LotM - Mar 16: Himmaswa: view article

Himmaswa has a fairly large phonetic inventory, with 18 consonants and 38 vowels. Himmaswa has nasal stops: /m/, /n/, /ɲ/, and /ŋ/, aspirated stops: /pʰ/, /tʰ/, /t͡ʃʰ/, and /kʰ/, voiced stops: /b/, /d/, /d͡ʒ/, and /g/, and some others: /f/, /s/, /h/, /l/, /j/, and /w/.

The vowels where things get really interesting. There are seven base vowels, ‹i u e œ ə o a›, which can undergo various modifications and blends. These vowels can be made lax, lengthened, tensed, made rhotic, made creaky, or made breathy. Not every base vowel undergoes every modification, but that's still a lot of options. Added on top of that are the blends, of which there are four types: raising/fronting dipthongs, backing dipthongs, centering dipthongs, and tripthongs. If you want to see how it all works out, go to Himmaswa's language page.

[edit] [top]Orthography

Let me just put this out there first. Himmaswa's orthography is beautiful. Follow these links. Right now. I can wait.

Looks great, right? And if you look at any of Himmaswa's translations, you'll see many more characters than just those. They're clean, clear, original; I'm not sure if I've seen a nicer character-based writing system.

[edit] [top]Morphology

Himmaswa is an analytic language, so it doesn't have much in the way of morphology. The verbs themselves do most of the heavy lifting. As in many languages, verbs carry their own valency. In Himmaswa, however, verbs also carry their own aspect. There are even some verb pairs; verbs that differ only in aspect. Valency and aspect can also be modified with auxiliary verbs. Such verbs can also handle mood and polarity.

Himmaswa also has a rich system of verb serialization/compounding. A string of verbs can represent sequential actions or simultaneous actions or, for certain combinations of verbs, gain entirely new meanings.

[edit] [top]More on Himmaswa

Crave more? Check out its articles, grammar tables, translations, grammatical examples, or LexiBuild sets.

[edit] [top]A Note on LotM

Got suggestions for how the next LotM should be written? See something in Himmaswa that wasn't covered and you wish it had been? Hate my guts and want to tell me? Feel free to shoot us (either phi2dao or argyle) a PM with your thoughts, suggestions, and hate mail. Also feel free to drop by the LotM clan if you have other feedback, want to join in the voting process, or nominate a language!

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on 11/03/16 12:56+9[Deactivated User]added user tag

on 04/03/16 21:22+8[Deactivated User]typo correction