zompist bboard

EDIT: Added a more in-depth list of the pronunciation for the letters in written-form. I had assumed that by mentioning at the beginning that my WIP conlang was mostly Latin and Ancient Greek based that the pronunciations would have been somewhat self-explanatory. My apologies. I have more to put down on here when I have the time to add more things. I will update the first post and/or this thread when the opportunity is available.


Note:

You are now reading this in the elderly voice of Christopher Lee.

This started off as a Grecco-Latin-English bastardization I tried doing about 12yrs ago while I was in high school. My Latin and Ancient Greek vocabulary is still a bit limited and the reviving of the conlang recently included using Serbian, Croatian, and Russian-based words here and there for phonetic icing. My plan was and still is to have this conlang be an alien language that derived from another alien race's (or just a god-like alien's) language due to visiting other planets and influencing them culturally a la the Engineers from 'Prometheus' (I apologize to fellow xenomorph-fans for mentioning that movie). The alien proto-language led to our own (or at least the PIE languages) while on other worlds the languages branched out in alternate ways. That's the plan for the conlang's history, my goal was to have it either in a comic or story used as an alien language based on all that.


Makūlorata - 'tainted speech'/'tainted language'


Phonetics of Written Form:

(Vowels)
a ("a" as in "awkward")
ā ("ā" as in "ape")
e ("e" as in "end")
i ("i" pronounced as the "i" in the Spanish word "Inglés")
ī ("ī" as in "idle")
o ("o" as in "oboe")
u ("u" as in the Latin word "umbra")
ū ("ū" as in the English word "user")


(Consonants)

b ("b" as in "baker")
c ("c" as in "cat")
č ("č" as in "chip")
d ("d" as in "dog")
f ("f" as in "fog")
g ("g" as in "gas")
h ("h" as in "hair")
j ("j" as in "jam")
l ("l" as in "lap")
m ("m" as in "map")
n ("n" as in "nail")
p ("p" as in "pot")
r (pronounced with a slight trill, like the Spanish "rr")
s ("s" as in "sap")
š ("š" as in "ship")
t ("t" as in "tank")
th ("th" as in "thimble")
v ("v" as in "vacuum")
x (pronounced as "ks")
y (strictly a consonant, as in "yak")



Sentence Structure:

SVO

Adjectives precede nouns.


Grammar:

English-based sentence structure mostly.

Conjugation-system employs pronoun-like suffix to verbs.

Ex.-

Amo'me ti.
(I love you)

Amo'te mi.
(You love me)

Amo'ver mi.
(He loves me)

Amo'fem mi.
(She loves me)

Amo'ne mi.
(It loves me)

Amo'nost ti.
(We love you)

Amo'il mi.
(They love me)

Tenses include 4 vowel endings to the base -verb as well as a prefixes.

Ame
(To love)

Ama
(Base form of 'loved/had loved')

Amo
(Base form of 'love/loves'. Without a conjugation added it is translated as a command unless the words for 'there'/'that'/'this'/'what'/'who'/etc precede the verb)

Ex.-
Cuis amo ti, nen?
(Who loves you?)

Štet jo cauc.
(That is bad.)

Ami
(Base form of 'will love/shall love')

Amā
(Base form of 'let ___ love/may ___ love')

Among
(Base form of 'loving'. Becomes a infinitive if 'jo' is added as a prefix. Vowel-stem changes based on tense)

Ex.-

Joamong'me hic.
(I am loving this)

Joamang'me hic.
(I was loving this)

Joaming'me hic.
(I will be living this)

Passive Voice involves adding the prefix 'jo' (base present tense of the verb 'to be').

Joamo'me.
(I am loved)

Joama'me.
(I was loved)

Joami'me.
(I will be loved)

Joamā'me.
(Let me be loved)


Stating 'can (verb)' involves the prefix 'pos'.

Posamo'me ti.
(I can love you)

Posama'me ti.
(I could love you)

Posami'me ti.
(I should love you)



Nouns:

Nouns all end in the suffix 'a' (the only exception being pronouns and foreign names from other languages) with the ending switched with 'ī' to denote ownership. If the object(s) precedes the noun(s) they belong to in the sentence, it is to be understood as '(object) of (noun)' instead of simply '(noun)'s (object)'.

Ex.-

Mī sīna.
(My dog)
vs
Sīna mī.
(Dog of mine)

Verī bova.
(His cow)
vs
Bova verī.
(Cow of his)

Duxī fila.
(Leader's child)
vs
Fila duxī.
(Child of leader)


Pronouns:

Mi
(Me/I/Myself)

Ti
(You/Thee, singular or plural)

Ver
(Him/He)

Fem
(Her/She)

Nū
(It)

Noster
(We/Us)

Ila
(They/them)

Possessive forms of pronouns involve either adding 'ī' or replacing the ending vowel with 'ī'.

Mī
(My/Mine)

Tī
(Your/Thine)

Verī
(His)

Femī
(Her/Hers)

Nī
(Its)

Nosterī
(Our/Ours)

Ilī
(Their/Theirs)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA

Pronounced as 'ë'? In what language? Is it like Albanian /ə/? Hungarian /e/? Ladin /ɜ/? Seneca /ẽ/? Actual /ë/? Maybe proto-Uralic /*ɤ/?
Just giving us a grapheme and saying that that's what it's pronounced like isn't telling us much. This does not only apply to <ë>, but to your other letters as well. We don't know whether your <b> is /b/, b̥/, /p/, /β/, /v/ or /ɓ/, or maybe even something else. IPA is essential!