User:Masako/naho/tatse
Introduction
Amal is meant to be a personal (or artistic) conlang and despite appearances and structure is not intended as an IAL. Amal is phonologically inspired by Semitic languages but incorporates aspects and lemma of numerous natural languages, in an effort to be euphonious and easy to use/learn.
Amal is an agglutinative language. Its vocabulary consists of basic roots which can be extended into different parts of speech, their meaning changed or modified, with various suffixes. Most of the suffixes are optional, so that there is a choice of what sort of information to convey with a given word.
Phonology
Consonants
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labiovelar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosives | p b | t d | k g | ʔ | ||
| Nasals | m | n | ||||
| Fricatives | s | ʃ | x | |||
| Approximants | l | j | w | h~ɦ | ||
| Trill | r~ɹ |
Note: The glottal stop /ʔ/ q, is used as a "buffer" to keep vowels apart when adding suffixes. /x/ and /h~ɦ/ are actually allophones.
Spelling
- /ʔ/ is written as q
- /ʃ/ always as sh
- /h~ɦ/ as h
- /j/ as y
Latin letters that only appear in loan words include c, f, j, v, z.
Allophony
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i~ɪ | u~ʊ | |
| Mid | e~ɛ | o | |
| Open | a~ə |
The vowels can be marked with an acute accent — á, é, í, ú — for two purposes: to mark stress if it does not follow the most common pattern, or to differentiate words that are otherwise spelled identically.
