Kala

• Kala is meant to be a simple and euphonic personal conlang.

• Many lexical entries are inspired/influenced/borrowed by/from any number of natlangs

Pronunciation

• Where ~ appears, it indicates free variation between phonemes.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i~i: (i)		u~u: (u)
Mid	e~e: (e)		o~o: (o)
Open		a~a: (a)

Diphthongs

falling

• [aɪ~aɪ:] - ai
• [aʊ~aʊ:] - ao

rising

• [wa~wa:] - ua
• [waɪ~waɪ:] - uai
• [ja~ja:] - ya
• [jaʊ~jaʊ:] - yao
• [je~je:] - ye
• [jo~jo:] - yo

Consonants

	Labial	Dental		Palatal	Velar		Glottal
		central	lateral		plain	labial
Nasal	m (m)	n (n)		ɲ (ny)
Plosive	p~b (p)	t~d (t)			k~g (k)	kʷ~gʷ (ku)	ʔ (')
Fricative		s (s)		ʃ (s)			h~ɦ (h)
Affricate		ts (ts)	tɬ (tl)	tʃ (ts)
Approximant			l~r (l)	j (y)		w (u)

Phonotactics

• Kala phonotactics does not allow the onsets of adjacent syllables to be identical, nor both to be labialised or palatalised.
• Syllables beginning with /l/ do not occur as the first syllable of a morpheme.

Syllable Structure

• (N)(C)V
• N = prenasal /n/ or /m/

• The three codas are /k/, /m/, and /n/.
• /k/ only occurs as a final coda to negate verbs and nouns.

Prenasalized consonants

• In Kala, almost every consonant can be prenasalized, but primarily the plosives /p/, /t/ and /k/ can be analyzed as prenasalized,

while most other instances could be easily analyzed as cases of syllabic /n/ or /m/.

• mb /mp~mb/

Example: mpaka /ˈmpa.ka/ - n - boundary / border / line

• nt /nt~nd/

Example: ntama /ˈnta.ma/ - n - calf (a young cow or bull)

• nk /ŋk~ŋɡ/

Example: nkapa /ˈŋka.pa/ - n - alcohol / grog

Writing System

See: Moya

Grammatical Principles

• The grammar of Kala should be regarded as a guide indicating how grammatical distinctions of gender, number, tense/aspect, noun, verb and particles are made. I have adopted the Arab grammarian's division into three categories (1) Noun [no / ata] / , (2) Particle [peya] , (3) Verb [uati] . Kala does not always follow European models. It discards all redundancies. In English we say “two boys came yesterday”; in Kala “two boy come yesterday” [ta’o tahi yomaye tala] it is clear that more than one boy is already indicated by ‘two,’ while ‘yesterday’ shows the time, or tense of the verb.

Sentences

See: Kala Sentences

Nouns

See: Kala Nouns

Verbs

See: Kala Verbs

Questions

See: Kala Questions

Numbers

Cardinal Numbers

• e'o - zero / nothing
• na'o - one
• ta'o - two
• ha'o - three
• ma'o - four
• ya'o - five
• tsa'o - six
• ka'o - seven
• pa'o - eight
• sa'o - nine
• ue'o - ten
• nye'o - (one) hundred
• tle'o - (one) thousand
• mue'o - ten thousand
• kye'o - (one) hundred thousand
• nte'o - (one) million

Higher Numbers

• uena'o - eleven / 11

• taue'o - twenty / 20

• nyeka'o - one hundred seven / 107

• hanyetauetsa'o (long form) | hatatsa'o (short form) - three hundred twenty six / 326

• tsatletauema'o - six thousand and twenty four / 6024

Ordinal Numbers

• ki- - ordinal prefix

Example : kisa'o - ninth (in a sequence)

Example : kiyanyepa'o - 508^th

Fractions

• i- - fractional prefix

Example : isa'o - a ninth, 1/9

Example : iha'o te pa'o - three eighths, 3/8 [lit: a third of eight]

word formation

noun modifiers

affix	derived from	definition	example
-pyo	pyoki	illness; sickness; ailment	tsinipyo diabetes

verb modifiers

affix	derived from	definition	example
-pa	pala	can; able to; capable	ta yalapa you are able to leave

Punctuation

See: Moya

Index

grammar outline | sentences | questions | lexicon | thematic lexicon | writing