Pwekish Language

**Pwekish** (TolontenPwék / 語󰀫󰃂󰁪󰂿󰀼󰀫󰂵󰀼佩󰀂󰀦󰂵󰁘) is a language spoken in the Isles of Pwek. It is listed as one of the national languages of United Ingland, where it is the historical major native language of the region. Pwekish belongs to the Pwekian language family, which has no clear relationship with other major language families of the world. Pwekish consists of a large amount of Chinese vocabularies, borrowed from the Chinese language throughout the years. However, Pwekish is undergoing a process of language revival, which replaces many of the loanwords with newly coined Pwekish words, a process similar to the use of Anglish.

## History

### Prehistory

The ancestor of all of the Pwekian languages is called Proto-Pwekian. Although human artifacts on the isles are found to be thousands of years old, it is not certained whether Proto-Pwekian arrived on the isles at the same time as the first humans on the isles. As there were no writing system for Proto-Pwekian, it is unclear how the language is like, or when the speakers of the language arrived on the isles.

### Old Pwekish

Old Pwekish is thought to be spoken on the isles from 5th century to early 10th century AD. As the Chinese writing system spread from Japan to the Isles of Pwek, Pwekish people began to write first in Classical Chinese, then using Chinese characters to transliterate Old Pwekish. Despite this, texts from this period are rare, and are hard to decipher, as numerous factions existed on the isles at the time, each uses a different dialect of Old Pwekish. Therefore, most of Old Pwekish's grammar, vocabulary and lexicon are only speculated.

### Middle Pwekish

During the late 10th century to 15th century, Middle Pwekish was spoken on the isles. As different tribes started to form larger kingdoms, the languages on the Isles began to be more unified. During the 12th century, the BentolPwek was invented, and was accepted as the writing system among the 3 kingdoms of Pwek. Many of the native vocabularies were established during the Middle Pwekish period, when phrases for various things are popularised among Pwekish speakers, and shortened or abbreviated into simple words later in the language's development. It is also during this period when the language changes from using an OSV structure (Object-Subject-Verb) to SOV structure (Subject-Object-Verb), a change which derives into the feature known as the Personal Initial Verb Mutation in Pwekish.

In the late Middle Pwekish period, the Pwek Kingdom united the Pwek Island, but haven't yet ruled over the various islands in the Isles of Pwek, including Sekritnkaynres, the largest of these islands. This started a centuries-long isolation of these islands, which lead to the generation of island dialects that are distinct from mainland Pwekish, which are sometimes thought as seperate languages from Pwekish.

### Modern Pwekish

Modern Pwekish began to take shape in the 16th century. In this period, the Isles of Pwek were united by the Pwek Kingdom. The influx of various other ethnicity started to increase on the isles, and contact with Europeans started to increase the amount of European loanwords. Several sound changes also happened during Early Modern Pwekish, such as /pʰ/ to /ɸ/, /kʰ/ to /ʁ/ and /kʲ/ to /s/.

During the Colonial period, Pwekish was neglected, even suppressed. This caused Pwekish to diminish on the isles, until the indigenous status of the Pwekish being recognised in the late 20th century. Fortunately, being the majority language of the isles in the past, the language has been listed one of the national language on the island, and efforts to preserve and promote the use of Pwekish has been continuing.

## Phonology

Standard Pwekish features an inventory of 30 consonants and 5 vowels. Dialects of Pwekish may feature several alternatives to different phonemes, but the differences between the regional dialects and the standard language are generally kept within being mutually intelligible, with the exception of the Sekritnkaynresian dialect. While Standard Pwekish words contain stressed and unstressed syllables, which can be used to distinguish between similar sounding words, dialects may also feature pitch accents, and the Sekritnkaynresian dialect even developed a tonal system.

The following sections are focused on the standard form of Pwekish. For informations about the Sekritnkaynresian dialect, see the page on Sekritnkaynresian Pwekish.

### Vowels

 Middle
 Near-open

### Phonotactics & Stress Pattern

Pwekish syllables generally have the pattern (C)(C)V(C)(C). Consonant clusters have no limits as to what consonants are allowed, tho ones that are considered too hard to pronounced are generally treated by inserting a schwa vowel [ə] in between. Syllabic /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /l/, /s/, /z/ and /r/ are allowed and are generally the preferred way to deal with consonant clusters containing such consonants as the second element.

Stress usually falls at the second-to-last syllable in polysyllabic words. There are exceptions to this rule, which typically occur in compound words and loanwords. Several native words, usually formed from shorterned forms of derivative words, also have irregular stress pattern. Unless used to derive new vocabularies, grammatical affixes also does not alter the stress pattern of words. For example, the word "dornaki", pronounced as /dornˈaki/, means "the roof", while "dorn-aki", pronounced as /ˈdorn.aki/, means "on the house".

Some dialects do not use a stress system in their phonology, instead use a pitch-accent system, perhaps influenced by Cantonese. Pwekish pitch accent can be easily converted from the standard stress system. Syllables where the stress lies generally correspond to a high tone; syllables before the stress usually correspond to a middle tone; and syllables after the stress usually correspond to a low tone. In long words where the stress lies at more than 2 syllables away from the last syllable of the word, the high tone generally persists on syllables after the stressed syllable until the second-to-last syllable, and the last syllable is pronounced with a low tone.

 pekentyukxa
("please")
 Example
 Sekritnkaynres
("sacred mountain")

The Sekritnkaynresian dialect, which had developed tones, has totally different phonotactics and stress patterns.

## Grammar

Pwekish is generally regarded as a language with very difficult grammar, especially when compared to the other common languages in the Isles of Pwek such as Inglesh. A common saying in Pwekish reflects this: "*TolontenPwék ayae ayae!*" ("Pwekish is very, very hard!")

Generally classified as an aglutinative language, Pwekish allows the stacking of word elements for the formation of very long words. Many Pwekish words are derived from some sort of verb roots, though there are also noun roots, as well as other parts of speech like adjectives, postpositions and determiners. Modofiers usually come after the modified words, though nouns can also be stacked in front of another word to modify it. The basic sentence structure of Pwekish is SOV (Subject-Object-Verb), but word order in Pwekish can be highly flexible with the use of case suffixes. Pwekish is also topic-prominent. Topics usually comes first in sentences, which is usually why the sentence structure got altered.

### Syntax

Pwekish sentences, as mentioned above, often follows the structure SOV (Subject-Object-Verb). Much like Korean and Japanese, Pwekish is also verb-final and topic-prominent. However, unlike in Korean and Japanese, Pwekish does not require the use of particles to mark noun cases in the sentences, unless the SOV sentence structure is altered. Another difference between Pwekish and Japanese and Korean is that adjectives, adverbs and determiners are all placed after the words they modify, which is rare among SOV languages. Pwekish does, however, allow noun stacking, where the noun that comes first in the phrase carries attributive meaning.

During the Old Pwekish period, the language used to follow the OSV structure. As contact with speakers of other languages such as Chinese, Korean and Japanese increases, Pwekish slowly had its sentence structure altered. In the Late Old Pwekish period, the Hinexapwen Kingdom (the strongest power on the isles at the time) adopted a dialect of Pwekiish which used the SOV structure as the standard. Other local powers soon also adopted the dialect as the standard, resulting in the current sentence structure of Pwekish.

### Verbs

Verbs are an essential part of the Pwekish language. Many word roots in Pwekish are verbs in origin, and sentences can often just contain verbs. Using various affixes, verbs can be transformed into nouns and adjectives, have their tense and aspects changed, and even have the object and direction of the action be altered. Verbs in Pwekish are also inflected by person, a result of the shift in sentence structure.

#### Verb Inflections

In Pwekish, verbs can have 3 tenses and 2 aspects, and are also inflected through person. Verb inflections are generally very regular, which occur as affixes on the verbs.

The affixes of the tenses and the aspects in Pwekish are as follows:

* kut-: Present Continuous (Progressive)
* hwi-: Past (Perfective)
* nis-: Future (Imperfective)
* mol-: Habitual
* byu-: Volitional
* p-: Passive
* s-: Causitive
* -bo: Interrogative
* -ka: Potential
* -ne: Negative

Notice that the stacking of multiple tense and aspect affixes is possible. For example, the word "hwipzimbey" (hwi- + p- + zimbey) may be used to describe some product that was sold in the past.

Personal inflections of verbs in Pwekish uses a more complicated system. Although it is still considered as adding prefixes to the verbs, the prefixes came from archaic Pwekish pronouns and they have since become sound changes to the initial consonant of the verb. This feature, commonly refered to as the Personal Initial Verb Mutation, is summarised below:

Example of the personal inflections of verbs in Pwekish:

* Ŋra bal. /ŋra bal/ "I read."
* Ntyu nbal. /n̩ˈtɕu mal/ "You read."
* Nrow bhal. /n̩ˈrow pal/ "He reads."

Personal inflections of verbs in Pwekish only happen at the initial of verbs. In other words, the special spelling realisation stated above would only occur at the starting position of any verbs.

### Copula

The Pwekish copula "*pe*" is usually left out. This means that sentences in Pwekish can often appear to have no verbs at all. However, this does not mean that copula in Pwekish has completely fallen out of use. In formal situation, and for confirmation purpose, the copula is still used.

The copula has one of the most irregular inflections among Pwekish verbs. When the copula is left out, the verb inflection affixes may be added to the concerned nouns instead.

### Adjectives & Adverbs

Pwekish does not have a clear distinction between adjectives and adverbs. Both are often just described as modifier words. However, Pwekish dictionary do generally list words as adjectives and adverbs, according to wheather the modifier words are used to modify nouns or verbs.

Adjectives are also used in the same way as verbs, and no copoula is required. When used as an attribute to the nouns and verbs, adjectives and adverbs are both put after the modified words and the suffix -*e* is added.

Adjectives can also be classified into 2 groups based on their etymology. These 2 groups are Adjective Roots, which are already adjectives from the start, and Adjectivized Words, which only became adjectives when the adjectivizing suffix -*e*. These 2 groups have some slight difference in their usage as the predicative and the attributive forms.

Example of Adjective Roots:

* Predicative: *Nur hmasnusa.* ("The person is tired.")
* Attributive: *Nrow nur masnusae.* ("He is a tired person.")

Example of Adjectivized Words:

* Predicative: *Bimpo nkabime.* ("The apple is red.")
* Attributive: *Iyungra bimpo kabime.* ("This is a red apple.")

### Noun

Nouns in Pwekish can either be a root word itself, a word derived from modifying some other root words, or the gerund form of a verb. Nouns can be inflected through multiple cases to express messages such as directions, positions, objects and subjects. Pwekish also has a class system, where nouns of different classes use different counter suffixes when counting.

Much like in Japanese and Korean, loan words are often treated as nouns, regardless of what their parts of speech are in their language of origin. This includes Sino-Pwekish vocabularies. To turn them into verbs, the suffix -*ye* is added; and to turn them into adjectives or adverbs, the suffix -*e* is added. If the speaker prefers to put the word in front of what they want to modify, the suffix -*tik* or -*tyi* may be added to the attributive noun.

## Vocabulary

Pwekish vocabularies are generally considered to consist of multiple classification of words, which includes Root Words, Derivatives, Hanngo, and Loanwords. These classifications are based on the origin of words. Due to the aglutinative nature of Pwekish, many of its vocabularies are interchangeable between being a noun, a verb or an adjective. These transformations between different parts of speech sometimes do not keep the original meaning of the word, instead taking a completely different meaning.

A dictionary of Pwekish is available to the public.

### Word Origin

Being an island nation, the Isles of Pwek had contacted many different cultures in its history, thus bringing in loan words from multiple languages. In the commonly-used word classification of Pwekish, these are the Hanngo and Loan Words. During the Old Pwekish and Middle Pwekish period, many Chinese vocabularies were brought to Pwekish, forming the word class Hanngo (漢語, literally "Chinese words"). In the development of Modern Pwekish, Pwekish also took loan words from languages such as Cantonese, Japanese, German, Portuguese and English. Even though some of these languages are also written in Chinese characters, they are generally regarded as the class Loanwords. Recently, however, Pwekish linguistic purism advocated for the reduction in use of loan words from other languages, resulting in an increase of calques with native Pwekish vocabularies. Hanngo and Loanwords are still common in both daily life and professional topics.

As Classical Chinese was once used as the educated language and the historical official language, some locally invented Hanngo terms have been invented, and have entered the Pwekish vocabularies. These Hanngo terms are often refered to as a separate class of Hanngo known as Pwetyi Hanngo (佩製漢語, literally "Pwekish-made Chinese words").

More imformation about Hanngo are on the page Sino-Pwekish Vocabulary.

### Word Formation

Among the native Pwekish vocabularies, over half are derived from adding affixes and modifiers to root words. Even among root words, many are suspected to be related, itself perhaps also derived from other root words. This has lead to the theory that the earliest form of the Pwekish language only had a handful of basic vocabularies.

As mentioned above, many words of the derivative class can often take on meanings very different from the root words that they are derived from. An example of this is the words *kru'* ("to jump") and *kru'n* ("frog").

## Writing System

### BentolPwék

Traditionally, Pwekish is written in BentolPwék (書佩, "Writing of the Pwekish"), a system similar to Japanese. This system is divided into 3 different parts: Punloy BentolPwék (本來書佩, "The Original Writing of the Pwekish"), Kentan BentolPwék (簡單書佩, "The Simplified Writing of the Pwekish") and Handzi (漢字, "Chinese Characters"). Similar to the Japanese writing system, these 3 sets of characters are used for different purposes:

* Punloy BentolPwék
	+ Pwekish vocabularies that cannot be represented with any Handzi character
	+ Tail of verbs (if the verb written has more than 1 syllable)
	+ Grammatical particles and affixes
	+ Representations of the reading of Handzi characters

* Kentan BentolPwék
	+ Loanword class vocabularies
	+ Onomatopoeia
	+ Representations of non-native reading of Handzi characters (i.e. those that are from Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, etc)

* Handzi
	+ Most nouns
	+ Head of verbs (i.e. the first syllable of verbs)
	+ Hanngo class vocabularies

Similar to Korean Hangul, characters in BentolPwék were designed to fit in grids with Chinese characters. each characters can be composed of multiple letters, and usually represent a syllable. This design also influenced the design of various Hanji scripts of Inglesh.

As for Handzi, much like in Japanese, each Handzi character can have more than 1 pronunciation. In Hanngo class words, they are often pronounced with a reading derived from Late Middle Chinese, known as 'imbaln (音讀, "sound reading"). In words of other classes, they are usually pronounced with a native reading that corresponds to the meaning, known as hyunbaln (訓讀, "meaning reading").

### BentolRomak

During the Colonial Period, Pwekish was not allowed to be written in BentolPwék, and had to be written with the Latin Alphabet. Thus, the system BentolRomak was developed.

Unlike BentolPwék, BentolRomak does not require custom encoding and custom font to be shown. In addition, BentolRomak marks stresses of words and is more pronunciation-oriented, making it a popular writing system for Pwekish.

Recently, the letter ə (capital letter: Ə) is added to represent the /ə/ sound represented by 󰃅 in BentolPwék.

## Sample Text

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Pwekish (BentolPwék):

人間󰂱󰀳󰀦󰂸󰃉生󰁎󰂡󰀮狩󰁕󰂮󰂱󰀹󰂸，尊嚴權利󰂓󰁕󰂤󰀁󰂚󰀲󰂸平等󰀁󰂸。人間理性良心󰀁󰂚󰀲󰂸󰃉󰀏󰂿󰁭有󰀹󰃂，󰀁󰂗󰀮󰃉應󰁱󰂸精神󰁱󰂸󰀹󰂫󰁃󰂱與󰀁󰂗󰀮󰀫󰂵󰀼。

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Pwekish (BentolRomak):

Rinkén edwe npekrit hekuene, tsunŋam guenlí-aki pade biaŋtŋ́ pe. Rinkén lisiŋ laŋsím pade hmolsano, pat h'inye tsiŋzyin-ye nuse pepatten.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

## See Also

* Pwekish People
* Sekritnkaynresian Dialect
* Inglesh Language
* Pwekish Revival
* United Ingland
* Pwek Kingdom
* Sisaidian Language