.

The three syllabic consonants in Walaan are represented as "ng, nn, and ll" in Barleimann but "ng, n, and l" in Darlis-Parol. Though the former clearly indicates that these are syllabic (thus doubled), but the latter is more famaliar to new learners.

All the romanized Walaan below are Barleimann.

Consonants
The syllabic nasal nn becomes /ɱ/ before f, and /m/ before p. Syllabic alveolar nasal can't be followed by k and h. No nasals are allowed to be in front of any approximants and flaps.

Am I pronouncing it right?
New learners always have difficult time pronouncing "real" voiceless unaspirated consonants, and often replace them with voiced but also unaspirated consonants.

One traditional local method to examine one's pronunciation contains two parts:
 * 1) "Adadadada": say the term without any stop of the vibrating of your voice folds, then you'll have the right /d˭/. You can touch your throat to feel the vibrating of your voice folds. For some people (including me in the past) they might get /t˭/ and while saying the letter "d", their voice folds stop vibrating. During saying the whole term, one should feel his voice cords keep vibrating.
 * 2) "Ts-ts": to check whether its aspirated or not, you can put your fingers near your mouth and feel the air flow coming out. Do not try to vibrate your voice cords, just push the air out from your lung, and click your tongue like "ts-ts". Feel the strength of the air flow, distinguish the stronger one from the weaker one, then you'll have both /tʰ/ and /t˭/.

Weakened consonants
"Weakened consonants" refer to some of the unaspirated consonants after other unaspirated ones. In some cases, aspirated consonants would become unaspirated. This sometimes happens, mostly when two nouns are tied together.
 * Natxa (evilness) + Tsama (person) = Natxatsxama (bad guy)

Diphthongs and Long Vowels
Two different vowels together become diphthong. When two same vowels meet, they can be regarded as one lengthene vowel. There can't be any syllabic consonants (mm, nn, and ll) after a lengthened syllable.

Gemination
Some consonants (all of them are plosive of affricative) in Walaan can be lengthened as well. These long consonants will never appear in the head of a word, and to most people is sounds like the vowel before the long consonant is shortened. This feature is represented by a little reverse "c".

The pitch of the vowel before the long consonants is always higher than usual. The length of both vowels and consonants is distinctive in Walaan.

Syllables
Most syllables in Walaan is open (CV). Some syllables don't exist in Walaan.
 * Y: yi, yeo
 * W: wu, weo
 * H: hi, hu, heo

Pitch
Linguists say that Walaan could be tonal in the past (Proto-Walaan or Old Walaan), but the feature was then replaced by pitch accent. The modern Walaan has 3 different levels of pitch: high, mid,  and low. The low tone is rare in words but common in particles. Some particles don't have their own pitch, they are influented by the previous word. Take the word mana for example: Here we adopted Jukostov-Barleimann, a romanization system based on Barleimann. Two "old" systems, Barleimann and Darlis-Perol, use accute (á) and grave (à) to indicate high and low pitch of a syllable (the mid tone isn't indicated). It's hard to input into computers and the shape of the diacritics could mislead people, making them consider these syllables rising (˩˥) or falling (˥˩) tone. The Jukostov-Barleimann replaced the diacritics with numbers, but the syllables are connected by hyphens. There are totally four kinds of pitch combinations: rising, sliding, falling, and jumping.
 * Rising tone: Starting mid (or low), then rises to high, and finally levels out. That is, 21...1.
 * Sliding tone: Starting high, and drop to mid at the last syllable. That is, 1...12.
 * Falling tone: Starting high, but drop to low at second syllable. That is, 13...3
 * Jumping tone: Starting low, then rise to mid (or high), then fall back to low. That is, 31...13. Only available for words consisting of more than three syllables.

Take the word mana and tonokxa for example: Verbs work the same way. Take the verb totsa (to sing / to broaden) for example: Verbs more than three syllables are often either falling tone or jumping tone. In other words, they are all low-ending.

Pitch Sandhi
There's one syllable highlighted in the first table of the pitch section. The second syllable of the word mana became high pitch. This is due to the following word hte, making a sliding tone (12)  "holding tone" (11).

Pitch sandhi does also happen to verbs. Especially when attaching to auxiliary verbs.

Varient of Pitch System
The system of pitch varies among the dialects of Walaan.

Sometimes a "heavy rising tone" (31) is also considered identical with rising (21).

Pronouns
Italic words are archaic. The term betahta comes from betabeta.

The apposition form of demonstrative pronouns is used when they are put in front of other nouns. For example:
 * Chxatxafi mana. (That girl)

Nouns
Nouns of Walaan are pretty easy. There is no declension at all.

Though there are still particles that can be attached to the nouns. There are postpositions, prepositions, and circumpositions. It's believed that circumpositions and prepositions are derived from verbs and adjective. Some adpositions can form adverb by adding -pai. For example, teyapai means "only, merely", formed by replacing the postposition part with the particle pai.
 * Yayea teyapai nomuimetsa. (I just want to shout.)

Verbs
There are currently 2 types of verbs: a-verbs and some irregular verbs. As for modern Walaan, a-verb comprises of verbs with some certain type of ending. Most verbs ends in -tsa. Some transitive verbs end in -ta, -ka, and -tsa, whereas their intransitive version end in -txa, -kxa, -tsxa.
 * -(u)a, -ta, -txa, -sa, -na, -sha, -ka, -kxa, -pa, -tsa, -tsxa

Kxonnpxotuafeli and Sasepxotuafeli
The term "kxonnpxotuafeli" means "the form that attaches to object", whereas "sasepxotuafeli" stands for "the form that attaches to action". This is due to the usage of the defferent verb forms.
 * Infinite: functions like nouns, can also share particles with nouns. In the sense of noun compund, the infinite form can also modify the noun following it.
 * Realis: takes nouns around it as its argument.
 * Irrealis: can only precede auxiliary verbs or adjectives.

Archaic Past Tense
To be honest, the past tense form mentioned above is becoming archaic. The perfect aspect and its particle tseo is taking over and becoming more common and common.

It's reported that tseo might originated from the adjective tsito.

Negation
The verb eonn can be regarded as negative to. It can also follow other verbs to express negation. Here's some comparisons:

Kxoyasha natxa
"Kxoyasha natxa" literally means "hurrying sound" and is a mechanism like Onbin (音便) of Japanese. Some sounds are dropped and a vowel or gemination replaces. Such things happen when a verb (or an auxiliary reflecting like verbs) is followed by auxiliaries with aspirated opening. Such as -peta and -tse.
 * Yayesa pxohteohtsite. (I have been hit.)

Adjective
Adjectives of Walaan does conjugate. They can be regarded as a stem with a verb (or copula) to following. Adjectives are put in front of modified noun. The adjectives are glue together with the nouns. When there are plural adjectives modifying the same noun, the particle ye will be added to each of them.
 * Lato mienn. (red flower.)
 * Latoye fasotoye mienn. (red and tiny flower.)

Adjectives can also be put behind the noun and act like verbs. In this case, a sentence is formed. Adjectives themselves can be treated as verbs that conjugates like the one to. The stems of these adjectives are meaningless without the verb to (and other particles).
 * Mienn late. (Flower is red.)

Other Particles
Particles and auxiliary verbs are surely important to Walaan. There are some other particles that haven't yet been mentioned.

Grammatical Object
The so-called "grammatical object" refers to those nouns with the same meaning with others but functioning differently. The words that are used alone are called common object, whereas those which can't stand alone are refered as grammatical object. Most grammatical objects consists of only one syllable and may sound strange to most Walaans when using alone. Grammatical objects can be seen in pronouns and appositions. Here's some comparison:

Syntax
Under normal circumsatnces the syntax of Walaan is SVO. When topic-marker is introduced, the topic (T) would be at the front of a sentence like TVO or TSV. Only objects are put behind the verb. When the particle "tseo" is introduced, the subject (with -tseo) must be in front of the verb. Complements formed by adding particles to nouns must be in front of the verb. Walaan   Pxonayayese   nato    sonnpxayo   fetetsaye   chxato   mana. Class    N.            Dem. N.->C. V.         Dem. N. Meaning  we            that    forest      find        this     girl Number   pl. *      sing. *          *        sing. Case     topic(nom.)   *       loc. *          *        acc. "We found the girl in that forest."
 * Pxonayayese nato sonnpxayo fetetsaye chxato mana. (It was us who found this girl in that forest.)(私達はその森でこの少女を見付けた. )("we" as topic)
 * Chxato manase pxonayayeta nato sonnpayo fetetsaye. (This girl is found by us in that forest.)(この少女は私達がその森で見付けた. )("this girl" as topic)
 * Nato sonnpxayose pxonayayeta fetetsaye chxato mana. (In that forest we found this girl.)(その森では私達がこの少女を見つけた. )("that forest" as topic)
 * Pxonayayesa nato sonnpxayo chxata manatseo fetetsxaye.

Relative Clause
A relative clause usually ends with fi following by the modified noun. Walaan   Yaafannwa! Taepai  feyonntseo   meyatse    fi     tase    to    namisinntolohte   keitse   fi     tsainn! Class    N.           Adv. N.          V2.        Par. Pr. V1.  N.->C. V2.     Par. N. Meaning  O Lord       really   thou         threaten   *      who     is    Sintolo           name     *      knight Number   sing. *       sing. *         *      sing. *    sing. *       *      sing. Case     voc. *       acc. *         *      topic   *     instr. *       *      acc. "My Lord! Who is really threatening you is the knight named Sintolo!"

Walaan   Feta    pasinn     fi     fetseo   masakxe   fi     nashatsa   satu Class    Pr. V.        Par. N.      V.        Par. V.->C. N. Meaning  you     not know   *      place    search    *      roam       sheep Number   sing. *         *      sing. *        *      *          sing. Case     nom. *         *      acc. *        *      *          *           "Roaming sheeps in search of the place you've never known."

Walaan   Enntsaya   tsxewe   pola    fetane   chuteyaite   txie. Class    V.         N.       Conj. Pr. V.          N. Meaning   listen     wind     until   you      can hear     sign Number   *          sing. *      sing. *           sing. Case     *          acc. *      nom. *           acc. "Listen to the wind until you can hear the sign."

Vocabulary
Walaan/Lexicon

Example text
Put your cursor on the sentence to see the meaning of it.

Nato manase tumetsa yayefi elisi mai?

Txatsxa txatsxaieonn kxonn.

Nato nachato manafi fokxa txonone hewalapai.

Kxaleto pxonatsamawa! Yotsxopewi pxonafetatseo chetete?

Yetsipetatsu selemana.

Yayefiye poleonntoye txeofapxaseofiye shahafi folenia.

Olltxito wangkane tsewefi lomoyo shape. Neolata lafarenntse. Yotsxoatatawi...

Shelito hawatachine lekuyennnetseo kxane. Totsa lafarenntse. Yotsxotsiyannwi...

Sawane kxetsxatsxa selepennsi, kxonntsa tonokxafi kanonn.

Chachapai hanotsa likolisi, watxaieonn elisionn.

Egyptian Book of the Dead
Yayese to maniaye txaaniaye tsxuniaye,

yenn yayese hatse txo pxaapehteo yeleiteota.

Yayese to seomuaye txalaama fi tsahatoye neotoye pua,

yenn yotsxo heeofi onnta wi txaetse siolefi pxonahasa,

yenn heeose to atatafi otsasoiye txuaye.

Tsotsa tsu! Yotsxo fashe welltefi yolannwi fi siolefefi saeo wi.

Tsetase to yaye yenn yayese to tseta.