Conlang Relay 20/Wanya

Warning: there are spoilers below! Do not read if you will participate in Conlang Relay 20.

This page contains text in the Wanya romanization. It renders best if you have the Geneva font installed.

This is Fenhl's Wanya ttorch from Conlang Relay 20's Ring 2.

Text

Note: A version in the Wanya alphabet can be found here.

Keꝛə sinika zum [pisonda keꝛə naɹon ya oy] dana pan kema wakiafəts. At [duäts wakiafunda] kema bəts dana [Tayi fises Kaugəltsa. Na oy xanziko fisa yes.].

Dana bəts [Soy vindodera ya salina ya yes.]. Kema bəts oy [Na yes salina ika monodəts sembazyonda.].

Mau kema sə salina ya oy. Mau soy salina ya kema. Soyats vinda ya dana. Mau gou oy mavin gamboyats kema. Ubəŋ dana pan kema lanfəts naɹon. Gou oy dana nasiməts [su kema fisəts]. Kema bəts [Ay.].

Vocabulary

• boenda (v.) “say”, “tell”, “speak”
• duönda (v.) “stop”, “finish”, “conclude”, “complete”
• dana (n.) “woman”
• gamboenda (v.) “speak one's opinion of sth.”, “comment on sth.”
• gou (adv.) “Y wants that…”
• wakiafunda (v.) “walk”
• yes (pron.) 2nd person, “you”
• ya (conj.) “of”, possessive
• pisonda (v.) “stay”
• pan (conj.) “and”, connecting 2 nouns
• tayi (qp.) “why”
• keꝛə (adv.) location
• kema (n.) “man”
• Kaugəltsa (name) transliterated from the previous torch
• lanfunda (v.) “leave”, “exit”
• ika (adj., qp.) “which X”
• ubəŋ (adv.) “regardless”
• vinda (v.) “host”
• vindodera (n.) “guest”
• zum (adv.) intent
• mau (adv., conj.) “not”, negation
• mavin (adj.) “evil”
• monodonda (v.) “cause”
• na (adv.) “in the opinion of Y”
• naɹon (n.) “house”
• nasimonda (v.) “know”
• fisonda (v.) “feel good”, “be happy” (without an object), “like”, “love” (with an object)
• sinda (v.) “be”, copula
• sinika (n.) “coast”
• su (qp.) yes/no question
• sembazyonda (v.) “fight”, “argue”
• salina (n.) “family”
• xanziko (adv.) “not necessarily”
• ay (adv., intj.) “yes”
• at (adv.) temporal structure, when Y happened
• oy (pron.) 1st person, “I”, “me”, “we”, “us”

Abbreviations

• adj. = adjective
• adv. = evidential/adverb
• conj. = conjunction (works like an adjective but takes an argument)
• evid. = evidential
• intj. = interjection
• n. = noun
• pron. = pronoun
• qp. = question particle
• sth. = something/someone
• v. = verb

Grammar notes

• The alternative version of the text is written in Wanya's native alphabet. You will need the chart on that wiki page to transliterate it.
• Wanya (if written in the native alphabet) 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 “adv.” 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.
• Adjectives and conjunction phrases come after the noun.
  • The whole adjective phrase (all adjectives and conjunction phrases behind a single noun) may be enclosed in kure and mai (often written as [ and ]) to avoid ambiguities.
    • The kure-mai construct is also used for indicating speech. Direct speech always starts with a capital letter.
• 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	oy	usoy	uvoy
	2	es	ues	uves
	3	a	usa	uva
	4	(ə)	us	(ə)fu
future	1	(ə)moy	usmoy	uvəmoy
	2	(ə)mes	umes	uvəmes
	3	(ə)ma	usma	uvəma
	4	(ə)m	um	(ə)fum
past	1	oyats	usoyats	uvoyats
	2	ets	uets	uvets
	3	ats	usats	uvats
	4	(ə)ts	uts	uvəts

The ə 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 -nda. Verbs are inflected by removing that and adding the suffix from the table above.
• Some adjectives and adverbs take an argument which is put after the adj/adv in question. This is referred to as Y in the vocabulary, while X refers to the word modified by the adjective.
• The romanization uses the diaeresis to indicate a vowel cluster, so for example eu is a diphthong (one syllable) while eü is a cluster (two syllables).