Zwani

Zwani is a language spoken in the Zwan Kingdom (Zwanas Davigulús), where it is the sole official language of it's entire population of 43 million people. 

General information
Zwani is a synthetic nominative-accusative head-initial language. It is an Eastern Imanith language, a family of highly-fusional languages spoken in the Middle East and southern Europe. Word order is generally SVO, but VSO in interrogative sentences. The subject pronouns can be dropped and it is standard in most dialects. Verbs conjugate for person, number, tense, aspect, mood, and voice. 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 diarchy 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 within the kingdom, 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-1600s, due to the loss of dual number, the loss of the progressive aspect (which is now expressed periphrastically), the loss of the conditional mood (which is also now expressed periphrastically), the higher rate of affixing, the complete loss of the cocative case (where it would be used historically, the nominative case is now used), the merging of the partitive and genetive cases, and the merging of the dative and the benefactive cases among other small differences. Despite the numerous grammatical changes, the phonology has remained almost the same. Only /ð/ has dissappeared and merged with /θ/.

Consonants

 * A nasal consonant can assimilate to a labiodental or dental before labiodental or dental consonant, but these nasals are not seperate phonemes. Similarly, before a voiced consonant, /θ/ becomes /ð/, but it isn't a seperate phoneme.
 * The letters X and Q may appear in loan words, and are pronounced /ks/ and /k/ respectively.

Dipthongs
All dipthongs can combine with [j] or [w] to form a syllable nucleus. In a dipthong, /u/ can be represented with either ‹u› or  ‹w›. Similarly, /i/ can be represented by either  ‹i› ‹y›. Dipthongs are always stressed and defy normal stress rules.

Phonotactics
The syllable structure is (C₁)(C₂)V(C₂)(C₁).

Stop-fricative and fricative-stop clusters are permitted both syllable-initially and syllable-finally as long as they agree in voicing. C₁ can be either a stop or fricative when C₂ is a liquid /l  ɾ r/ approximant /j w/. Stop-nasal clusters cannot occur syllable-initially but nasal-stop clusters can occur syllable-finally if they agree in place of articulation.

Primary stress is placed on the first syllable of a word and secondary stress is placed on the last syllable of a word in two syllable words and the penultimate syllable in three or more syllable words. Stress affects vowel pronounciation, illustrated in the table below. Many speakers, however, have a tendency to pronounce word-final /e/ and /i/ as [ə] and [i], respectively.

Pronouns
Pronouns are highly 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. Pronouns in the 3rd person show natural gender and do not agree with the grammatical gender of a noun.

Verbs
Verbs in Zwani are highly complex, and conjugate for three tenses, two aspects, and two moods (three in the present tense). Infinitives end in -ék and verb stems take on different endings to convey information. The passive voice is expressed periphrastically similarly to English. The conditional mood and the progressive aspect are both expressed periphrastically as well. The verb anék - to make - is conjugated below.

Participles
There are six participles in Zwani. They retain a passive conjugation unlike verbs where it is expressed periphrastically. Construction of participles is similar to verbs, remove the -ek ending and suffix the respective participlial ending. They are demonstrated below on the verb disek - to see. Participles are translated a number of ways - similar to an English participle, as a relative clause, as a temporal clause, or as a causal clause, though the latter 3 are falling out of usage in favor of actual clauses.

Irregular verbs
There are a few irregular verbs in Zwani. They are detailed in a seperate article.

&gt; Zwani/Irregular Verbs

Declension
Nouns in Zwani have three genders, each of which decline differently. Feminine nouns always end in a vowel, but not all nouns that end in a vowel are feminine. Neutral nouns can end in an unvoiced plosive, rhotic sounds, a dipthong ending in /w/, or a back vowel. About 40 neutral nouns end in a vowel. Masculine nouns end in a consonant or dipthong. Nouns decline for six cases: nominative, accusative, dative, genetive, insturmental, and locative.
 * 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, and marks the object of almost all non-locative preposition.
 * 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). Using the locative case for the latter construction is considered uneducated.
 * The locative case marks location in at or on something. There is no distinction between the three other than context. It is also used to mark certain locative prepositions, but not all.

Feminine declension
Feminine nouns always end in a vowel and decline different depending on whether the noun ends in a front vowel or back vowel. In the genitive singular for feminine nouns ending in a back vowel, an -s is essentially suffixed to the noun, but truncation occurs in the genitive plural and the ending is always -ays.

Neuter declension
Neutral nouns can end in an unvoiced plosive, rhotic sounds, a dipthong ending in /w/, or a back vowel.

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

Adjectives
Adjectives precede the noun they modify, can take on a comparative or superlative suffix, and agree with it's case. Adjectives do not agree with noun gender. If an adjective does not end in a consonant, -y is suffixed onto the adjective before declension. Determiners and articles act as adjectives and decline as such, save for the definite article.

Adverbs
Adverbs, like adjectives, preceed the verb they modify. To derive an adverb from an adjective, suffix -au.

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.