Nawuhu: Difference between revisions

| date = 2024

| script1 = Latn

| development_body = [https://discord.gg/Wzd9gWFu97 Wuhu Island Community Discord]

| agency = [https://wuhugov.neocities.org/ Wuhu Autonomous Zone]

| notice = ipa

}}

==Phonology==

| a || b || c || k || d || e || g || h || i || j || l || m || n || ñ ||o || p || s || t || u || v || w || y || z

|-

|}

The digraph ⟨LHlh⟩ represents the phoneme /ʎ/.

===Consonants===

{| class=wikitable style="text-align: center;"

|-

! colspan=2 |Plosive

|-

! rowspan=2 | Nasal

! pulmonic

|-

! pre-glottalised

|-

! colspan=2 |Fricative

|-

! colspan=2 |Semivowel

|-

! colspan=2 |Lateral

|}

====Glottalisation====

Though glottal stops do not occur phonemically in Nawuhu, some consonants are pre-glottalised at the beginning of a word, usually /n/, /m/ and /ŋ/. This glottalisation is not marked, mainly because Mark Mii, the creator of the Mark Mii romanisation system, never actually noticed the phonemic pre-glottalisation when researching the language. However, subsequent studies that interrogated actual native speakers did note the phonemic difference, with one research paper noting that one participant reportedly joked that a foreigner they had met greeted them with ''yenita’a ngala!'' [[IPA for Nawuhu|[jenita.a ŋala]]], meaning "Give the spider!", instead of what the participant believed the foreigner wanted to say, ''yenita’a *ngala!''(The asterisk is a common unofficial way to note pre-glottalisation) [[IPA for Nawuhu|[jenita.a ˀŋala]]], meaning "Welcome [to my home]!".

===Nouns===

====Number====

Adjectives do not have to agree with nouns, though verbs do. Agreeing verbs have their own suffixes to indicate number, please see the [[Nawuhu#Verbs|Verbs]] section for more information.

|+ Base suffixes for nouns

|-

|-

|}

====Genidative====

The '''genidative case'''(Latin: ''casus genidativus'') is a popular term used by Nawuhu linguists to refer to the merged genitive and dative case in Nawuhu, marked by an ''-u''. Originally two separate cases in Classical Nâuxu(''-eu'' and ''-u'' for the genitive and dative cases respectively), the two cases began to merge sometime around the arrival of initial colonisers, although some linguists argue that the Japanese possessive article の(''no''), which has similar properties as the Nawuhu ''-u'' suffix, could have accelerated the merging of the two cases, though this is still up to debate.

====Personal====

{| class=wikitable style="text-align: center;"

|-

! First

|-

! Second

|-

! Third

|}  

There are no gendered third person pronouns in Nawuhu, though some older translations of excavated texts translated the third person pronoun as "he". Today, most translators translate the ''ain'' pronoun as "they".

Demonstrative pronouns are placed after the noun, and have to agree with the grammatical number of the noun.

{| class=wikitable style="text-align: center;"

|-

! Proximal

|-

! Medial

|-

! Distal

|}

'''Proximal''' refers to things near the speaker("this thing"), '''medial''' refers to things near the addressee("that thing near you"), and '''distal''' refers to things "over there", as in not near the speaker or the addressee.

** '''''Ewe’el''' pulojek bakampián?''

Nawuhu verbs are inflected on mood, aspect and tense. Weak verbs have specific suffixes to indicate mood, tense and aspect. Strong verbs, like ''oí'', "to be", or ''gvé'', "to have", have their own specific mood, tense and aspect conjugations.

====Mood====

|}

To form perfective and imperfective tenses for past, present and future, the aforementioned the suffixes ''-sen'' and ''-san'' are placed before the tense suffix. Thus, something like "I do" would be ''ja kubu''(or simply ''kubu'' if one chooses to [[Nawuhu#Null-subject|omit the subject]]), or for emphasis ''ja kubusen'', while "I was doing" would be ''ja kubusanálo''(or ''kubusanálo'').

====To be, ''oí''====

|-

|-

| ''í'' || ''ey'' || ''oí''

|-

|-

|-

|-

|-

|-

|-

|-

|-

|-

|-

|}

==References==