I recently took courses in Akkadian and Japanese, and that, together with excess time this summer, reignited my interest in conlangs. I scribbled down some notes, and here is what I have so far. I make no claims to quality or completeness.
Phonology
I am not good at IPA, so I will include consonants and vowels by analogy to English (apologies). Pronunciation isn't incredibly important to me at this stage, though, and I'm mainly just trying to get some ideas down.
K kite
G gate
T tell
D door
F fall
V velocity
C chips
J jackal
L lie
M mat
N not
R rim
S size
Z zebra
Š shin
Ž casalty
W win
Y yes
A E I O U as in English "short" vowel
AA EE II OO UU as in English "long" vowel - not actually longer, just the sound convention
I apologize for the subpar transcription system; bear with me until I've figured out the full phonology. For the time being, it's sufficient for me to play around with some grammar.
Verbs
Verbs use a system inspired by the Semitic triconsonantal root system. A verb root consists of three consonants: for example, (prs) "to cut"
These are then conjugated to make a stem for each of three tenses:
Past: pooroos
Present: puuruus
Future: paras
Different suffixes are added to distinguish person and number of the verb agent (in transitive verbs, the subject, in intransitive, the sole subject):
1st singular: -a
1st plural: -e
2nd singular: -na
2nd plural: -ne
3rd singular: -an
3rd plural: -en
Negation of verbs is achieved by prefixing nii- to the verb.
niipuuruusa |
I am not cutting |
parasne |
you all will cut |
This is all I have decided for verbs so far - I have yet to think about modality and other concepts.
Substantives and articles
The category of substantives includes what in English would be nouns and adjectives. These are declined in the same way:
bol |
ball |
bolu |
balls |
bolnee |
ball-like |
Articles have forms for singular and plural forms:
de bol |
the ball |
duu bolu |
the balls |
en bol |
a ball |
oot bolu |
some balls |
The definite article also has different forms for animate and inanimate substantives:
ket gof |
the dog |
koot gofu |
the dogs |
Pronouns
Person: singular, plural
1st: ik, yaš
2nd: žem, žor
3rd animate: cee, caa
3rd inanimate: gee, geš
Attribution
Attributes can be given using either possessive or stative forms.
Possessive:
de bol žee vard |
the ball of green |
Stative:
de vardnee bol |
the green ball |
Particles
Substantive role is marked by particles similar to those in Japanese. I have not fully developed this system; at the current time, I have only two.
- Agent: too
- D. Object: nuu
The copula is treated like a verb, and has forms similar to verb, but is irregular - it has only two consonants: (šn)
de bol too vardnee nuu šuunan |
the ball is green |
ik too vardnee nuu šoona |
I was green |
....And that's all I have for now! I will continue working and post and edit as I go. I currently have a very small vocabulary; my verbs will be sourced partially from Akkadian and German, and nouns will be a bit more arbitrary, with occasional onomatopoeia and sourcing from familiar languages. Here are some example sentences.
Substantives:
-
bol ball -
vard green -
gof dog -
lašnam language
- (prs) "to cut"
- (lšn) "to speak"
ik too uulašon nuu niiluušuuna |
I do not speak Ulashon |
de bol žee ik too en gof nuu niišunan |
The ball of mine is not a dog |
de iknee bol too en gof nuu niišunan |
My ball is not a dog |
Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions! I would also be interested in knowing what systems people like to use to record grammars and lexicons; I'm thinking of just doing it in LaTeX so I can use diacritics more easily.