Miwonša

Introduction

Miwonša is a constructed language (conlang) developed by a German language enthusiast with an academic background in linguistics. It is a self-classified artistic language (artlang), created primarily as a personal project for creative expression and linguistic exploration. Miwonša is not intended for practical use or international communication, but rather as a naturalistic conlang that aims to resemble a plausible human language.

Background and Purpose The development of Miwonša began in 2011 as a private hobby during the creator's time as a linguistics student. The language was not designed for use in a fictional world, nor with the goal of being particularly easy or difficult to learn. Instead, it was intended to be internally coherent, typologically naturalistic, and aesthetically appealing.

While Miwonša does not imitate any specific natural language, it draws inspiration from a variety of typological features found in less commonly studied languages outside Western and Central Europe. These include elements from Slavic languages, Turkish, and indigenous languages of the Americas and Asia. The goal was to avoid Eurocentric patterns and to explore structures that are naturalistic, but less familiar to speakers of languages such as English, German, or French.

Typological Profile Miwonša is an a priori language and functions as a language isolate, though it incorporates a small number of loanwords. Its phonology includes features such as nasal vowels, ejectives, and a variety of sibilants and affricates, inspired in part by languages like Polish, Quechua, and Lakhota.

The language distinguishes two grammatical genders (masculine and feminine), singular and plural number, and five declension classes. Nouns and pronouns are inflected for four grammatical cases, and the language does not use articles. Demonstratives and possessives are realized as infixes placed between the noun stem and the case ending. The declension classes are based partly on the final vowel of the noun and show some semantic tendencies, such as associations with animacy or gender. While much simpler than Bantu noun class systems, the Miwonšan system still represents a basic form of noun classification.

Adjectives usually follow the noun and agree in number and declension class. In oblique cases, the case ending appears only on the adjective, not the noun. This results in a mixed marking system with both head-marking and dependent-marking traits. The case morphemes in these contexts act more like syntactic clitics than regular suffixes.

Verb morphology in Miwonša is relatively complex. Verbs may agree with both subject and direct object, although person marking can be omitted in certain contexts. The language features three tenses (past, present, future) and two aspects (perfective and imperfective), as well as optional markers for reflexive, reciprocal, passive, and impersonal voice. Non-finite forms such as infinitives, gerunds, and supines are also present.

The language allows flexible word order, with both SVO and SOV being common. Word order can reflect information structure: SOV often places the object in a backgrounded or known position, while SVO tends to introduce it as new or focused information. Miwonša generally follows a topic–comment (theme–rheme) structure, with a preference for placing new or important information toward the end of the clause.

Writing Systems Miwonša is typically written using the Latin alphabet, which consists of 27 letters:

A B C Č D – E F G H I – J K L M N – O P R S Š – T U V W Y – Z Ž

The letters q and x are not used; in borrowed words, they are usually replaced with kw and ks. The letters b, d, g, and v are also limited to loanwords. Native Miwonšan words never begin with the letter j, so J is not used as an initial capital. When words are written entirely in uppercase, J may appear as part of a borrowed or adapted form. For pronunciation support, stressed vowels may be marked with acute accents (á, é, í, ó, ú), though these are not part of the official orthography.

In addition to the Latin alphabet, Miwonša has a native script called Tarul, which functions similarly to the Korean Hangul system. Each Tarul character represents a full syllable but is constructed from smaller components that represent individual sounds. Due to the language’s allowance for complex syllable structures (e.g., CCCVNC), the Tarul script is significantly more intricate than Hangul. As such, it is not used for everyday writing, but rather in artistic or ceremonial contexts such as signage, tattoos, or fictional documents.

Phonology

Consonants

	labial	alveolar	post-alveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
plosive	p pʼ (b)	t tʼ (d)		c cʼ	k kʼ (g)
nasal	m	n		ɲ	(ŋ)
fricative	f (v)	s z (sʲ zʲ)	ʃ ʒ	ɕ	(x)	h
affricate		ts	tʃ dʒ	(tɕ tɕʼ)
trills		r
laterals		l (ɬ)		(ʎ)
approximants	w ʍ			j

Vowels

Monophthongs:

	front	central	back
high	i ĩ		u ũ
central	ɛ ɛ̃		ɔ ɔ̃
low		a ã

Diphthongs:

	front	central	back
high	iʊ̯		uɪ̯
central	ɛɪ̯		ɔɪ̯
low		aɪ̯ aʊ̯

Verbs

Finite Verbs forms

The slot model

slot 1	slot 2		slot 3		slot 4		slot 5
VERB STEM	-wa-/-ya-	PAST	-im-	1SG.NOM	-im-	1SG.ACC	-an	IND.IPFV
			-iš-	2SG.NOM	-iš	2SG.ACC	-Ø-/-at-	IND.PFV
			-iw-/-if-/-it	3SG.NOM	-iw-/-it	3SG.ACC	-ui/-ao	IND.FUT
			-am-	1PL.NOM	-am-	1PL.ACC	-ai	COND
			-aš-	2PL.NOM	-aš-	2PL.ACC	-ai/-Ø	IPFV
			-aw-/-af-/-at	3PL.NOM	-aw-/-at	2PL.ACC
					-ar-	PASS
					-ast-	REFL
					-ahw-	RECP
					-asj-	IMPERS

Agreement rules

Type of Subject	Type of Object	Subject Agreement	Object Agreement	Example sentence	Translation
noun	no object	NO	NO	Kaika lufjan.	The cat is sleeping.
pronoun	no object	YES	NO	Woi lufiwan.	He is sleeping.
omitted pronoun	no object	YES	NO	Lufiwan.	He is sleeping.
phrase	no object	NO	NO	Luzjan, sta ši anhi.	It's nice (literally: It makes happy) that you are here.
noun	nouns	NO	NO
	pronouns	YES	YES
	omitted pronouns	YES	YES
	phrase	NO	NO
(omitted) pronoun	nouns	YES	NO
	pronouns	YES	YES
	omitted pronouns	YES	YES
	phrase	YES	NO
phrase	nouns	NO	NO
	pronouns	YES	NO
	omitted pronouns	YES	NO