South Vimnic

South Vimnic (Vgha) is spoken on the southeast coast of the Mainland and throughout the Southern Mountains. It has had extensive and artificial reconstruction and simplification from its archaic predecessor and is the official language of several small nations.

History
The southeast coast of the Mainland and the Southern Mountains were invaded and colonised twice by the Tev Empire, during which Old South Vimnic became extinct and much of the language was lost. Once the region regained independence, the linguistic composition of the region was mainly Tev with various Tev-based creoles and pidgins. The nations of this region formed a multinational government and founded an institution to create the new South Vimnic language based on Old South Vimnic (via surviving texts) as well as reconstruction via other Vimnic languages and regional creoles. This effort also involved compounding, abbreviation, abstraction, and the elimination of most non-Vimnic lexical and grammatical influences—the latter most notably excepting the agglutinative morphology (which is widespread in Tev creoles due to Old South Vimnic's isolativity and Tev's fusionality). Various grammatical rules were also simplified, with most grammatical exceptions eliminated. The initiative to educate the population in the new South Vimnic language was largely handled by a newly-formed religious institution.

This initiative was well-received both internally and externally and achieved great success. However, this effort gradually slowed and then halted due to a plague whose aftermath led to civil war and an invasion by Aurwe. During this time, compounding with South Vimnic's large amount of particles with varied lexical, phonological, and grammatical influences from the Aurwean language altered the language and led to a linguistic rift primarily between rural and urban areas. While connections between the cities improved causing the formation of the modern standard dialect, more isolated parts of the country became more isolated from the language and saw stagnation or independent change. After this period of chaos, the government of the region attempted a new linguistic purist movement which was poorly received in general and was soon discontinued after some relatively minor orthographic reform. The standard dialect has been gradually replacing other dialects.

Classification
South Vimnic is a Vimnic language, but one of the least related languages in this family as it has been heavily constructed. South Vimnic is the indirect descendant of Old South Vimnic, being largely constructed from texts in Old South Vimnic. It also has large amounts of reconstruction via other Vimnic languages and Vimnic-Tev creoles, as well as influences from Aurwean. Like most Vimnic languages, South Vimnic has a fairly flexible VSO-VOS word order, a large inventory of consonants and particles, no adjectives, and an active-stative morphosyntactic alignment. Unlike most Vimnic languages—which are generally isolative—South Vimnic is agglutinative.

Dialects
Modern South Vimnic has numerous dialects:
 * Standard dialect: The dialect spoken in nearly all of the major cities and by approximately 68% of the population. It could potentially be split into slightly deviating regional dialects.

Consonants
Including all base and constructed consonants, South Vimnic has 106 consonants.

Phonotactics
There are no vowel diphthongs in South Vimnic. When a vowel precedes another vowel due to morphemes or foreign origin, q̇ is inserted between them, including between words (see Syntax). Regular vowels also become nasalised before nasal consonants except for l, r, and r̈ (see Writing system).

There is also consonant harmony—mostly defined by voicing in bilabial to velar plosives, affricates, and fricatives—which prevents "voiced" consonants from being in a word with "unvoiced" consonants and vice versa. In South Vimnic, the "voice" harmony rules can be unintuitive. For example, while both r and r̈ represent voiced consonants, they are considered "unvoiced" and share the "voiced" form ṙ. If ṙ becomes "devoiced" however, it can only become r. When an "unvoiced" particle is appended a "voiced" stem, the consonants in that particle assume their "voiced" form and vice versa. There are also "neutral" consonants which do not affect a word's "voice". If a word consists of only neutral consonants, the "first-appended particle" rule applies to determine "voice" (see Syntax). The "voiced" consonants and their counterparts are detailed below with the neutral consonants.

South Vimnic is a consonant-heavy language with a syllable structure of (C)(C)(C)(C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C)(C)(C)(C)—it can have consonant clusters with up to seven (7) consonants. However, no roots occur with the theoretical maximum of fourteen (14) consonants per vowel and there are only nine roots with a seven-consonant cluster (see Lexicon):
 * ajtfsxwq̇
 * ḋjdżġwq̇ạ̇ṅġ
 * jdżbġwq̇eld
 * jëjtṡxwpq̇
 * jpṡxṫwq̇apwq̇
 * jvwdzġq̇ẹ̇ṁ
 * ṅjqṡxwq̇ẹ̈
 * rjtsxwq̇ı̣tṡxw
 * ṙjqżġwq̇ọḋd

Romanised system
(*) Tone.
 * Regular vowels become nasalised before nasal consonants.
 * The letters l, r, and r̈ are pronounced as /n/, /ɱ/, and /ŋ/ respectively before other consonants and at the end of words. This occurrence never triggers nasalisation in preceding vowels.
 * Some letter combinations create new phonemes (see Consonants):
 * The letter q̇ makes certain preceding voiceless consonants ejective.
 * The letters ġ and x velarise most preceding consonants.
 * The letter ġ following g forms its respective affricate.
 * The letter x following k or q forms their respective affricates.
 * The letters s and ṡ or z and ż following t or d respectively, form their respective affricates.
 * The letter w labialises most preceding consonants.

Syntax
VSO/VOS word order

Lexicon

 * ajtfsxwq̇
 * verb: (tone 1) perservere
 * verb: (tone 2) (literary) survive, outlast; (derogatory slang) elect; (dialectal) hold status, govern, get killed
 * noun: (tone 2) (slang or dialectal, derogatory) appointed official
 * ḋjdżġwq̇ạ̇ṅġ
 * noun: (tone 1) warbler
 * noun: (tone 2) wren; (dialectal) robin
 * noun: (tone 3) cotton plant; (dialectal) cat, small bird, bulrush
 * jdżbġwq̇eld
 * noun: (tone 1) alder
 * noun: (tone 2) willow
 * verb: (tone 3) droop, sag
 * jëjtṡxwpq̇
 * noun: (tone 1) rain
 * noun: (tone 2) dew
 * noun: (tone 3) juice; (vulgar slang) semen; (dialectal) blood, sweat, anger, jealousy
 * verb: (tone 3) (dialectal) ring out, sqeeze, anger
 * jı
 * noun: (tone 1) hawk
 * conjunction: (tone 2) however, but
 * verb: (tone 3) take revenge, avenge
 * jpṡxṫwq̇apwq̇
 * noun: (tone 1) (literary) spirit, soul
 * verb: (tone 1) (slang or dialectal) entrance; (dialectal) die, euthanise
 * noun: (tone 2) (literary) ghost
 * verb: (tone 2) (dialectal) die, haunt, frighten, starve
 * noun: (tone 3) (literary) demon; (dialectal) corpse, evil, evil person
 * verb: (tone 3) (slang or dialectal) murder
 * jvwdzġq̇ẹ̇ṁ
 * verb: (tone 1) tap (furnish with taps)
 * verb: (tone 2) extract (a resource); (dialectal) suckle
 * verb: (tone 3) (colloquial) extract (a resource); (dialectal) block
 * o
 * particle: (tone 1) precedes noun clauses in sentences without verbs to define an indicated object or person; this is, these are, that is, these are, (s)he/it is, they are, etc.
 * particle: (tone 2) precedes noun clauses in sentences without verbs to indicate presence; there is, there are
 * particle: (tone 3) (dialectal) preceeds a name as a general address (i.e. vocative particle)
 * ṅjqṡxwq̇ẹ̈
 * verb: (tone 1) dry, solidify
 * noun: (tone 2) ice
 * verb: (tone 2) (dialectal) freeze
 * verb: (tone 3) (colloquial) suffocate
 * q̇aẋ
 * noun: (tone 1) quarter (one of four equal parts), time of day (e.g. morning, afternoon)
 * numeral: (tone 2) four (4)
 * numeral: (tone 3) (colloquial) four-hundred (400)
 * rjtsxwq̇ı̣tṡxw
 * verb: (tone 1) compress
 * verb: (tone 2) bind, restrain, command
 * verb: (tone 3) stupidify
 * ṙjqżġwq̇ọḋd
 * noun: (tone 1) blonde hair; (slang or dialectal) jaundice, bleach
 * verb: (tone 1) (dialectal) age
 * noun: (tone 2) yellow; (dialectal) canary, coat of arms, bathrobe, footwrap, jaundice
 * verb: (tone 3) fade


 * ṡȯxt
 * noun: (tone 1) sapling, shrub; (dialectal) thicket, grove, fen
 * noun: (tone 2) tree
 * noun: (tone 3) hedge; (dialectal) fence, region, area
 * kṡȯxt (k- + ṡȯxt)
 * noun: (tone 1) paper; (dialectal) moss
 * noun: (tone 2) lumber; (colloquial) an item made of wood; (dialectal) hut, shed, grave
 * noun: (tone 3) building (note: historically only referred to a wooden building); (dialectal) house
 * pkṡȯxt (b- + kṡȯ˧˩xt)
 * noun: (tone 1) letter, writings, message (on paper)
 * noun: (tone 2) (dialectal) maggot
 * noun: (tone 3) wood louse
 * tq̇a
 * verb: (tone 1) investigate, question, interrogate; (dialect) suspect, think
 * verb: (tone 2) confirm, affirm
 * noun: (tone 2) (colloquial) confirmation, affrimation
 * interjection: (tone 3) (when confirming something has already been done) yes

Basic sentences

 * e˧˩npṡo˧x le˧q̇ạ˧ṁqa˧ e˧nqa˧la˧ qq̇ë˧sı˧ṫxȧ˧˥ẋa˧?
 * Translation: Why are you going home?
 * IPA (U˧ Hı˧jkna˧˩rw pronunciation): [ˈɛ̃³²n.p͡ʂo⁴⁴x lɛ³³ˈʔã⁵⁵.ɱqa³ ɛ̃⁴nˈqa⁴⁴.la³ qʼə³.sɨ⁴ˈθxæ³⁵ħa³]