Kalini Sapak - new lang

I've just started of a new lang, the working name of which for the moment is
_Kalini Sapak_, meaning "Clans' Speech" (note pl!). It's based loosely on
Arabic and similar langs with consonantal roots, but because I don't speak
any such language, I've probably done some things differently. It's quite
possibly to regular and "nice" to be believeable as a real language. It has
no connection to the conworld where my other langs belong - for now, I think
of the background as a bunch of mediaeval tech, warlike tribes out in a
desert somewhere.

The phonemic inventory has three vowels - /a/, /i/, and /u/. I've not
decided exactly what'll be found in the consonantal inventory yet, but it'll
be reasonably small and not include and too odd sounds.

Roots are, you guessed it, triconsonantal. I've come up with about five as
of yet - let's look as the root M-Z-T, meaning roughly "love".

A basic noun is made from a root by incerting an "a" between the first two
consonants. Between the two last consonants, another vowel indicates case.
To form the plural, the last vowel is replicated after the last consonant:

            sg        pl
accusative  mazat    mazata
nominative  mazut    mazutu
genitive    mazit    maziti

The accusative is the "neutral" case - thence the use in the langs name.

To form a verb, an "u" is inserted between the first two consonants instead.
Verbs are inflected for tense and gender (don't ask me why). It's the gender
of the subject that counts, BTW. See chart:

               masculine  feminine neuter
past           muzutu     muzuti   muzuta
present        muzatu     muzati   muzata
future         muzitu     muziti   muzita

Word order is SVO, and that's about all I've decided on just yet.

Example sentence:

Tahuk muzatu kazal.
"(A) man loves (a) woman"
(T-H-K "man", K-Z-L "woman", and I've also decided there'll be no articles)

So, any comments?

                                                        Andreas
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Reply