Amal

See also:

• lexicon
  • thematic lexicon
  • verb charts
• phrases & translations

Introduction

Amal is meant to be a personal conlang and despite appearances and structure is not intended as an IAL.

Phonology

consonants

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Labiovelar	Glottal
Plosives	p   b	t   d		k   g		ʔ (q)
Nasals	m	n
Fricatives		s	ʃ (sh)
Approximants		l	j (y)		w	h
Trill		r

Note: The glottal stop /ʔ/ q, is used as a "buffer" to keep vowels apart when adding suffixes.

vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i~ɪ		u~ʊ
Mid	e~ɛ		o
Open		a~ə

Vowel length is productive and is marked by an acute accent. á é í ú

• ai - /a͡ɪ/ (this is the only diphthong in Amal)
• o - /o/ is extremely rare and is mostly used in proper names

Verbal Morphology

The verbal inflection of Amal is quite simple. There are only three tenses (present, past, future), plus the conditional and the imperative, each marked by person and number. There are two aspects (perfective, continuous) and various moods that are also marked on the verb (usually between the verb root and the person).

Nouns

Case

ablative

• sha - ablative case; "from, off of" [ABL]; comparatives "than"

Pronouns

Pronouns in Amal are marked for number, person, and case. There are three persons. The stand-alone personal pronouns are not used widely as the person is evident from the personal verb ending. They are used for emphasis only in their simple form as the verb form itself already points to the person. This is similar to Spanish where a person will say comprendo - "I understand" instead of Yo comprendo - "I understand".

	singular	plural
1	-an	-uk
2	-ti / -e	-ut / -í
3	-u / -a / -il	-um