Béu : Chapter 1

..... The sounds of béu

The full range of sounds heard in béu are given below according to the conventions of the I.P.A. (International Phonetic Alphabet)

	labial	labiodental	alveolar	postalveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
stops	p b		t d			k g	ʔ
fricatives		f v	s z	ʃ ʒ			h
affricates				tʃ dʒ
nasals	m		n			ŋ
liquids			r l
glides	w				y

tʃ dʒ are the initial sounds of "Charlie" and "Jimmy" respectively. From now on they will be represented by c and j.

ʔ represents a glottal stop (the sound a cockney would make when he drops the "tt" in bottle). In béu this is a normal consonant ... just as real as "b" or "g" in English.

v is an allophone of f when inside a word and between two vowels.

z is an allophone of s when inside a word and between two voiced^* sounds.

ʃ is also an allophone of s when before the front vowel i or before the consonant y. ʃ is found in English and is usually represented by "sh" (as in "shell")

ʒ is an allophone of s when the above two conditions apply at the same time. ʒ turns up in English in one or two words. It is the middle consonant in the word "pleasure".

ŋ is an allophone of n when followed by k or g. ŋ is found in English and is usually represented by "ng" (as in "sing").

l is a clear lateral in all environments.

r is an approximant in all environments.

p, t and k are never aspirated. And on the other hand b, d and g are more voiced than in English (i.e. the voice onset time is a lot earlier)

^* Actually all the phonemes are voiced, apart from p, t, k, s, h and ʔ.

The béu phoneme inventory is shown below.

	labial	labiodental	alveolar	postalveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
stops	p b		t d			k g	ʔ
fricatives		f	s				h
affricates				tʃ dʒ
nasals	m		n
liquids			r l
glides	w				y

The basic vowels are a, e, i, o and u. Also the diphthongs ai, au, oi, eu, ia and ua are used. Note that while the sounds ia and ua are possible sound combinations in English, they each are realised as two syllables. In béu the two components are more intertwined ... the flow into each other more. And they each represent only one syllable.

béu stresses the first syllable in a word.

béu differentiates between words using tone. All single syllable words have either a high tone (for example pás = "I") or a low tone (for example pà = me). All multi-syllable words lack tone (or can be said to have neutral tone). If a single syllable word, receives an affix making it into a multi-syllable word, its tone will become neutralised. If a word count was done on a typical béu text, it would be found that around 17% of words have a high tone, 33% have a low tone and 50% have the neutral tone.

Don't let the tones put you off learning béu. The chances are vanishingly small that you will cause a misunderstanding by pronouncing one of the short words wrong. And even if you speak the language and put absolutely no effort into getting the tones right ... no problem, it will just mark you out as a non-native speaker ... but who isn't  :-)

I am representing the high tone with a full-stop sign after the syllable (in a similar manner the béu writing system places a small dot to the right of a high tone syllable). If single syllable words are come across that are not followed by a full-stop, they can be taken as low-tone (as happens in the native béu writing system).

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LINGUISTIC JARGON ... "allophone", "voiced sound" and "diphthong" are linguistic jargon. You don't have to worry if you don't understand what they mean.

..... Some interjections

All languages have a small set of interjections. Usually they party fall outside the normal sound system rules. béu is no exception.

iʃʃ ... an exclamation expressing sympathy (neutral tone)

xaa ... an exclamation of disgust (it starts of as a neutral tone, falls quickly then sort of lingers at a low level)...(the "x" represents the last sound in "loch")

aido ... an exclamation of frustration (rapidly rising tone on the "ai", a short break, then the "do" is a lowish level tone)

oho ... an exclamation of awe ("o" is a normal high tone, "ho" starts quite high and rises to the normal high tone level)

..... Consonant clusters

Word initial

The following consonants and consonant clusters can begin a word;-

ʔ
m	my
y
j			jw
f	fy	fl
b	by	bl	bw
g		gl	gw
d			dw
l
c			cw
s/ʃ		sl	sw
k	ky	kl	kw
p	py	pl
t			tw
w
n	ny
h

Word medial

The following consonants and consonant clusters can be found in the middle of a word;-

l@

lm

ly

lj

lf

lb

lg

ld

lc

lz/lʒ

lk

lp

lt

lw

ln

lh

@

m

y

j

v

b

g

d

l

c

z/ʒ

k

p

t

w

n

h

n@

ny

nj

nf

mb

ŋg

nd

nc

nz/nʒ

ŋk

mp

nt

mw

nh

s@

zm

ʒy

zb

zg

zd

zl

sk

sp

st

zw

zn

sh

Word final

The consonants n and s can occur word finally.

..... Plurals and duals

In béu the basic noun is undefined as to number. For example the plain noun nambo mean "house" or it could mean "houses" . To unequivocally refer to just one house, the word aja "one" must be included. i.e. aja nambo = "house". To unequivocally refer to more than one house you would use namboi.

The normal way for single-syllable nouns to show plurality is to put the word nò in front of the noun.

nò means number (well it does when it is not qualifying another noun)

The normal way for multi-syllable nouns to show plurality is to change the final vowel of the word.

Most nouns end in one of the vowels a i u e or o.

To show plurality, these are changed to ai ia ua eu and oi respectively.

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There are a few nouns (mostly body parts) that have a dual form as well as a plural form. All the word that can take a dual end in a.

The dual form is made by changing the a to au.

wá	eye or eyes	wáu	a pair of eyes	nò wá	eyes
elza	ear or ears	elzau	a pair of ears	elzai	ears
duva	arm/hand	duvau	a pair of arms/hands	duvai	arms/hands
poma	leg/foot	pomau	a pair of legs/feet	pomai	legs/feet
gluma	breast or breasts	glumau	a nice pair	glumai	breasts

Also in this paradigm we have

jwuba (buttock), ploka (cheek), olna (shoulder) and kloga (shoe)

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A very small number of nouns end in ai or au. For plurality they add a (that is another syllable, a is added to the word). For example ;-

nandau = word, nandaua = words

moltai = doctor, moltaia = doctors

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1 multi-syllable word is irregular ;-

glabu means "a person" and has the regular plural form glabua, however it also has a dual form ;-

glabau = a couple (not necessary married but the word gives a very strong connotation that the couple are intimate/having sexual relations)

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3 single-syllable words have irregular plurals. These are ;-

glà = woman

gala = women

báu = man

bawa = men

nò = number

nòi = numbers

..... Thread Writing

béu has 17 consonants.

For some of these the form differs slightly, depending upon whether the letter is at word initial, word medial or word final.

The three forms are shown below.

béu has 5 vowels and 6 diphthongs.

The form of these doesn't change with their position.

These are shown below.

To give you better idea of what thread writing looks like, I have listed below the 12 colours of béu.

Nice, eh? Sort of organic.

..... Numbers

béu uses base 12.

one	aja	1012	ajau	10012	ajai
two	auva	2012	uvau	20012	uvai
three	aiba	3012	ibau	30012	ibai
four	uga	4012	ugau	40012	agai
five	ida	5012	idau	50012	idai
six	ela	6012	ulau	60012	ulai
seven	oica	7012	icau	70012	icai
eight	eza	8012	ezau	80012	ezai
nine	oka	9012	okau	90012	okai
ten	iapa	120 i.e.(10x12)	apau	10x12x12	apai
eleven	uata	11x12	atau	11x12x12	atai

You will noticed that 12 numbers over eleven have been shortened. For example the "regular" form for 20 would be auvau, but this is actually uvau.

Also the number 6, ela has been shortened. This would have been eula if everything was perfectly regular.

In the above table, 10 is actually, of course 12 : 90 is (9x12)+0 => 108 etc. etc.

The numbers in the above table combine, to express every number from 1 -> 1727 in one word. For example ;-

54312	idaigauba
50312	idaiba
64012	ulaigau
7212	icauva
612	ela

The above explains about the pronunciation of the numbers. But how are they written.

In fact the numbers are NEVER written out in full. See below for the characters corresponding to the five numbers above.

It can be seen that all the vowels are dropped and there is a horizontal line inserted in the top left of the character. The symbol for h is used for inserting zeroes (although never pronounced).

If you had a leading zero you would use the word jù which is usually placed before nouns and means "space/empty/zero/no". 007 would be jù jù oica (three words)

To deal with a telephone number, you would lump the numbers in threes (any leading zero by itself though) and outspeak the numbers. If you were left with a single digit (say 4) it would be pronounced agai. If you were to pronounce it uga, it would of course mean 004. Also you would probably add the particle dó at the end. This means "exactly" (or it can mean the speaker has finished outspeaking the number)

Ordinal numbers

To get an ordinal number you just attach n- to the front of the cardinal number. So we have ;-

first	naja
second	nauva
third	naiba
fourth	nida
etc.	etc.

May be this form originally came from an amalgamation of nò plus the number.

These forms are adjectives 100% and are always written out in full.

Fractional numbers

To get an fractional number you just attach d- to the front of the cardinal number. So we have ;-

a unit ?	daja
a half	dauva
a third	daiba
a quarter	dida
etc.	etc.

May be this form originally came from an amalgamation of ??? plus the number.

These are fully numbers. They are written in the same way as numbers, except the have a squiggle above them. The squiggle looks like an "8" on its side that hasn't fully closed.

And so ends chapter 1 ...

..... Index

1. Introduction to Béu
2. Béu : Chapter 1 : The Sounds
3. Béu : Chapter 2 : The Noun
4. Béu : Chapter 3 : The Verb
5. Béu : Chapter 4 : Adjective
6. Béu : Chapter 5 : Questions
7. Béu : Chapter 6 : Derivations
8. Béu : Chapter 7 : Way of Life 1
9. Béu : Chapter 8 : Way of life 2
10. Béu : Chapter 9 : Word Building
11. Béu : Chapter 10 : Gerund Phrase
12. Béu : Discarded Stuff
13. A statistical explanation for the counter-factual/past-tense conflation in conditional sentences