Conlang Relay 19/Wanya
| Warning: there are spoilers below! Do not read if you will participate in Conlang Relay 19. |
This is Fenhl's Wanya torch from Conlang Relay 19's Conscript ring.
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Vocabulary
Note that there may be multiple entries for a word if it has different meanings depending on where it is in the sentence.
- (evid.) “and”, “also”
- (n.) “badger”
- (adj.) “back”
- (conj.) “behind”
- (v.) “return”
- (adj.) “wide”, “vast”, “broad”
- (v.) “live”
- (n.) “spoken message”, “speech”
- (n.) “river”
- (adj.) “multiple”, “much”, “many”
- (conj.) introduces a relative clause (la is substituted for the noun)
- (v.) “do something”, “follow an activity”
- (conj.) introduces the meaning of a sentence, which is appended using kure (or “[”) and mai (or “]”). Usually used with the null pronoun ŋi.
- (v.) “walk”, “run”, “wander”
- (v.) “exist”
- (n.) “wolf”
- (pron.) 2nd person
- (conj.) “of”, possessive
- (adj.) “also”, “too”
- (conj.) “and”
- (n.) “rock”, “stone”
- (n.) “bird”
- (v.) “fly”
- (n.) “arrow”, “needle”, “thorn”
- (adj., evid.) locational marker, by itself stands for “at”, “near”
- (conj.) “with”
- (v.) “teach”, “educate”
- (adj.) “small”, “little”, “short”
- (v.) “talk”, “converse”, “chat”, “discuss”
- (conj.) makes the following numeral an ordinal number
- (n.) “tree”
- (adj.) “fallen”
- (pron.) 3rd person
- (tmp.) later
- (conj.) “of” (+ defining attribute), “(talking) about”, “concerning”
- (n.) “bush”
- (evid.) speaker's immediate perception
- (n.) “violet” (the flower, not the color)
- (pron.) “who”, “what”
- (evid.) abilitative mood
- (n.) “squid”
- (v.) “know”
- (conj., evid.) negation
- (evid.) “definitely”, the speaker is 100% certain
- (adj., tmp.) “quick”, “punctual”, “soon after”
- (evid.) “in my opinion”, when used with a question: “I wonder”
- (pron.) “nothing”
- (v.) “talk to sb.”, “address sb.”, “start a conversation”
- (pron.) null pronoun
- (evid.) inceptive aspect
- (adj.) “happy”
- (v.) “smile”
- (v.) “like”, “be thankful”
- (adj.) “reflecting”, “shimmering”
- (adj.) “covered”, “clothed”
- (v.) “be”, copula
- (adj.) “up”, “on”, “above”
- (n.) “hill”
- (adj.) “big”, “large”
- (conj., evid.) temporal phrase indicator, by itself it refers to the time referred to in the last sentence, but can be modified by postpositioned nouns and temporal particles
- (n.) “problem”
- (v.) “sit”, “rest”, “idle”, “wait”
- (v.) “see”, “look (at)”, “watch”, “view”
- (n.) “valley”
- (pron.) 1st person
- (adj.) “tasty”, “delicious”
Abbreviations
- adj. = adjective, adverb
- conj. = conjunction (an adjective that takes another word as its argument)
- evid. = evidential or other sentence-level modifier
- n. = noun
- pron. = pronoun
- tmp. = temporal particle (used with the temporal marker)
- v. = verb
Grammar notes
- The text and vocabulary are written in Wanya's native alphabet. You will need the chart on that wiki page in order to match the capital and small letters.
- Wanya does not use punctuation to indicate sentence breaks. The first letter of each sentence is still capitalized though.
- The basic word order is subject-verb-object.
- Sentences may begin with one or more sentence-level modifier words (called “evid.” in the vocab)
- The subject slot is left empty when the verb is in the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person. On the other hand, the 4th person is used whenever the subject slot is not left empty.
- There is no number marking on nouns or verbs, i.e. no grammatical distinction between singular and plural. The adjective “multiple” can be used to mark something as plural, or alternatively numbers in an adjective slot.
- Numbers work as follows (taken from the main page):
Wanya uses a quinary (base-5) number system. The digits are:
- 0 —
- 1 —
- 2 —
- 3 —
- 4 —
These digits are simply chained together: 40 (base 10) = 130 (base 5) = . These are the basic rules for writing numbers in Wanya. There are the following exceptions:
- 0 as a number (not as a digit) is written as .
- Ordinal numbers start at 0, not at 1 (just like in computer science). This 0 is written as .
- If a number is or starts in , this is replaced by .
- If a number is or starts in , this is replaced by .
- The sequence , if it is not surrounded by more , is replaced by .
- If a digit occurs exactly twice in a row, the second occurrence is replaced by .
- If a digit other than occurs exactly thrice in a row, the second and third occurrences are, together, replaced by .
- If a digit occurs multiple times in a row, the sequence is replaced by the digit in question, [, the length of the sequence, and ].
All numbers are prefixed with either the symbol for the unit if there is one, or the number sign .
To quantify a noun, a number word can be used as an adjective.
- For units, the number sign () is replaced by the symbol for the unit. The only unit used in the text is the temporal unit * (), which is equivalent to one day, or 24 hours.
- Adjectives and conjunction phrases come after the noun.
- In the same way, adjectives can be added to a verb as adverbs.
- The whole adjective phrase (all adjectives and conjunction phrases behind a single noun) may be enclosed in and (or [ and ]) to avoid ambiguities.
- Verbs are inflected according to tense (present, future, past), modality (indicative, imperative, declarative), and person (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th). The forms are:
| indicative | imperative | declarative | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| present | 1 | | | |
| 2 | | | | |
| 3 | | | | |
| 4 | () | | () | |
| future | 1 | () | | |
| 2 | () | | | |
| 3 | () | | | |
| 4 | () | | () | |
| past | 1 | | | |
| 2 | | | | |
| 3 | | | | |
| 4 | () | | | |
The in parentheses is only added when required by the syllable structure
- The infinitive form of a Wanya verb (as used in the vocab list and when a verb is used as a noun) always ends on a vowel or diphthong, followed by -. Verbs are inflected by removing that and adding the suffix from the table above.
- Adjectives are "augmented" by inserting one of the following infixes directly before the nucleus of the adjective's last syllable:
- — definitely
- — very
- — extremely
