I'm creating a language!

[civman2000]

LINK TO THE FULL GUIDE: http://www.geocities.com/civman200/inagalasi.txt

I present to you my artificial-language-in-progress Inagalasi:

Sounds of Inagalasi:
a, b, d, e, i, k, l, n, o, p, s, t, u are essentially like the same sounds in most languages (vowels are like spanish).
f is pronounced between the lips, like in Japanese and I think Greek ph.
g is always a "hard" g like in "go"
h is a glottal stop, like in ""uh oh". This sound is common in arabic.
r is like spanish r (ere), not a trill but a single tap
y is like in english (a shortened i)
There are no sounds represented as c, j, m, q, v, w, x, or z.
All syllables have the structure Consonant-vowel (CV), except that final syllables of verbs can end in a consonant (CVC).
Stress is always on the last syllable of the root of a word. Stress is ordinarily written as an accent marks, but as I'm too lazy to find the special codes to make them I'll use capital letters (as in "inagalasI", the more proper way of writing the name of the language).

General structure of Inagalasi:
Sentences are essentially of the form SVO (Subject Verb Object (if there is one)). ALL modifiers of verbs (positional phrases, objects, adverbs) come after the verb. All modifiers of noun phrases come after the basic noun. Almost all positional ideas (prepositions in English) and other gramatical modifiers are expressed as suffixes of the word they modify.

Nouns:
Nouns are the simplest aspect of Inagalasi. They can have two types of affixes: "ne", which makes a noun plural, and postpositions. Postpositions generally are like prepositions, but also can express things like a noun being the direct object of a sentence.
Example: "pigA" means pig. "pigAne" means pigs. "pigAne Ade" means "the pigs of (de) me (A)", or my pigs.
Noun/pronoun list (not comprehensive, you can form more by "inagalasi-ifyling" English words):
A=I
U=you
I=he/she/it
garA=grape
pigA=pig
ferinA=much, a lot (usually used in conjunction with postposition fi to mean "very")
inagalasI=this language
alafabetA=alphabet
foninA=phoneme
lanagA=language
fudA=food
sakulA=school
balaberI=blueberry
sinI=thing
kidA=kid
retA=here (used with ni)
retU=there (used with ni)
retI=over there (used with ni)
tunarA=tomorrow (used with fe)
atA=question marker; more on this later
ogorO=something extra (used with fi to mean "also")
nitA=knight
Postpositions/endings used on nouns (not comprehensive):
ne=plural
lo=direct object marker
fi="in the manner of"; changes the noun into an adverb
ni=in, but cannot be used idiomatically; can only refer to physical location
de=of
fe=location in time, used with time words
tu=direction of action/indirect object
ka="because of", marks the cause of something
ti=with
po=marks the duration of time an action takes


Dizzy yet? I've still got a lot more to say (and it'll all make more sense once I show you a lot of sample sentences)

[St Leo]

prefer(me, to|play|with(grammar(English)), );

[Nubclear]

|)3/-\7H 2 J00!!!!

Eathday otay isthay anguagelay.

[Spiffor]

Interesting.
But since it is very close to English, you risk ending up using a pure-English vocabulary, and not bothering with proper Inagalasi words. Maybe you should try to diversify your inspiration for vocabulary.

As for the sentence structure: it's simple and clear, and I like it

[civman2000]

EDIT HISTORY:
10/23: Order of verb and modifiers in relative clauses reversed.
10/24: Passive voice added (is)

Verbs of Inagalasi:
This is the biggest part. True verbs always end in consonants. The roots of verbs always end in consonants (eg "sapIk" speak). Verbs are inflected by adding a ton of suffixes to them. A scary example: "nohEtusinahepil" "they will not have eaten" comes from the short simple root "Et" "eat".

Order of affixes:
"no"(negative)-root of verb-major modes-person-"ah"(plural)-temporal modes-minor modes-tense.

Simple verb rules: If the subject is first person add "an." If 2nd person add "en" and for third person add "in". If the subject is plural add "ah" after the person. If the verb is negative (eg "I do not eat") add no (noh if the verb starts with a vowel) to the beginning (eg "nohEtan," "I do not eat"). If the verb is in an "-ing" tense add "on" and if it is in a perfect tense ("I have eaten") add "ep". After this come modes, like "ak" for "can" ("I can eat"="Etanak"). For past tense add "ed" to the end and for future add "il".

Passive Voice: Passive voice (eg "The pig is eaten by the dog") is indicated by adding "is" before the person (eg "Etisin" "it is eaten"). The agent is marked with the postposition ka (eg "pigA Etisin dogAka" "the pig is eaten by the dog")

Sample sentences:
"I sIr-in-ed"="He thought" ("He think-3rd person-past")
"A-ne lIk-an-ah pigA-ne-lo"="We like pigs" ("I-plural like-1st person-plural pig-plural-direct object").
"b-an civman2000"="I am civman2000" ("be-1st civman2000"; note that the subject ("I") can be omitted)
"nE U-de b-in atA-lo"="What is your name?" ("name you-of be-3rd what-direct object")
"A sapIk-an-ak inagalasI-fi"="I can speak Inagalasi" ("I speak-1st-can inagalasi-in manner of"; literally "I can speak in the manner of Inagalasi")
"A salIp-an-il tunarA-fe"="I will sleep tomorrow" ("I sleep-1st-will tomorrow-when")
"Et-an-on"="I am eating" ("eat-1st-progressive")

Nominal forms:
There are two ways that verbs can become nouns. First there is the infinitive form. To form the infinitive add "o" to the root of the verb ("Eto" "to eat"). The infinitive for all purposes is gramatically a noun. Note that both temporal and regular modes as well as the negative prefix ("no") can be added to the root before the infinitive ending, but nothing else can. Example: "sapIk-ak-o", "to be able to speak". The second way a verb can become a noun is by creating subordinate clauses. To do this, remove the final consonant of the fully inflected verb (eg "noh-Et-an-il" becomes "noh-Et-an-i", "that I will not eat"). These can be used as the direct object of sentences (they are usually in the subjunctive form in this case), like in "hanAt-an gIb-us-e(n)-lo fudA-lo A-tu" "I want you to give me food" ("want-1st give-subjunctive-2nd-nominalize-direct object food-direct object me-indirect object", or "I want that you give food to me" more literally).

Relative clauses:
Relative clauses are phrases like "the food that I will eat tomorrow" or "the person that I want to kill". To express this in Inagalasi, you take the basic noun (eg "the food"), then add the nominalized form of the verb with "de" added to the end together with any modifiers of the verb (eg tomorrow). The example "the food that I will eat tomorrow" becomes "fudA Et-an-i(l)-de tunarA-fe" ("food eat-1st-will-nominalize-relative clause tomorrow-when", literally "food of that I will eat tomorrow")

Adjectives:
Adjectives in Inagalasi are really a special form of verb. To use an adjective (eg "I am crazy") take the root of the adjective (eg "kurasI", crazy) and then add the properly inflected form of "b" or "to be" (eg "b-an" "I am"). Thus "kurasI-b-an" is "I am crazy". To use adjectives to describe a noun directly (eg "strange pigs") treat it as a relative clause (eg "pigs that are strange", "pigA-ne sataranE-b-in-a(h)-de" "pig-plural strange-be-3rd-plural-nominalize-relative clause")

Verb list:
b=be
Et=eat
sIr=think
lIk=like
sapIk=speak
hanAt=want
gIb=give
salIp=sleep
sOp=hope
fAb=have
Ud=do
parepAr=prepare
apAr=appear to be the case
gOh=go
tAk=talk, say (what is said is marked with de)
mAk=make
lanAr=learn

Verb ending list:
no(h)=negative
us=subjunctive
is=passive
an=1st person
en=2nd person
in=3rd person
ah=plural
ak=can
ed=past
il=future
o=infinitive
on=progressive
ep=perfect
ar=obligative, must

Adjective list:
sataranE=strange
kurasI=crazy
fanA=fun
bayalA=violent
nU=new
godA=good
badA=bad
sikA=sick
alA=all
isI=easy

That's most of what I have so far; tomorrow I'll post some other minor nuances and stuff.

[civman2000]

Adverbs:
Inagalasi has no true adverbs. All adverb-like things are actually postpositional phrases. One useful postposition for adverbs is fi, which loosely means "in the manner of". For example, when you say "speak language X", language X is marked with fi to mean literally "speak in the manner of language X" or "soeak language X-ly". Another common phrase with fi is "ferinAfi", which means "very". All temporal or spacial adverbs (here, there, tomorrow, today, etc) are formed by taking the noun that is translated loosely into english as teh same word (eg "tunarA" tomorrow) and adding ni, tu, or perhaps another postposition (which one depends on the precise semantics of the sentence) for spacial adverbs and fe, po, or another postposition for temporal adverbs.


Questions:
All questions include the word atA (except sometimes in informal conversation), which roughly means "what". In general, though, it simply means that the sentence is a question and that the object in question is that which would ordinarily be marked with the same postposition as atA. Thus "atAlo" means "what" or "who" and indicates that what or who is the direct object of the sentence.

The one exception to this construction is questions of the form "Is X the case?" (eg "Do you eat pigs?" or "Are you crazy?"). These questions are formed by attaching "atAbin" to the end of the verb, which is an irregular construction that literally means "how is it?" or "is it so?".

Answering questions:
To answer a question "Yes" you say "bin ahalAfi" (literally "It is in that way") or "bilAfi" less formally or even just "lAfi". To say no you say "nobin ahalAfi" or "nobAfi" or most informally "nOfi". Example: Typical answers to "SapIkenak-atAbin inagalasIfi?" (Can you speak Inagalasi?) might be "lAfi, sapIkanak" (Yes, I can) or "What is this gibberish??" (No, I can't).

Question words:
atA=question marker/what/who
atAfi=how
atA X-nede=which X (literally "what of the X's")
atAka=why
atAni=where
atAfe=when
atAbin=question marker on verbs, "is it so?"
bin ahalAfi/bilAfi/lAfi=yes
nobin ahalAfi/nobAfi/nOfi=no


Subjunctive:
If you speak a language that has a subjunctive mode, you should have little trouble with Inagalasi's subjunctive but should still read this for differences between its subjunctive and that of oterh languages. If you are not familiar with the idea of a subjunctive form, this section is very important.

The subjunctive in Inagalasi has two main uses. First, it is used to express that somethign is not being asserted or even assumed to be true, but rather that the possibility of it is being discussed. This usually is found as a subordinate clause being the direct object of a verb like "sOp" (hope) or "hanAt" (want). For example, in sentences like "nohanAtan Etusilo garAne Ade" (I don't want them to eat my grapes) the subjunctive ("us") indicates that you are not claiming that it is true that they eat your grapes and that you are only speculating about your feelings on the matter. This definition or subjunctive differs subtly from that of for example Spanish, in which even if something is assumed to be true if you are expressing your feelings on the matter it is in teh subjunctive tense.

The other main use of the subjunctive is to express commands. Commands are formed by making the main verb be subjunctive (eg "Etusen fudAnelo alAbinade" "eat-subj-you food-plural-DO all-be-3rd-plural-of" or "Eat all the food"). There are three types of commands: 2nd singular ("Etusen" "Eat" speaking to one person), 2nd plural ("Etusenah" "Eat, you all"), and 1st plural ("Etusanah" "Let's eat").


The Three Locative Classes:
Like many other languages, Inagalasi has three different classes of locations and related concepts: "here" (close to speaker), "there" (close to listener), and "over there" (far from both). In accordance with my personal conjecture about the origin of these three types in languages, these types are represented in Inagalasi by the 1st person (A), 2nd person (U), and third person (I) pronouns respectively. These pronouns are added to various roots to create the three types. For example, "retA" means "here", "retU" is "there", and "retI" is "over there". Note that these can be used both with ni to refer to locations in space and with fe to refer to times (now, then, way back then or way in the future).

Roots with A/U/I:
ret-=location (+ni=in space, +fe=in time)
sat-=thing ("this/that thing", +de="this" or "that" as an adjective)
ahal-=manner or way ("this/that way", +fi means "in this/that way" or "like this/that")


Conjunctions:
In Inagalasi, conjunctions are attached to the beginning of the object that in English would follow them. THus "dogs and pigs" is "dogAne ogo-pigAne" and "I eat food but don't like eating" is "Etan fudAlo bata-nolIkan Etolo". Most subordinating conjunctions are expressed as postpositional phrases of the nominal form of the subordinate clause (eg "gOhaned sakulAtu hanAtaneka" "go-I-past school-to want-I-past-because" or "I went to school because I wanted to").

Conjunction list:
ogo=and
bata=but
are=or


Congratulations! SapIkenak inagalasIfi retAfe!

Note: All three parts will be edited as I further develop the language. Many edits will simply be adding to the word lists and these will not be mentioned. However, if I make any major change I will post about it.

[civman2000]

Interesting.
But since it is very close to English, you risk ending up using a pure-English vocabulary, and not bothering with proper Inagalasi words. Maybe you should try to diversify your inspiration for vocabulary.

As for the sentence structure: it's simple and clear, and I like it

I knowl the language isn't really about the vocabulary, which is nearly entirely derived from english with a few changes of teh pronunciation. What's fun is taking something so like english and immersing it in a grammar so different from english.

prefer(me, to|play|with(grammar(English)), );

Translated into Inagalasi (most of teh vocab made up on the spot): "parafAran palElolo garanAti inalisIde" ("prefer-1st play-infinitive-DO grammar-with English-of" (DO=direct object))

[MrFun]

If you're seriously bored, why don't you just say so??

[civman2000]

Eathday otay isthay anguagelay

In Inagalasi: "hanAtan desAlo lanagAde satAde" ("want-1st death-DO language-of thing-1st-of", literally "I want the death of this language")

[civman2000]

If you're seriously bored, why don't you just say so??

I've been seriously bored for two days, I started this Monday night

[MrFun]

woohoo!!!

[Q Classic]

i have more fun devising writing systems. i had one that was based off of a binary system: letters were representations of 2^6, and were written in this form:

_/___/_
_____
/

which would look like this when typed:

._.
__.

and so on and so forth.

[Nubclear]

Ok. Now how about writing Inglasias for Dummies?

[Shi Huangdi]

My reccomendation: Go outside more. Get a life.

[Agathon]

Are you going to have your own script?

I once saw an excellent font, the letters of which were made up of fornicating couples.

[Giant_Squid]

Hyperborean: degevithim usumurál. ukarevithipi marisai osilikakazulanal.
English: Ignore the infidels. They just don't understand the coolness of conlangs.

If you're interested in this, I suggest you check out www.langmaker.com, which is the hub site for this sort of thing. And that you find a more visually appealing way of rendering the stresses (or just don't mark them down, like English doesn't)

[st_swithin]

What's that translate to in Esperanto?

[Tis I]

get some velaric and glottalic ingressive sounds to make it sound real sweet.

http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departme...ex/sounds.html

velaric ingressive are clicks btw.

[civman2000]

Yeah, I know about glottalics and velarics, I just made my phonological system based on some of the most common sounds (so it's like a typical langauge with the exception of lacking m). And for the writing system, ordinarily stress is marked by an accent mark, but i'm too lazy to use the special codes to get accented characters.

A little quiz:
Translate the following sentences into Inagalasi (make up words if necessary!):
I hate dogs that eat pigs
You are a crazy maniac
They will have hoped that we will not have smelled the giant pig

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Can I pose a question?

What's the ****ing point?

Aren't you just wasting time you could otherwise spend beating your face against a wall?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp

What's the ****ing point?

Incidentally, that was from my own invented language- Gimpese. It's exactly like English except it has only one adjective.

[Bosh]

another thing you might look at for pronunciation is the difference between aspirated and unaspirated consonants. Aspirated bascially means a puff of air comes out when you say it (its also how people who spit a lot when they speak talk).

For example in korean there's a letter that's kind of a cross between a b and an unaspirated p and then there's one that's an aspirated p. Similarly there's a letter that's kind of a cross between a d and an unaspirated t and then there's one that's an aspirated t and a letter that's kind of a cross between a j and an unaspirated ch and then there's one that's an aspirated ch and finally there's one that's one that's kind of a cross between a g and an unaspirated k and one that's an aspirated k.

[Drake Tungsten]

Verbs of Inagalasi:
This is the biggest part. True verbs always end in consonants. The roots of verbs always end in consonants (eg "sapIk" speak). Verbs are inflected by adding a ton of suffixes to them. A scary example: "nohEtusinahepil" "they will not have eaten" comes from the short simple root "Et" "eat".

Heavily inflected languages can wrap around my ass.

Incidentally, that was from my own invented language- Gimpese. It's exactly like English except it has only one adjective.

[st_swithin]

Quechua.

[Immortal Wombat]

Suffixes suck.


"Hira cuilë."

[civman2000]

another thing you might look at for pronunciation is the difference between aspirated and unaspirated consonants. Aspirated bascially means a puff of air comes out when you say it (its also how people who spit a lot when they speak talk).

For example in korean there's a letter that's kind of a cross between a b and an unaspirated p and then there's one that's an aspirated p. Similarly there's a letter that's kind of a cross between a d and an unaspirated t and then there's one that's an aspirated t and a letter that's kind of a cross between a j and an unaspirated ch and then there's one that's an aspirated ch and finally there's one that's one that's kind of a cross between a g and an unaspirated k and one that's an aspirated k.

Yeah, I know all about this stuff. One of my major goals was for the phonology of the language to be simple. BTW, all stops in Inagalasi are unaspirated.

What's the ****ing point?

It's fun

Heavily inflected languages can wrap around my ass.

Well Inagalasi technically is not inflected at all, rather jsut the opposite: it's a purely agglutinative language, so you never have to worry about how endings change, just which ones are there. For example, in romance languages you have separate endings for each person and number for every single tense. In Inagalasi on the other hand there is one ending for each person, one ending for plurality, and one ending for each tense you just stick on the end.

Working on part 3 now, it will be added in an edit to a post on the first page.

[civman2000]

Part 3 added on the first page and part 2 edited to reverse relative clause order. All three parts together in a text file (I recommend viewing in wordpad, make sure you have wordwrap on!) uploaded: http://apolyton.net/upload/files/civ.../inagalasi.txt

[Starchild]

The thing is, it looks like an artificial language. It's got no true flow or rhythm to it that natural languages do.

Languages are powerful, they shape the way we percieve the world. You can create a vocabulary but if you base it just off of English, all you get in the end is English with odd grammar. You won't be able to express concepts English has no words for.

[civman2000]

You can create a vocabulary but if you base it just off of English, all you get in the end is English with odd grammar. You won't be able to express concepts English has no words for.

I've been trying to introduce as many semantic differences as possible through the grammar, and in the next few days I hope to work a lot on the vocabulary. Thanks for the advice, I'll try to make some differences (particularly with things like family relations and colors and other very variable things in langauges). I'm also going to try to make major differences with the derivational morphemes (ie affixes like "ion" or "dis" or "ment" in english)

[Mercator]

You do know you can only use your upload space for civ-related stuff, don't you?

*Zap* ... and another language died.

Maybe you should invest your time in trying to learn one of the many languages of the world that is going extinct as we speak.