note on a side project

it's been brewing a while, but now seems as good a
time as any to throw it open to comment, so here goes
:

i've been working on a sortof pidgin-influenced speak
for a bit. it's entirely based on english, lexically,
but has a very reduced phonology, permitting only CV
syllables ( and occasionall CCV where the first C is a
stop and the second a continuant, eg |floflo|,
elephant ). syllable final |n| is also allowed, as are
a few diphthongs. other than diphthongs, all vowels
are to be pronounced separately, with a glottal stop
onset

the word roots are reduced rather like infantile
speach, and tend to be only one syllable long

|i| eat /?i/
|fu| food /fu/

because of this, homophony could be very common

solution : compounds

so instead of saying |i| for eat, you say |fui|
/'fu?i/

a peculiarity is that nouns are reduplicated, whilst
verbs aren't. so food is |iifu| /'?i?ifu/

once a context has been established you can use
uncompounded forms of a word, so once it's clear we're
talking about |iifu| we can refer to it as |fu|

singular pronouns are

mi
yu
hi/ha

you can reduplicate them to give the reflexive
pronouns

i haven't decided how to form plurals yet, but i'm
considering using either |me| ( many ) or |lo| ( lot )
as in |me mi| |mi lo|, we

one thing it has in common with bac is stringing lots
of verbs together in a sentence. because of this it
can express a lot of grammatical features using verbs
:

|mi ge iifu| my food ( |ge| from 'get' )

sample sentences:

mi go go mi ge lilihaw fuku iifu
me go go me get livelivehause foodcook eateatfood
i will go home to cook food

mi lo ge go blablazu ge lusi me floflo
me lot get go animalanimalzoo get looksee many
elephantelephant
we went to the zoo and saw the elephants

mi lo ge pepefa bi aakay, me tose yu ge kokone ge
blebleklo, me yu ge kikila kan . . .
me lot get parentparetnfather be upupsky, may talksay
you get callcallname get blessblessholy, may you get
kingkingland come
PATER NOSTER

nothing's frantically regularised at the moment, and
i'm considering using it as a test bed for various
word formations etc, rather than developing it as a
proper language

anyway, thought please messieurdames,

bn

=====
bnathyuw | landan | arR
stamp the sunshine out | angelfish
your tears came like anaesthesia | phèdre

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