Babyish languages

Babyish languages are a set of artificial languages from a child story called "Stories in Babycasèny", which can be viewed as a pidgin of Cantonese and English.

Babyish languages can basically be classified into two branches:

• Babyish - characterised by its 5 vowels system (ä and ö are considered part of a and o)
• Sheepness - besides a, e, i, o and u, they considered schwa as the 6th vowel and coded separatedly, while Babyish will distribute them among the 5 vowels as short vowels. For each of the branch, there are further sub-branches, differed by the suffices and articles used in sentences.

Babyish has its own characters, being some geometric shapes, but was not used beyond illustration. It is transcripted in two ways:

• accented Latin characters
• plain ASCII text

Since Babyish is a pidgin of Cantonese, some words are tonal and require indication of tones. Tonal marks from pinyin is borrowed for tone indication, with an additional mark of "dot below" in indicate "yang" tones.

Characters used in Babyish

Babyish used these characters:

Vowels

Vowels	IPA	transliteration	Special note
A	a	a	à = /ɐ/ in IPA
Ä	æ	ae
E	ɛ	e	è = /ə/ in IPA
I	i	i	ì = /ɨ/ in IPA
O	ɔ	o	ò = /o/ in IPA
Ö	œ	oe
U	u	u	ù = /ʌ/ in IPA
Ü	y	ue

Babyish does not have diphthongs, so when one encounters two vowels being placed together, they are pronounced separately.

Consonants

Consonants	IPA	transliteration	Special note
B	p	b
P	p'	p
M	m	m
F	f	f
D	t	d
T	t'	t
N	n	n
L	l	l
G	k	g
K	k'	k
Ŋ	ŋ	ng
Ĥ	x	kh
J	ʤ	j
Č	tʃ	ch
R	r	r
H	h	h
Ẑ	tʂ	zh
Ĉ	tʂ'	cz
Ŝ	ʂ;	sz
Ȓ	ʅ	rh
Z	ts	z
C	ts'	c
S	s	s	Sometimes Ç is used to represent "S" sound
Y	j	y

Note:

• /ʨ/, /ʨ'/, /ɕ/ can be written as either "JI", "QI", "XI" or "ZI", "CI" or "SI". The former was the older way to write, and it is proper transcription in Putonghua, but that will confuse /ʨ/ with /ʤ/.

Tones

• Tones: macron for long vowels, acute, hacek, grave, dot below.

Tone sign	Tone value	Tone value in Cantonese	Tone value in Mandarin
(no sign)	33 or 55	yin ping or Tone 1	yin ping
¯ (macron)	33 or 55 but longer duration	(no equivalent)	(no equivalent)
´ (acute)	24	yin shang (Tone 2) or yang shang (Tone 5)	rising tone
(hacek)	22	yin qu (Tone 3) or yang qu (Tone 6)
` (grave)	short vowels or 51	(no equivalent)	qu sheng
. (dot below)	11	yang ping (Tone 4)	(no equivalent)

Some sample text of Babyish

Vocabularies

English	Babyish	Origin
Cat	Uzaza / Miao	Original / Onomotopaeic
Dog	Azaza / Wou	Original / Onomotopaeic
Rabbit	Zaza / Déng	Original
Sheep	Me	Onomotopaeic
Panda	Siongmiao	Mandarin Chinese
Fish	Ör	Original
Tortoise (or turtle)	Wuggwài	Cantonese
not yet	mǐ-	Cantonese
full (after meal)	báo	Cantonese
hungry (after meal)	mǐbáo	Cantonese (= "mǐ-" not yet + "báo")
used	Yused	English
not used	Mǐyused	Cantonese+English (= "mǐ-" not yet + "yused")
Elder Brother	(le) gor	Cantonese
Younger Brother	(le) sálou	Cantonese
Elder Sister	(la) sis	English	"sis" is not pronounced as /sis/, but is pronounced as /dzit/ instead, a pattern occurred in Korean as well
Younger Sister	(la) mui	Cantonese
Father	Baba	Cantonese
Mother	Mama / Mami	Cantonese
Water	Sui	Cantonese
Clear water	Nanasui	from "sui"
Tea	Cya	Japanese (Cantonese)
Tea for guest	Oucya	Japanese
Tea for sheep	Meorcya	derived from "me"+"oucya"

Famous Literatures in Babyish

• "Sheepness stories" series (Yöŋmàn gusi)
• "The Hero: New R Little Bear" (Sun R xiuhung daihùp)

External link

• A collection of information on the Babyish language