House of Ziryuwah / Conlangs / Charwattan

Charwattan


Area where Charwattan is spoken as a majority native language (orange) and as a common second language (green). Borders of Æsuwa outlined in black.

Charwattan (tzr̄wattę, pronounced [ˈt͡sr̩ːwätːɛ̃]) is an East Argevoean language spoken natively by most of the Šisoi population of Æsuwa and surrounding regions, and used as lingua franca across much of Argevoe and parts of southern Q'avara. It is the most spoken of the Meshan-Æsuwan languages with approximately 40.000.000 L1 speakers and an additional 110.000.000 L2 speakers.

Dialectal variation

Charwattan makes up a dialect continuum spanning the eastern half of Argevoe. The dialect spoken in Fewoz and Krmoa is often referred to as Standard Charwattan (tzr̄wattę e-râizæ) and is the dialect described in this article unless otherwise noted.

Phonology

Charwattan has a large inventory both of vowel and consonant phonemes, as well as four syllabic consonant phonemes with long and short versions. Syllable structure is (C)(C)V(C), where C is a consonant and V is a vowel, diphthong, or syllabic consonant. Allowed onset clusters include any non-identical obstruents, as well as any sequence of obstruent followed by a resonant, with the exception that velars and uvular may not be followed by /w/ or /ɰ/, and uvulars may not be followd by /j/. There are several rules of long-distance assimiliation for both vowels and consonants.

Consonants

The non-syllabic consonant phonemes of Charwattan are:

	Bilabial	Interdental	Alveolar	Palatal	Postalveolar	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	m		n	ɲ
Stop	(p pʼ)		t d (tʼ)			k g kʷ gʷ (kʼ)	q qʷ (qʼ)
Affricate			t͡s d͡z (t͡sʼ)		t͡ʃ d͡ʒ (t͡ʃʼ)
Fricative	ɸ	θ	s	ç	ꭍ	x~χ		h hʷ
Approximant			r l	j	ɻ	ɰ w

• Sounds in parantheses occur only in loanwords from Q'ao, e.g q̇āra /ˈqʼaːra/ "Q'avara".
• Voiceless stops have a short VOT, voiced stops have a short negative VOT.
• /x~χ/ is velar before high vowels and uvular before non-high vowels and consonants.
• /hʷ/ is sometimes heard as [xʷ].
• /ɰ/ is realized as [w] before rounded vowels.

Vowels and syllabic consonants

Charwattan has a number of syllabic resonants, each with two contrastive lengths. These are /m(ː)/, /n̩(ː)/, /r̩(ː)/, and /l̩(ː)/. They do not occur intervocallically, but occasionally in contact with vowels.

Charwattan has a very large inventory of both monopthongs and diphthongs, with contrasting nasality and length on some monophthongs. High and high-mid vowels agree in height with the first vowel of the word root. Sequences of vowels phonemes do not occur in native Charwattan words, but do in loanwords from Q'ao, e.g q̇áo /ˈqʼao/ "Q'ao".

The Vowel phonemes of Charwattan are:

Oral Monopthongs

	Front	Central	Back
High	i iː yː		ɯː u uː
High-mid	e eːøː	ə əː	ɤː o oː
Low-mid	εː		ɔː
Low		a aː

Nasal Monophthongs

	Front	Central	Back
Mid	ε̃ ε̃ː	ə̃ ə̃ː	ɔ̃ ɔ̃ː
Low			ɑ̃ ɑ̃ː

Diphthongs

The diphthongs of Charwattan are /ei̯/, /oi̯/, /eu̯/, /ou̯/, /əi̯/, and /ai̯/. /ei̯/ and /oi̯/ originate from earlier /ia̯/ and /ua̯/, and may still be heard as such in some dialects and older people's speech. /əi̯/ is sometimes realized as [ai̯]

Romanization

The phonemes of Charwattan are romanized as follows (long vowels and syllabic consonants for which there are short versions are written with a macron above. /əː/ is romanized as /ȳ/):

Phoneme	Romanization
m	m
n	n
ɲ	ñ
p	p
pʼ	ṗ
t	t
d	d
tʼ	ṭ
k	k
g	g
kʷ	kw
gʷ	gw
kʼ	ḳ
q	q
qʷ	qw
qʼ	q̇
t͡s	tz
d͡z	z
t͡ʃ	č
d͡ʒ	ž
t͡ʃʼ	č̣
ɸ	f
θ	þ
s	s
ç	c
ꭍ	š
x~χ	x
h	h
hʷ	hw
r	r
l	l
j	y
ɻ	ř
ɰ	v
w	w
i	i
y	ü
ɯ	ï
u	u
e	e
ø	ö
ə [ə]	ÿ
ə [V[-ə]]	V̌
ɤ	ë
o	o
ε	æ
ɔ	œ
a	a
ε̃	ę
ə̃	y̨
ɔ̃	ǫ
ɑ̃	ą

In the future, I plan to add descriptions of Charwattan grammar, as well as the native writing system. Time will tell if I ever get around to that.

The subject of this article has the following names in the languages of Vássoe: æsuæq̆an (Aaqhan), tsalawaat (Q'ao), tzr̄wattę (Charwattan), noďésua (Nordañ), sę̋rwait (Ęsa̋lęw).