Wanya

Wanya
Pronounced:	[ˈwan.ja]
Timeline and Universe:	here and now
Species:	humans
Total speakers:	1
Writing system:	alphabet
Genealogy:	isolate
Typology
Basic word order:	SVO
Credits
Creator:	Fenhl
Created:	from January 2011 onward
Links
CALS

Wanya is a conlang by Fenhl. It serves as his personal language. For example sentences, see the translations on CALS.

Phoneme inventory

Consonants
	Bilabial		Labiod.		Dental		Alveolar		Post-alv.		Palatal		Velar		Uvular		Glottal
Nasal		m						n						ŋ
Plosive	p	b					t	d					k	g
Fricative		β	f	v		ð	s	z					x	ɣ		ʁ
Approximants		w						ɹ				j
Trill								r
Lateral Approximant								l				ʎ

• In syllable codas, [ʃ] replaces [s].
• In syllable codas, [ʒ] replaces [z].
• [β] and [ʙ] are in free variation.
• [ʁ] and [ʀ] are in free variation.

Vowels
	Front		Near-front		Central		Near-back		Back
High	i									u
Near-high
High-mid					ɘ
Mid
Low-mid			ɛ							ɔ
Near-low
Low					a

• In diphthongs, [ɪ] replaces [i].
• In stressed syllables, [ɘ] and [e] are in free variation.
• In unstressed syllables, [ɘ] and [ə] are in free variation.
• [a] and [ɐ] are in free variation.

Syllable structure

The structure of Wanya syllables can be described in pseudo-awkwords-code as:

((C)(L)/A)V(V)(N)

with the following parameters:

• C=b/d/g/w/p/t/k/δ/β/v/z/γ/m/n/ŋ/f/s/x
• L=l/λ/ꝛ/r/ɹ/y
• A=pf/bv/ts/dz/kx/gγ
• V=u/a/e/o/i/ə
• N=m/n/ŋ/s/ts/z/dz

This pseudocode does not reflect the fact that a diphthong may not consist of two instances of the same vowel.

Orthography

Wanya's native script is an alphabet: each phoneme is represented by one of several letters. Normally the language is written in small letters, but the first letter of a name, and the first letter of the first word of the first sentence is a capital one. When a name consists of multiple words in the original language, it is written in PascalCase. Abbreviations are written in all-caps. Consonants have two letters — the capital and small letter — and vowels have four letters — capital and small versions of the standard and diphthong letters. The diphthong letters are only used for the second vowel in a diphthong, e.g. the i in rais would be represented by the small diphthong letter, while the ï in raïs would be represented by the small standard letter.

There are two romanizations: the Unicode-based romanization which always has exactly one letter for one sound (or letter in the native script), and the ASCII-friendly romanization which only uses Latin capital and small letters, spaces, and optionally punctuation marks. Here they are in comparison:

Phoneme	Unicode-based	ASCII-friendly
b		d		ɡ	Б	b	D	d	G	g	B	b	D	d	G	g
w		ɹ		j	W	w	Я	ɹ	Y	y	W	w	Ll	ll	J	j
p		t		k	P	p	T	t	K	k	P	p	T	t	K	k
ð		l		ʎ	Δ	δ	L	l	Λ	λ	Dd	dd	L	l	Y	y
i		ɘ		u	I	i	Ǝ	ə	U	u	I	i	X	x	U	u
β		r		ʁ	B	β	R	r	Ꝛ	ꝛ	Bb	bb	Rr	rr	R	r
v		z		ɣ	V	v	Z	z	Γ	γ	V	v	Z	z	Gg	gg
m		n		ŋ	M	m	N	n	Ŋ	ŋ	M	m	N	n	Nn	nn
f		s		x	F	f	S	s	X	x	F	f	S	s	Kk	kk
ɛ		a		ɔ	E	e	A	a	O	o	E	e	A	a	O	o

The Unicode-based romanization uses the diaeresis to indicate a vowel cluster, for example:

• rais [raɪʃ]
• raïs [ra.iʃ]
• kuäi [ku.aɪ]
• kuaï [kua.i]
• kuäï [ku.a.i]

Each example could theoretically be a different word. Kuai cannot be a Wanya word since triphthongs are not allowed.

Since the native alphabet doesn't use any punctuation marks, they are optional in the romanizations.

This article uses the Unicode-based romanization.

Grammar

• The basic sentence structure is SVO.
  • The subject is left out when the verb is in the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person. (Unlike Spanish, not leaving the subject out for emphasis is very bad style.) Conversely, the 4th person requires the subject to be explicitly mentioned.
  • the definition of a verb includes a list of thematic relation slots. Similarly to Lojban, objects listed after the verb are assumed to have the thematic relation of their respective slots. In order to leave a single slot empty, insert the null object ŋi. For two or three empty slots, use ŋiŋi or ŋisti, respectively.
• There is no number marking on nouns or verbs, i.e. no distinction between singular and plural.

Verbs

In Wanya there are two types of verbs which are inflected differently from each other. There are vowel verbs, whose stems end on a vowel, and consonant verbs. Wanya also has irregular verbs: their stem ends on a vowel, but they are inflected like consonant verbs.

The infinite suffix is -nda for vowel verbs, and -onda for consonant verbs.

Verbs are inflected according to tense (present, future, past), modality (indicative, interrogative, imperative, declarative), and person (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th). If you count the two verb classes and the infinite forms in, that makes 98 different verb suffixes:

vv.		indicative	interrogative	imperatove	declarative
present	1		λen	xiβ	t
	2	s	y	γa	ts
	3	ko	λ	γə	ŋa
	4		λa	x	t
future	1	lu	δu	mu	zu
	2	te	d	mes	dz
	3	ɹa	dam	ŋu	zi
	4	l	t	mu	ze
past	1	do	gom	xud	β
	2	nə	gə	ꝛə	bəs
	3	ra	γa	lom	βa
	4	d	ku	m	b

vc.		indicative	interrogative	imperatove	declarative
present	1	u	ana	au	uvu
	2	es	ais	ab	uves
	3	o	em	ou	uvo
	4	a	al	au	uf
future	1	ui	iyak	umo	uï
	2	əi	ian	əmo	us
	3	oi	iŋo	om	uyə
	4	ai	i	ə	uz
past	1	ayat	ax	axud	abem
	2	ət	əx	əxe	əb
	3	ot	ol	olom	oβ
	4	at	e	am	əb

Adjectives

Adverbs are to verbs what adjectives are to nouns, and Wanya treats them exactly this way.

Vocabulary

• bun — n. word
• bunɹa — adj. beautiful
• blanda — vv. to give sth. to sb.
• benonda — vc. to live
• baun — n. sheep
• dudek — n. halo
• duŋ — num. 2
• dꝛanda — vv. to work at sth.
• desa — n. bridge
• dana — nn. woman
• gəδə — n. glass
• wan — n. language
• ɹənda — vv. to exist
• yes — pron. 2nd person (you)
• ya — conj. by, from, of
• yoönda — vi. to greet sb.
• pə — conj. which does (insert verb here)
• pəönda — vi. to throw sth. at sth.
• pan — conj. and (+ noun)
• təmonda — vc. to write
• kala — n. list
• konda — vc. to have sth. swh.
• δə — conj. (together) with, containing, of
• la — pron. 3rd person (he/she/it/they)
• λi — conj. and (+ list of nouns, + λi again)
• ista — num. 3
• uλan — adj. imaginary, nonexistant
• βoŋ — adj. closed, restricted, in a building
• rə — adj. open, free, unrestricted, outside
• ꝛunda — vv. to hurt sb. using sth.
• viya — nn. violet (flower)
• vo — num. 1
• zəꝛanda — vv. to ride
• zuïyu — n. convention, standard, tradition
• γus — evid. can
• mau — evid. not
• mavin — adj. evil
• nyeŋ — adj. cheeky
• na — evid. hopefully
• ŋi — pron. null object
• ŋiŋi — pron. double null object
• ŋisti — pron. triple null object
• fa — num. 4
• fi — n. light
• fis — adj. happy
• faŋ — n. fish
• sinda — vv. to read sth. using sth.
• səe — num. 5
• xi — adj. green
• anka — nn. duck
• ani — adj. long
• oy — pron. 1st person (me/us)
• ompfonda — vc. to eat sth. using sth.

abbreviations

• adj. adjective
• conj. conjunction
• evid. evidential
• n. noun
• nn. noun and name
• num. number word
• pron. pronoun
• vc. consonant verb
• vi. irregular verb
• vv. vowel verb

• sb. somebody
• sth. something
• swh. somewhere