Viljsafaanan

Viljsafaanan is a Little Dwarf Language (LDL) spoken by an estimated 3,200 people in the isolated Vilja Valley of the northern Equatorial region. Linguists classify it as part of the Indo-Pael branch of the broader Palasek family, though its early protoforms are poorly documented. The language demonstrates a high degree of ergativity in its verbal morphology, a feature that makes it a frequent subject of comparative studies with other ergative languages in the area. The noun class system is unusually extensive, containing seven animate and six inanimate categories, which are marked by dedicated suffixes on the noun stem.

The earliest known records of Viljsafaanan date to the late 17th century, when European explorers stationed in the region produced a handful of word lists and a short grammar sketch. The language survived the flashpoint of the Great Vilja Conflict in the mid‑19th century, largely due to its relative geographic isolation and the community’s strong oral tradition. By the 20th century, missionaries introduced a Latin‑based orthography that has since been refined; the modern writing system uses a 24‑letter alphabet with diacritics to indicate tone and nasalization.

Viljsafaanan is primarily an oral language, though recent linguistic revitalization projects have produced a small corpus of recorded folklore and a flagship text, the "Vilja Hymn." The community is bilingual in Viljsafaanan and the dominant East Palasek tongue, yet code‑switching remains rare in ritual contexts. According to the 2010 national census, 68% of Vilja Valley residents are fluent in Viljsafaanan, with 12% speaking it as a second language. The language is designated as "Vulnerable" on the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, but active community groups and academic institutions are working to document and preserve it.