Re: Conlang dialects

Watya'iya`isa has no regional dialects, at least as far as the Classical
form goes.  It was spoken on a small island, but in pre-Classical times
it was spoken on a continent, and thus might've had multiple dialects.
Anyways, there are, however, class dialects.  I'm not sure quite what
the details of the different classes are yet.  However, one detail I do
know about is that the upper dialects tend to avoid the personal
pronouns/non-third person inflections when speaking to superiors, or
distant-equals (social equals who are not friends).  Everyone,
regardless of class, used a noun for speaking to the ruler, probably
"sugladi'zkwa" (my lord) - a word which betrays its foreign origin,
incidentally, the root "gladi'z" is unusual in that it ends in a
consonant, no native words end in closed syllables in their root form,
except for a few that have -l and -n, which were originally compounds,
where a final -i was lost.

Anyways, _gladi'z_ is descended from a word in the Imperial Language on
the Continent _gh'l'a"dejh_, where gh' = creaky-voiced velar fricative,
l' = creaky-voiced l, a" = creaky-voiced a, jh = voiced palatal
fricative < gh'l'-, all, -a-, over, dejh, protector, thus "protector
over all; protector of everyone".

Back on the topic of class dialects.  Sugladi'zkwa would be pronounced
by the higher classes as _sugladi'zgwa_ or _sugladi'gwa_, while the
lower classes would retain the original pronunciation (more careful
pronunciation being associated with greater subservience).  Perhaps
_sugladi'gwa_ could form the basis of a formal you, much like Sp.
_usted_ < _vuestra merced_ (your Grace, IIRC).  Some other differences
may be involve vocabulary selection.  Incorporation would definitely be
an area of differences.  For example, some auxillaries may be
incoporated into the verb for the upper class or the lower class.

--
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