User:Masako/pataka

Introduction

Kala is a personal artistic language, or constructed language (conlang). It is the culmination of my life-long appreciation and fascination with language and linguistics. This fascination began in my youth, c. 1988 when I received a book about ciphers and codes. I have studied multiple natural languages since that time, including several European languages, Arabic, Japanese, and Chinese (Mandarin), to name only a few. I have focused much of my interest in the subfield of writing systems, which will likely be apparent to anyone familiar with Kala and its many varied writing systems.

Kala draws on natlangs (natural language), other conlangs, and of course imagination. Kala was started in late 2009. The phonemic inventory is based on Classical Nahuatl while the syllable structure and vowels are based on the strict (C)V structure of Japanese, and the presence of prenasalized stops is influenced by Bantu languages. Kala’s grammar was initially based on Japanese but has changed considerably based on influence from several natural and constructed languages. Many – if not most – of Kala lexemes are derived from or inspired by natural languages. A few have been taken from previous projects or constructed languages such as Ajara (a cipherlang from my youth) and Qatama (a conlang that I abandoned several years ago).

Nouns

Gender

Abilitative

• -ta from tlaka meaning "man; male; masculine"

Verbs

Mood

Abilitative

• -pa from pala meaning "able (to); can; possible; potential"

Particles

• ka - interrogative particle