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Venture

Southern Wànzi Languages

The Southern Wànzi languages are a family of languages that can be found in the southern and central reaches of the eastern half of the Blessed Isle. The Southern Wànzi spectrum encompasses the Dragonswrath desert, the Mhaltin and Dhorash mountains, and proceeds upward to its northern border with the Northern Wànzi family in the Imperial River valleys.

Wànzi means “from the Wàn” in High Realm. The languages are so named because of their similarity to Wàn, the Xianyu language which the Empress spoke before she took the throne. In the modern Isle, more people speak a Wànzi language – northern or southern – than any other language family. Between the two, the Southern Wànzi languages are by far the more removed from High Realm, but can still trace their vocabulary and grammar back to a closer common ancestor with the Northern Wànzi than any other family.

Characteristics of the Southern Wànzi Languages

One characteristic of the Wànzi languages, both Northern and Southern, is the compelte atbsence of phonemic voicing. Where the old languages of the Isle often had multiple layers of distinction in their stops, the Southern Wànzi languages only have two: aspirated (with a puff of air) or unaspirated (without it).

The most obvious difference between the Southern and Northern Wànzi languages is that the Southern family is much more permissive with final consonants. Where the Northern Wànzi languages only really usually allow a final -n, the Southern Wànzi languages allow a much greater range of finals: usually some or all of -m, -n, -ng, -r, -p, -t, and -k. The Southern languages also often lose the distinction between r and l in most positions, reducing both to r.

Vowels are where the Southern Wànzi langauges most stand out. First, many of them feature the vowel ue and some oe, which expands their total inventory. Second, the Southern Wàn languages have among the largest tonal inventories not only in the Isle, but in the world. A real standout here is the Paishek language spoken in and around Vane Prefecture; some scholars claim that Paishek has as many as 11 distinct tones, although such analyses are disputed. Most Southern Wànzi languages have roughly six or seven tones. The consonants m, n, and ng can stand alone as syllables; the sentence “m’ ’ng m’ ’n” is a famous example of a valid phrase in Pagodi meaning “to dance about nervously.”

Grammatically, the Southern Wànzi languages mostly share the Northern Wànzi language’s distinguishing traits: lack of clitic usage, strict word order, and a dominant SOV word order. The Northern and Southern Wànzi languages are startlingly similar in grammar – often, you can substitute words almost one-for-one and get a valid sentence. Because of this similarity, scholars consider the Northern and Southern Wànzi languages very closely related families, despite their divergent sounds.

Status of the Southern Wànzi Languages

The Southern Wànzi languages are stereotypically lower class. The land that they cover is expansive, but generally of little use – deserts, hills, and areas with little impactful economic output. As a result, the people who speak Southern Wànzi languages are generally poor peasantry and inconspicuous patricians. In a play, a farmer character or backwoods hick probably has a strong accent reminiscent of the Southern Wànzi family.

Despite this class connotation, the Southern Wànzi languages are also thought to be reliable to a certian extent. The Southern Wànzi folk are simple: they work hard, they do what they say they will do, and they are generally honest and friendly, if crass and uneducated.

Accent Features of Southern Wànzi Languages

If you want your character to have a Southern Wànzi accent, you might mention some of the following vocal habits:

  • You don’t fully pronounce your i sounds, especially at the front of the mouth; they become a sort of buzz; “sze” instead of “si”.
  • You have a habit to reduce syllables like “ma” and “na” to “m’” and “’n”;
  • You pronounce f like w.
  • You use a lot of very expressive tones that aren’t quite standard.

Encountering a Dynast with a Southern Wànzi accent would be unusual, because it is a backwater accent. House Nellens and House Ragara have a reasonable number of scions who sound kind of Southern, owing to their holdings in the area; Ragara Sayyah has a Southern Wànzi accent.

Making a Southern Wànzi Name

Southern Wànzi names are distinct for their final consonants and the presence of more than just the five basic vowels.

Romanization: to emulate how the Southern Wànzi languages are perceived as uneducated and low-class, I’ve decided to Romanize them using a system inspired by Wade-Giles, the “White Guy Writes Chinese” system which was used in a lot of older works.

The Sounds

For a stereotypical Southern Wànzi name, you should use some of the following symbols: p, p’, t, t’, k, k’, ts, ts’, ch, ch’, m, n, ng, s, hs, h, w, r, and y. Hs is pronounced like “sh”, but is spelled like that because Wade-Giles are crazy?

You have the vowels i, e, a, u, and o, as well as eu (ü in German) and eo (ö in German). If you want to really make it look Southern Wànzi, you can use the following spellings everywhere:

tsi -> tzu,
ts’i -> tz’u,
chi -> cze,
ch’i -> cz’e,
si -> sze.

This represents the “buzz” that Southern Wànzi speakers often have (the same phenomenon as contemporary Mandarin).

If you want a uV pattern, spell it wV, like wa instead of ua. Likewise ya instead of ia.

The Shape

You can have any consonant at the start of the syllable, and any vowel that you like. At the end of the syllable, you can have m, n, ng, p, t, or k.

Two syllables sounds like a good flow.

Some Example Names

Hsi-Mak, Po-Lin, Seu-Teng, Nga-Wo, Shai-P’ek, Tzu, Ch’a-Kwan, Sze-Neu.