Alahithian

[ol bofosh]

New development: interrogatives.

I'm experimenting now with just one all-purpose interrogative: ûx (which brings some doubts about using ejh for why).

I'd come up with a list of other interrogatives (what, where, when etc.) but have decided to go another way.

A question can start with ûx:
ûx on alahirt alahith – do you speak Alahithian?
ûx ono zedoyt – What is your name?
ûx onang efity - do you know them?

Interrogatives pronouns there aren't, but ûx can be specified by nouns, after which a simple "ûx" can be used to repeat the question.
Ûx savot – who (which person)?
Ûx erefas – when (which time/change?)
Ûx udak – where (which place/land/ground)?

It can also be tagged onto a statement:
Ono zedoyt, ûx – you have a name, don’t you?

[Grunnen]

New development: interrogatives.

I'm experimenting now with just one all-purpose interrogative: ûx (which brings some doubts about using ejh for why).

I'd come up with a list of other interrogatives (what, where, when etc.) but have decided to go another way.

A question can start with ûx:
ûx on alahirt alahith – do you speak Alahithian?
ûx ono zedoyt – What is your name?
ûx onang efity - do you know them?

Interrogatives pronouns there aren't, but ûx can be specified by nouns, after which a simple "ûx" can be used to repeat the question.
Ûx savot – who (which person)?
Ûx erefas – when (which time/change?)
Ûx udak – where (which place/land/ground)?

It can also be tagged onto a statement:
Ono zedoyt, ûx – you have a name, don’t you?

Seems reasonable, and nice.

[ol bofosh]

Thanks.

I think I could also add it into embedded questions:

I don't know what to eat.
Om efiwtel ûx muw.

At least for the moment.

[ol bofosh]

Just working my way through adverbial clauses. Happy how I've started.

My grammar dictionary has a few phrases that I can use:


Ûm gowp eti jiks ûm onedoyp vu, ûx?
we will drink first with we go last, yes?
Lets have a drink before we go.

It's a suggestion in English so I made a statement in Alahithian followed by the all purpose interrogative to make it more "suggestive".

Suzie rushed off to play as soon as she finished work.
Sûzi fiyk zinofaw erefas kama ong parew fothûp.
Suzie left play... hmm, I think I translated that wrong. Fiyk zinofaw is meant to be "left to play" but looks more like "left playing." I have to work on my "in order to". Back to the drawing board with that one.

The "as soon as" I've translated as erefas kama - time same, which seems to work.

I have another which is "I've been sleeping better since I changed jobs." I think I'll take the example I read about Spanish which is to make the "I've been sleeping..." present tense and then I can keep "I changed jobs" as past tense. "Since" I'm still undecided about. I want to avoid a direct translation and try something else. I was thinking erefas kama or just kama but it lacks the sense of "from then till now", though the contrast of present and past might work. What do you think?

[Pole, the]

The difference between j and jh is that the former is unvoiced (Eng. ch) counterpart of the latter, right?

[ol bofosh]

Yes. At the end of a noun jh is singular and j is plural, which is the same for other voiced/unvoiced letters.

[Pole, the]

And how is û pronounced?

[ol bofosh]

û is /ʊ/ and u is /ʌ/.

[Turtlehead]

Om alahirtel alahith, ûx on alahirt alahith?

[Pole, the]

Omong arahirtel.

[ol bofosh]

Om alahirtel alahith, ûx on alahirt alahith?

Ûx savot ine on atalowta? Om thefiwt on tetoyk "an". Am zedoty savod bilawo jiks ejhel.
To who were you asking? I think you meant "an" (1s). We are many people, not just one.

But very good use of Alahithian.

I've found the limit of using the word for Alahithian (alahith) as the same word as "language".

Ûx on alahirt alahith could be "do you speak Alahithian" or "do you speak language", which could get confusing....

[break]making hot choclate for girlfriend and myself[/break]

...Solution has just presented itself. A while ago I invented a word that started for "oh" (ol) for a poem I translated, but I soon found use for it as an word to address people, like "sir", "madam", or Mr. and Mrs. It could also act as a article for unique things or "archetypal" things. This is the only article I'm allowing in Alahithian for the moment.

So if I say ûx on alahirt ol alahith it's like saying "Do you speak The Language?"

I love figuring things out like that as I go along.

[ol bofosh]

Just got an idea for when a relative clause meets passive voice, because I had some grammatical problems with it before.

The relative clause comes after the NP as a verb with no tense (I may still include the aspect).

Mûreth gakar.
man hit
The man that hits.

For the passive voice the words are reversed.

Gakark mûreth.
hit-PAST man
The man was hit.

But I wasn't sure how to do combine passive with relative clause. But I hit upon a solution.

Mûreth gakar ong.
man hit it
The man that was hit.

Alahithian is SVO, but only when the object is a noun; when it is a personal pronoun word order is SOV (like French).

Putting a pronoun after the verb means it cannot be confused with anything else. I'm also considering using the reflexive (in the case above ongo) in the same way, though I don't see much use for it at the moment.

In this way I could possibly use tense, since the word order wouldn't be confused with anything else. That's another thing I've still to decide.

[ol bofosh]

There are no articles in Alahithian except one: ol.

It's function doesn't cover definite or indefinite, instead it indicates a proper noun, such as a person's name, and is also used as a vocative.

Hence alahith is language and ol alahith is Alahithian, literally The Language.

[ol bofosh]

Well, after losing some words I've been recovering them, and have got a few of them back.

Not only that but I've been playing with the

My idea for Alahithian is that it is an auxiliary language, built from a few different languages, but its vocabulalry mainly comes from one, so I've been using the Sound Change Modifier to create a bit of it. It's supposed to be a bit more complex than Alahithian, having case, number and gender in its nouns and tense, aspect and mood for its verbs, with perhaps person too.

I've played with the morphology of the words but not the phonology. I may just keep the sound values the same, as its not meant to represent natural sound changes. Here's a list of verbs, with English translations of the right, Alahithian in the middle and the new morphology on the right.

abë aper answer
abei arapey be born
adï aratir begin
adlöu atalow ask
adö udor be low (down)
ägi uguy dig
ajei ajhey discover, find
aleu alew shine
alhï alahir speak
aliu aliw illumine
amï umiy care
amö umor give
awï awir agree
badï patir kill

The only thing with the verbs is that its produced seven dipthongs, which I'm not sure if it's naturalistic or efficient for a language; one dipthong has a long vowel, which I'm also suspicious about. For the moment that's how it stands though.

[ol bofosh]

It's been a while but I've made a few changes to Alahithian.

For instance I had six vowels: <a e i o u û>, based on my own short vowels: [æ ɛ ɪ ɒ ɐ ʏ]. I then reduced this to five vowels: <a e i o u> /a e i o u/.

I also change some of the consonants: <dh j c l n r sh th zh> these were /ð dʒ tʃ l n ɹ ʃ θ ʒ/, since I was feeling lazy, but since then I've changed them: /ɖ ɖʐ ʈʂ ɭ ɳ r ʂ ʈ ʐ/. The rest stay the same.

Above I say there is no definite or indefinite articles. Well, I'm here to say that a definite particle has made a show: pa. This article also makes its appearance in conjunctions.

pa jix is the definite article with the postposition jix "with", which conjuncts clauses together in the same way as and.
pa nep, the same but with pp for "by", and means because.
There's a whole list of conjunctions like this.

One thing that was confusing me was how to make passive relative clauses. The passive has word order VS, yet for relative clauses you simply place the infinitive after the noun phrase, but this only works for active voice.
Felis maw = cat that eats.
Putting the infinitive before the noun phrase could have been an answer but may have been confusing (for me)
so now I have the passive particle tha.
Felis tha muw mureth nep = a cat that was eaten by a man

I started doing a lot for clauses, and can say that I have relative clauses (infinite after NP), verb-complement clause
and various conjunctions.

And if I haven't mentioned this before, emphasis is fixed on the penultimate vowel of a word.

I've just read my original entry and a few of my first posts. Just where was I? (actually, where am I still? I feel I've come a long way in a year though)

[Click]

I also change some of the vowels: <dh j c l n r sh th zh> these were /ð dʒ tʃ l n ɹ ʃ θ ʒ/, since I was feeling lazy, but since then I've changed them: /ɖ ɖʐ ʈʂ ɭ ɳ r ʂ ʈ ʐ/. The rest stay the same.

So there are no plain /n/ and /l/ in your language now? I have seen one language from north Mexico or southwest USA that had /ɭ/ without /l/, but I don't think /ɳ ɭ/ without /n l/ is plausible.

[ol bofosh]

I also change some of the vowels: <dh j c l n r sh th zh> these were /ð dʒ tʃ l n ɹ ʃ θ ʒ/, since I was feeling lazy, but since then I've changed them: /ɖ ɖʐ ʈʂ ɭ ɳ r ʂ ʈ ʐ/. The rest stay the same.

So there are no plain /n/ and /l/ in your language now? I have seen one language from north Mexico or southwest USA that had /ɭ/ without /l/, but I don't think /ɳ ɭ/ without /n l/ is plausible.

It's meant to an auxlang, so naturalism isn't an aim.

Also Javanese. Funnily I did not take my phonology from Javanese, someone told me the similarities later.

[ol bofosh]

Particles (pa, tha, ol, ux)

pa
definite article. Also used for conjunction phrases for and, or, because, etc. I've also been considering it for copulas with adjectives, instead of a rather longwinded "The leaf is identified as green" or "The leaf exists greenly" (there is no copula verb) we could say "the leaf the green".

pa felis - the cat
pa bofosh - the tree
pa valiz - the flowers

Use of pa in conjunctions (the other words are typically postpositions)
X because of Y – pa nep
X, therefore Y – pa lo
X in order to Y - pa ha
If X then Y – pa bexi
X about/of Y - pa zix

X while Y – pa fan
X before Y – pa erin
X after Y – pa kin

X until Y – pa fa
X since Y - pa era

X and Y – pa jix
X or Y – pa ota
X but/yet Y – pa rat

pa felis pa bo - the cat is big
pa valis pa fi - the flower is small

tha
particle used to introduce relative clauses in passive voice.

pa felis maw mus - the cat that eats a mouse
pa mus tha maw pa felis zin - the mouse eaten by the cat

ol
used as a vocative particle, as well as for proper nouns. May also be used to indicate divinity: "god of", hence ol bofosh (PR tree) means Treegod. For God we use ol om (PR 1SG), The I.

Ol bofosh! - Hey tree!
Ol jon mawt felis maw mus - John eats a cat that ate a mouse.
Ol budak - mountain god/The Mountain


ux
interrogative particle. So far it has use for yes-no questions, simply by placing it at the beginning of a sentence. The same for polar questions. WH-questions I haven't yet figured out.

Ux on mawt? - Do you want to eat?
Ux on lefir feliz ota kanis ota? - Do you like cats or dogs? (each option - cat and dog - is followed by ota "or" or "opposite")

And that's about all the particles I have, so far...

[Pole, the]

It's meant to an auxlang, so naturalism isn't an aim.

If it's meant to an auxlang, neither weirdoing is an aim then.

I also change some of the vowels: <dh j c l n r sh th zh> these were /ð dʒ tʃ l n ɹ ʃ θ ʒ/, since I was feeling lazy, but since then I've changed them: /ɖ ɖʐ ʈʂ ɭ ɳ r ʂ ʈ ʐ/. The rest stay the same.

Interesting vowels, you say.

[ol bofosh]

It's meant to an auxlang, so naturalism isn't an aim.

If it's meant to an auxlang, neither weirdoing is an aim then.

Yeah, that too.

Internal history: Alahithian probably found existence in the inept hands of a wannabe linguist learning basic grammar that should have been learnt in school... and yet was still widely accepted for an auxlang, despite its oddities. Linguists have since cleaned it up a bit, but kept some oddities because they find it "charming".

External history: Alahithian found existence in the inept hands of a wannabe linguist learning basic grammar that should have been learnt in school... and comes up with poor internal histories to compensate.

If I started Alahithian now it would be very different; I've learnt too much to do the same mistakes. I'd make whole load of new mistakes now.

Interesting vowels, you say.

Fixed, thanks.

[ol bofosh]

maw - to eat
Om mawt - I eat
Om mawta - I am eating
Om mawtelo - I have not eaten

Add to these -i. I'm not sure about the proper name for it but it describes:

Om mawti - I am going to eat or I'm just about to eat.
Om mawki - I was going to eat or I was just about to eat

but...

Om mawpi - I would eat

Combining the future -p- with the prospective(?) -i we have the conditional.

Full inflection for muw "to eat".

Om mawk - I ate
Om mawt - I eat
Om mawp - I will eat

Om mawko - I had eaten
Om mawto - I have eaten
Om mawpo - I will have eaten

Om mawka - I was eating
Om mawta - I am eating
Om mawpa - I will be eating

Om mawki - I was going to eat/just about to eat
Om mawti - I am going to eat/just about to eat
Om mawpi - I would eat

The precise grammatical function for aspect and tense more or less copies English, but I'm going to fine tune this.

[ol bofosh]

It's been a long time since I've done anything on Alahithian, but after thinking about hnaf's interrogatives I got to thinking about Alahithian's, which I never really sorted out.
<ux> is a particle for yes-no questions I've had for a long time. I never wanted interrogative pronouns for Alahithian, but I never had a fixed idea until now.

<uxu> is an interrogative particle that behaves like an adverb and adjective (there's no morphological difference between adj and adv, so neither is there for this one). Adjectives go right after the nouns they modify and adverbs go right after verbs (I don't have my vocab with me, so I'm just giving grammatical examples).

what/which - thing uxu (<uxu> can go after any noun like this as in constructions of "what NOUN")
who - person uxu
how much/many - quantity uxu

Where, when and why are expressed with postpositional phrases, though in informal speech the postposition may be left off.
when - time uxu at
where - place uxu at
why - reason uxu for

"How" is simply uxu after a verb, like an adverb.
Oñ alahirt uxu? - how does he/she speak?

Edit: uxu can also be used as an interjective, expressing surprise. Sort of like WTF.