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Ongakian language

From:Adam Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious <aczj5@...>
Date:Friday, July 16, 2004, 17:32
I am both a conworlder and conlanger,  but conlanging is even a bigger
priority to me and hence, it cannot keep up with my conworlds and geofiction.  So
I've been reshaping the world for 1000 years into the future to have some place
to put my conlangs.  Ongakia is located between the Austria-Hungarian area and
Greece and between the Adriatic Sea and mid-Bulgaria & mid-Romania.

The language Ongaki (called "Onaki" locally) is derived of Japanese words and
inspired by the Hebrew alphabet.  The alphabet is composed of Hebrew
consonants, no vowels accept the schwa, the daghes, and a symbol that makes sure you
know that the sentence ends with a consonant.  It has an original grammar
(which I am unable to describe right now, since I've found the best way to develop
a grammar is to just let it come to the language naturally - I haven't been
working on this conlang long enough for much grammar to develop yet) and even
tones!  Like Chinese, these tones don't need an absolute pitch, however Ongaki
has 15 tones whereas Chinese has 4 (or 5, depending if you count the neutral
tone as a tone itself).  Also unlike Chinese, Ongaki sounds like a song - and in
fact, tones are recorded in sheet music (on a trumpet's scale).  The vowel
"x" ( /@/ )is counted as an auxiliary vowel and will not necessarily change the
meaning of a word if you use the /@/ phoneme.  This is because the vowel
entered the language when immigrants and tourists used it when they were guessing
the unwritten vowels.  Although using the vowel x shows how influent you are,
they admire your honesty - especially since guessing the vowel can change the
word.

If you ask for paper in Ongakia, people will bring you blank sheet music to
write the tones with room for the words.  Otherwise, ask for drawing paper -
but it would be considered rather rude to write words without tones if they're
meant to be formal writing or a document that must be spoken.  What's
confusing, though, is that when you go to write more than one word in a sequence, both
the tones and the words are written from right to left.  However, when writing
a single word, the tones are written left to right and hence you start
writing on the left side of the paper.

I derived the tones from actual songs in my trumpet music books and sheet
music so that by putting words into sequences, they will sound like a song (which
is why this language is an experiment - I want to see if it WILL sound like a
song or just a mess).
An example is the song "My Dredyl" - one of the first songs in my first music
book with lyrics (notice: in Ongaki when you are actually SINGING A SONG, you
don't worry about the vowels, just the tones and length, but the consonant
"y" is always proceded by an i and a "w" is always proceded by an o, unless they
are the initial letter):

lx driydxl driydxl driydxl, kxshxrxr kx "x klx
lx driydxl driydxl driydxl, xsxb Tx kx chiyxm

With vowels:
li driydul driydul driydul, koshirer ko "a kle
li driydul driydul driydul, osab Tu ko chiyom

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Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>