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Ng'and'ana

From:Elliott Belser <renyard@...>
Date:Wednesday, January 23, 2002, 3:26
Alright you orrible men, you asked for it, you got it.  This is the
first of two posts about Ng'and'ana.  First off, the letters.
Ng'and'ana is alphabetic and a phonetic language, so don't worry
there.  I don't have a font so I'll deal with transliteration...
incedentally I CAN write in Ng'and'ana lettering.  Who here knows how
I can make a font?

Right then.  I do not know how to classify letter sounds, so help me
with that... I'll use the 'like the (letter) in (word)' form.  The
basic vowels are:

ae (pronouced like the 'ay' in 'way')
a (pronounced like the 'a' in 'father')
e (like the 'e' in 'left')
i (like the 'ee' in 'see')
o (like the 'o' in 'know')
u (like the 'oo' in 'food')
y (like the 'i' in 'sigh'), sometimes spelled 'ay'

The consonants, like in Hebrew, can sometimes be modified by a dot.
In this language this dot is called an 'Adam,' or 'crystallizer'
(Hard: Adam'u  To harden: Adam'as  Crystals: Adam) and they make
sounds guttural (the only sound word I know).  The Ng'and'ana sounds
are pretty much the same as English ones, and where there are
exceptions I note them.  The letters and what they turn into are
below.
(This > turns to that.)

V       >       B
K       >       Q  (Like the 'Ch' in Chanuka)
D       >       T
F       >       P
G       >       NG  (Like the Ng in Ring, but is it's own letter.)
H  (Must be used at the end of a word that would have a vowel end.)
L
M       >       N
R       >       RH (Rolled R - the infamous 'kitty purr' as Terran
linguists have it.)
S       >       Z (Sometimes pronounced J)

Also, ideals in a word are seperated by a 'sfir' ('breath,' sfir'u
'inspired') that look like and are represented by an apostrophe.
It's a glottal stop in linguistic terms, the difference between 'uh'
and 'oh.'

So this is an Ng'and'ana sentence:  Am'galahad ben'a Eliout.
Em'ben'a lom gloz'adi.  (My name is Elliott.  I am a linguist.)

Incedentally, Ng is 'a sharing,' and Anda is 'the soul.'  The racial
name Ng'anda means 'ones of shared soul.'  Ana is just a gender
marking a word as a language, so Ng'and'ana is 'the language of those
who share souls.'

Grammar is next...

Replies

Chris Palmer <cecibean@...>
Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Elliott Belser <renyard@...>Ng'and'ana grammar