Ruwadhi

Like the other Buri languages, the aspirated stops of other Davanian languages are instead fricatives in Ruwadhi. The retroflex series of consonants collapsed into the dental, and the palatal affricates lenited and merged into the fricatives. Unique among the Davanian languages, Ruwadhi incorporates pharyngealised consonants, developing from earlier murmured vowel sounds (still present in the other northern Buri languages), and likely at least partly under the influence of neighbouring saurian languages, where pharyngeal sounds are common. The velar sounds were particularly unstable in the development of Ruwadhi: the velar nasal /ŋ/ merged into the palatal nasal except as an allophone before a velar sound in a cluster, the velar fricative /*ɣ/ merged into the palatal approximant /j/, and many instances of earlier /*k/ retracted to /q/. Also odd, Ruwadhi’s rhotic sound is generally realised as an alveolar approximant /ɹ/, rather than the more common tap or trill. Ruwadhi still retains the Davanian syllabic liquids ṙ and ḷ, though without length distinction, and additionally the anusvara developed into a syllabic nasal in most cases (though this is starting to erode, especially in cases after /w/, earlier /*v/).The visarga (ḥ) developed from earlier Burjmani /ɨ~ə/ into /ɯ/ in Ruwadhi, usually transliterated as “ı”, rather than the more conservative “ḥ” The common final -ī has also merged into this sound, though is usually still transcribed as “ī”.   The Ruwadhi script was adapted from the Kushan script, its most notable difference being the lack of horizontal line at the tops of most letters. Ruwadhi lacks the retroflex consonants that are common in many other Davanian languages, but repurposed their letters for the pharyngealised dental series. There is some redundancy, as several sounds have merged since the spelling was codified (such as /*ɣ/ merging with /j/) or obsolete spellings were deliberately maintained (as with the “diphthong” letters) due to their use in Kushan scriptures. A few cases, such as /q/ and short /e/ and /o/, do not have unique letters, as they represent sound splits not present in Kushan.   The Ruwadhi language has a considerable number of loanwords from Nenian, particularly from Sardian. Most of these loans refer to ecology and geology of the Nenian Plateau, which the early Ruwadhis migrating to the area would not have had words for. For example, the Ruwadhi word “પેલિસ”, plural “પેલિસઃ” (pēlis, plural pēlisı), referring to the small mountain lakes that dot the Nenian Plateau, was borrowed from Sardian “བེལྒིད྄” (belgid). “હલાઙકિસ” (halāṅkis), referring to the steppe cat (manul) comes from a Nenian word meaning approximately “the solitary one” or “the lonely one”.

Ruwadhi

રુવઢી
(ruwāḍhī)

  Pronunciation: /ɹʊˈwaː.ðˤɯ/   Ethnicity: Ruwadhis   Language Family:
Oecumeno-Davanian

Consonants

 

Vowels

 

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