Rhavanese language

Nhai
Rhavanese, Rhavan Speak
Native to	Rhava
Ethnicity	Rhavanese
Native speakers	30,000,000
Language family	Huang Eastern Nhai
Standard forms	Northern (standard script)
Dialects	Northern Central Southern Traditional Formal
Official status
Official language in	Rhava
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–

Nhai is the official language of Rhava and is a part of the Huang family tree. Nhai is separated into to writing scripts, ancient and standard. In modern day cities only standard is taught, but in rural areas ancient is taught.

Writing System

Writing system

Nhai (Rhavanese) is written in the Anglo-Rhav Alphabet, which is a modified Latin alphabet used for Rhavanese languages.

Order	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30
Majuscule	Ă	Â	E	Ê	I	O	Ô	Ơ	U	Ư	B	C	D	Đ	G	H	J	K	L	M	N	P	Ts	Q	R	S	T	V	X	Y
Minuscule	ă	â	e	ê	i	o	ô	ơ	u	ư	b	c	d	đ	g	h	j	k	l	m	n	p	ts	q	r	s	t	v	x	y

Initial consonants

Initial consonants which exist only in the Northern dialect are in red, while those that exist only in the Southern dialect are in blue.

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n		ɲ/nh/	ŋ/ng/
Stop/ Affricate	tenuis	(p)	t	ʈ/tr/	c/ch/	k	(ʔ/oi/)
	aspirated		tʰ/th/ & tɬ/tl/
	glottalized	ɓ/b/	ɗ/d/
Fricative	voiceless	f/ph/	s	ʂ/sh/		x/kh/	h
	voiced	v/y/	z			ɣ/gh/
Approximant			l		j/y/	w
Rhotic			ɹ/r/ (trilled)

Vowels

Rhavanese, or Nhai has many different vowels. Though not labeled in the chart, there are also added long vowels such as; aa, and oo.

	Front	Central	Back
Centering	ia/iê [iə̯]	ưa/ươ [ɨə̯]	ua/uô [uə̯]
Close	i/y [i]	ư [ɨ]	u [u]
Close-mid/ Mid	ê [e]	ơ [əː] â [ə]	ô [o]
Open-mid/ Open	e [ɛ]	a [aː] ă [a]	o [ɔ]

Centering diphthongs are formed with only the three vowels; i, ư, u. They are usually spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, when they are followed by a consonant.

In addition to Nhai's many vowels, there are also diphthongs and triphthongs. The closing diphthongs and triphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide /j/ or /w/.

	/w/ offglide		/j/ offglide
Centering	iêu [iə̯w]	ươu [ɯə̯w]	ươi [ɯə̯j]	uôi [uə̯j]
Close	iu [iw]	ưu [ɯw]	ưi [ɯj]	ui [uj]
Close-mid	êu [ew]	– âu [ʌw]	ơi [ɤj] ây [ʌj]	ôi [oj]
Open-mid	eo [ɛw]			oi [ɔj]
Open		ao [aw] au [ɐw]	ai [aj] ay [ɐj]

</ref> There are restrictions on the high offglides: /j/ cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and /w/ cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus.

	/w/ offglide		/j/ offglide
	Front	Central		Back
Centering	iêu [iə̯w]	ươu [ɨə̯w]	ươi [ɨə̯j]	uôi [uə̯j]
Close	iu [iw]	ưu [ɨw]	ưi [ɨj]	ui [uj]
Close-mid/ Mid	êu [ew]	– âu[əw]	ơi [əːj] ây [əj]	ôi [oj]
Open-mid/ Open	eo [ɛw]	ao [aːw] au [aw]	ai [aːj] ay [aj]	oi [ɔj]

Diaeresis (diacritic)

letter	sound
ü	oo-weeh
ë	ooh-weh
ö	er
ä	ay

Rhavanese Phonetics

Name	Description	Diacritic	Example
ngang   'level'	mid level	(no mark)	ma  'ghost'
huyền   'deep'	low falling (often breathy)	◌̀ (grave accent)	mà  'but'
sắc   'sharp'	high rising	◌́ (acute accent)	má  'cheek, mother (southern)'
hỏi   'questioning'	mid dipping-rising	◌̉ (hook above)	mả  'tomb, grave'
ngã   'tumbling'	creaky high breaking-rising	◌̃ (tilde)	mã  'horse
nặng   'heavy'	falling	◌̣ (dot below)	mạ  'rice seedling'
Vēn   'continuation'	straight tone (medium length)	◌̣ (straight line above)	mā  'used before Tü to symbolize ownership of subject'