Gaw Vataient

General information
Colonial Vataian (Gaw Vataient) is a variant of the Vataian language created by Aekari Tennou for his fictional world. It is a minority language spoken by some 5% of the population of the Kingdom of Vataiankt, but primarily in the New Arcadia region, where the Deesawtonians first settled. It is also spoken as the primary native language of the Vataian ex-patriot community in Deesawton. It arose from an extreme form of colonial mentality, hence the name "Colonial Vataian," in which certain populations became so enamored by the invading English language - the fact that it had fewer phonemic contrasts and lacked tone - that they deliberately tried to alter their native tongue to match the English phonology as much as possible.

Two schools of thought arose in this deliberate language experiment. The first school, rather ironically called the Purist School (Fao Gaw Hat/Faod Nkawg Hatg], advocated that the pronunciation should be changed to match English as much as possible and that the tonality should be dropped, meaning that tone marker letters would simply cease to be used. The second school, called the No Unpronounced Spelling School (Ond Ondboil Supelring/Ood Ood-Npeuil Soe-Phel-Ring Hatg) or simply NUSS, advocated that not only should the pronunciations be changed to be like English as much as possible and that the tonality should bed ropped, but also that any letters which were previously used to mark tones should be pronounced explicitly as well in order to preserve the new language's connection to its mother language. The Purist School won the hearts of more people, but NUSS also managed to create a large enough community to sustain its variant of the language as well.

With regards to orthography, the Purist School devised a new spelling system, called the Reformed Vataient Alphabetical System (RVAS), that would take into account the proposed pronunciation changes. The Purist School recommended that the original spelling system not be used in favor of RVAS. RVAS enjoys official status in the Deesawton-based Vataian ex-patriot community, where it is used in education, common correspondence, and at the official level. NUSS also devised its own spelling system to accommodate the loss of certain consonant contrasts and prenasalization, while still ensuring the presence of the to-be-pronounced final consonants. This spelling system was called the Revised and Explicit Vadtaijentj Writing System (RaEVWS). NUSS also advocated for the use of the original spelling system, as this already contained the final consonant information as well as served as a connector between NUSS Vataian and Nkawg Hvaad-Taij-Eecj. The original spelling system is preferred in official correspondence, while RaEVWS is typically used in non-official writing.

This article will cover the Purist School variant, which is called Gaw Vataient.

Consonants
In an effort to make the language sound more like English, many of the consonant sounds were removed and merged with consonants that can be found in English. See this page to look at the original phonolog of Nkawg Hvaad Taij Eecj. The consonants are given in the IPA table below. Only those phonemes whose phonemic symbol and orthographic symbol do not match have their orthographic symbol indicated in parentheses next to the phoneme.

Sounds mergers are as follows: