A new language

Tentatively called tanapo.

This conlang is not like others that I have created, and thus it is not numbered unlike the rest of my conlangs. It’s still incomplete.

Philosophy of tanapo

• Prefer simplicity
• Prefer unity
• but take practicality into account
• most importantly, be wholesome

Non-goals: not anti-goals but not goals either

• ease of learning
• minimalism
• experimenting with weird features
• avoiding ambiguity altogether
• coercing the language on people

“Phonology”

tanapo has eleven “consonants”:

p t k f s h m n l y w

and ten vowels:

i e a o u í é á ó ú

i e a o u have low tone while í é á ó ú have high tone.

(note that capital letters are not used in tanapo.)

a syllable has:

• an optional onset: either a single consonant or a glide consisting of a consonant other than y or w plus y
• a vowel
• an optional coda: one of n, l, k

other restrictions:

• two adjacent vowels (i.e. without an intervening consonant) must have different tones. (otherwise, the second vowel changes tone to fit this requirement)
• the same consonant cannot appear twice in a row (e.g. *akke is invalid), and n can’t occur before m. (otherwise, the first consonant is deleted)
• the sequences *yi, yí, wu, wú are also invalid.
• syllabification occurs on a maximal-onset principle: kikyalu is syllabified as ki.kya.lu.

there is not yet any canonical pronunciation of tanapo, and I’m not sure if there will ever be.

Outline of words

by syllable count:

Nouns

nouns are what most people expect them to be. however, they have no case, number or gender (for any sense thereof). nafa ‘human’ is such a word. nouns always end in vowels.

the personal pronouns are na ‘I, we’, ti ‘you’ (both singular and plural), la ‘this thing or person’, and le ‘that thing or person’. they act exactly like regular nouns (can take modifiers, &c.)

by themselves, nouns aren’t that interesting.

Verbs

there are only a few verbs:

• ke: the copula (‘to be’). can take either a noun, an adjective or an ideophone as a complement.
• keke, kete and keté: refinements of the above, meaning ‘equals’, ‘is a member of’ and ‘is a subset of’, respectively.
• so: ‘to do’. can combine with nouns to form other actions.
• tó: ‘to have’. also can combine with nouns to form other actions.
• fo: ‘to go to’. no adposition needed!

in a sentence, the subject comes first, followed by the verb, then possibly the complement:

na ke kikyalu.
I cop key
I am a key.

in the case of verbs that can combine with nouns (such as so), the object of the action can be separated from the noun describing the action itself with a:

na so káto (a) púlu.
I do eat (bleh) fish
I eat fish.

some particles that can be placed before verbs:

• hó: interrogation: ti hó tó lépile? do you have flowers?
• sal: negation: la sal ke talo this is not a bean
• ak: past: ti ak so kikyalu hyulepe you unlocked the door
• lá: future: na lá fo kénpi fa I will go to my house

Adjectives

adjectives are, like other parts of speech, not inflected at all. an adjective falls after the noun it modifies: lépile húpu a red flower.

adjectives can act as adverbs with no change.

an adjective can be preceded by the particle nin ‘state of being’: nin húpu redness.

there are possessive forms of the personal pronouns: fa ‘my, our’, fi ‘your’, lya ‘this one’s’, lye ‘that one’s’.

the demonstrative adjectives are wa ‘this’ and we ‘that’.

Prepositions

you know what they are. prepositional phrases can modify either nouns or verbs.

the particle sal can also modify prepositions to negate them.

Numerals

uses base 12:

Ideophones

ideophones have high tone in the first syllable and low tone in all others. they can modify nouns or verbs, optionally with the particle u preceding it, as well as participate in compounding. an ideophone can be reduplicated; in that case, its first copy has the low tone in all syllables.

Word formation

two nouns or an ideophone plus a noun can be compounded head-finally.

Lexicon