User:Masako/Kalo

Introduction

Kalo is intended to be a minimalist artlang, not an auxlang. It draws primarily on vocabulary from the five most spoken languages in the world; Mandarin, Spanish, English, and Arabic (Hindi is used sparingly although it is spoken by more speakers than Arabic). The grammar is mostly isolating with very few elements of inflection, mostly to show plurality or possession. This is just a fun little side project that I mainly use as a thought experiment. Kalo is NOT meant to mimic, replace, or be inspired by Toki Pona or any other IAL. Any similarities are based on design aesthetic coincidences and the minimalist nature of the language.

Phonology

Kalo has nine consonants (/p, t, k, s, m, n, l, j, w/) and five vowels (/a, e, i, o, u/). Stress is mostly word final.

Consonants

	Labial	Coronal	Dorsal
Nasal	m	n
Plosive	p	t	k
Fricative		s
Approximant	w	l	j (y)

Vowels

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Mid	e	o
Open	a

Diphthongs

There are two diphthongs [ai̯] ai, and [au̯] au. These are rare and typically only occur word-finally.

Syllable Structure

All syllables are of the form (C)V(N), that is, optional consonant + vowel + optional final nasal, or V, CV, VN, CVN.

Syllables

The ordering of the syllables is based on Japanese Gojūon.

a	ka	sa	ta	na	pa	ma	ya	la	wa
i	ki	si	ti	ni	pi	mi		li	wi
u	ku	su	tu	nu	pu	mu	yu	lu
e	ke	se	te	ne	pe	me	ye	le	we
o	ko	so	to	no	po	mo	yo	lo

phonotactics

A few syllables sequences are disallowed; /ji, wu, wo/. Also, a syllable-final nasal may not occur before /m/ or /n/ in the same root.

Allophony

The nasal at the end of a syllable can be pronounced as any nasal stop, though it is normally assimilated to the following consonant. That is, it typically occurs as an [n] before /t/ or /s/, as an [m] before /p/, as an [ŋ] before /k/, and as an [ɲ] before /j/. Because of its small phoneme inventory, Kalo allows for quite a lot of allophonic variation. For example, /p t k/ may be pronounced [b d ɡ] as well as [p t k], /s/ as [z] or [ʃ] as well as [s], /l/ as [ɾ] as well as [l], and vowels may be either long or short. Both its sound inventory and phonotactics (patterns of possible sound combinations) are found in the majority of human languages and are therefore readily accessible.

Writing

Kalo can be written with numerous writing systems, and is adaptable to various alphabets, abugidas, and even logographies, but for aesthetical reasons, a simplified adaptation of Hangul is used.

Syntax

Classical Arabic is primarily VSO, but MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) tends to be SVO, favoring full agreement over partial.

Chinese is classified as an SVO language. Transitive verbs precede their objects in typical simple clauses, while the subject precedes the verb.

Spanish unmarked word order for affirmative declarative sentences is SVO; however, as in other Romance languages, in practice, word order is mostly variable.

English word order is almost exclusively SVO.

Hindi is primarily an SOV language.

Based on the above information about the main source languages for Kalo, it is primarily an SVO (subject-verb-object) language. Modifiers generally follow what they modify, as do prepositional phrases and subordinate clauses.

• … - 1S eat - I eat. (SV)

• … - 1S love 3S - I love her. (SVO)

• … - DO woman love - The woman is loved. (OV)

questions

The interrogative particle ma (taken from Chinese (嗎) is used in conjunction with various nouns, adverbs, and adjectives to form specific questions.

non-polar questions

• ma - what; which
• ma ko - who, whom
• ma koyo - whose, of whom
• ma tenpo - when

• ma loka - where
• ma moto - how
• ma laka - how much, how many
• ma sapa - why

polar questions

Any statement can become a polar question by adding the interrogative particle ma at the end of the sentence.

• wa wite le kasa

1S see PST house

I saw the house.

• ni wite le kasa ma

2S see PST house Q

Did you see the house?

Nouns

Nouns only decline for number and possession. They are altered with -lo to show plurality, and possessiveness with -yo.

Pronouns

kalo has three basic pronouns; wa [1sg], ni [2sg], and ko [3sg]. These do not indicate gender. These can be made plural using the suffix "-lo", and possessive with "-yo".

	singular	plural	possessive
1st person	wa I; me	walo we; us	wayo my; mine; our(s)
2nd person	ni you	nilo you (all)	niyo your(s)
3rd person	ko he; she; him; her; it	kolo they; them; those	koyo their(s)

• walo wite ni - 1pl see 2s - We see you.

• kolo ne kono wa - 3pl NEG know 1s - They don't know me.

Gender

TBD

爸 / 媽

Verbs

Verbs do not change and are only ever modified by particles. There are three basic tenses in Kalo, past, present, and future. The simple present is not marked, the past is marked by le from the Chinese particle (了), and the future is marked by sa from the Arabic construction (سَـ).

tense/mood	particle	example	translation
present	-	wa ila	I go
past	le	wa ila le	I went
future	sa	wa ila sa	I will go
conditional	kisa	wa ila kisa	I would go

• wa kome le - 1s eat PST - I ate.
• aki koyo kome - brother 3sg.GEN eat - His brother eats/is eating.
• nilo ne wite sa ko - 2pl NEG see FUT 3sg - You all will not see her.

positional verbs

Kalo does not use prepositions, but instead uses positional verbs as auxiliaries. These are also used as temporal adverbs in certain situations.

• yu - in; at; within; inside; during; between | from (于)
• ila - be toward; at; in the direction of; go; walk; travel | from (إلى)

Conditionals

Uncertainty is marked by ki, kisa, or kile. These are taken from Spanish (quizá) and used across the three basic tenses. It can also act as a subordinating conjunction, and conditional constructions, “if, whether”. It is also used to express possibility or probability.

• tela wa ki ni wite ko - tell 1s if 2s see 3s - Tell me if you can see her.
• ki ni amo yawe te pu yuma ne inpo - if 2sg like weather of today NEG important - Whether you like today’s weather does not matter.
• kisa pu yuma yuwa - maybe this day rain - It may rain (later) today.

Prepositions

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_Franca_Nova_grammar#Prepositions

Number

Kalo	number	English	Kalo	number	English
sunya	0	zero	na	7	seven
wa	1	one	pa	8	eight
li	2	two	nun	9	nine
san	3	three	ye	10	ten
si	4	four	aku / -ku	100	(one) hundred
pen	5	five	mila	1000	(one) thousand
we	6	six

When numbers one through ten occur independently, the indicator "ke" precedes the number.

• ko yo le o kasa ke li

3s have PST O house NUM two

She had two houses.

• wa wite o nano ke si

1s see O man NUM four

I see four men.

Higher Numbers

• yewa - 11; eleven
• yeli - 12; twelve
• liye - 20; twenty
• liyesi - 24; twenty-four
• kuyeli - 112; one-hundred-twelve
• sankuweyepen - 365; three-hundred-sixty-five

Lexicon

Words in Kalo tend to function in multiple roles. The lexicon is arranged to include those roles within each entry. What follows is the working lexicon for Kalo.

• ARA - Arabic
• ELL - Greek
• ENG - English
• FRE - French
• GER - German
• HEB - Hebrew
• HIN - Hindi

• JPN - Japanese
• KOR - Korean
• PIE - Proto-Indo-European
• SPA - Spanish
• TUR - Turkish
• ZHO - Mandarin

• adj - adjective
• n - noun
• num - number/numeral
• part - particle
• prep - preposition
• pro - pronoun
• v - verb