Sani language

The Sani language, formerly called Lakhesian by the colonial power Shireroth, is a Cosimo-Benacian language spoken by approximately 32-35 million people in Sanama and Talenore. It is closely related to Ama with which it has limited mutual intelligability. Around 25 million speakers can be found in Sanama, and 7.5 million in Talenore. It is an official language in Talenore and the main official language in Sanama. Sani is a mildly agglutinative language, it also has a number of particles.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Plosive	p			t			k	q
Nasal	m			n			ŋ
Trill				r̥ r
Fricative		f	θ	s	ʃ		x		h
Approximant	ʍ w					j
Lateral approximant				l̥ l
Affricate				ts	tʃ

Where consonants appear in pairs, the left is unvoiced and the right is voiced.

Vowels

Sani has six vowel phonemes. They do not contrast for length or nasality. The Sani schwa vowel is transliterated as Ë, while the E vowel varies between /e/ and /ɛ/ depending on environment.

Orthography

Orthography

A

C

E

Ë

F

Ff

H

I

K

L

Ll

M

N

Ng

O

P

Q

R

Rr

S

T

U

W

Wh

X

Y

Z

Cz

Phonology

a

ts

ɛ-e

ə

f

θ

h

i

k

l

l̥

m

n

ŋ

ɔ

p

q

r

r̥

s

t

u

w

ʍ

x

j

ʃ

tʃ

Grammar

Syntax

Sani is a subject-object-verb language, but due to case marking, the order is somewhat fluid.

Sani vocabulary

Most of the Sani vocabulary is Cosimo-Benacian in origin, but the language has also borrowed words, mostly from Cisamarrese, Ama and more recently Istvanistani, Praeta and Babkhi.

Semantic Domain	Word	Etymology	Definition
body	xonu		noun: head, main
government	xonuti		noun: king, leader, chieftain
grammar	-ti		suffix: abstraction of noun
grammar	-lla		suffix: something belonging to the modified noun
	zawa		adjective: free, unchained, not in servitude, independent
government	rrumë		noun: state, independent entity
grammar	na		conjunction: and
government	kosos	Pr. Koïsoß, "Empire or a significant State, realm, domain, sphere"	noun: empire