Béu : Chapter 1 : The Sounds

..... The sounds of béu

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

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	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. In writing I will continue to use f to represent this allophone as v is visually indistinct next to any vowel.

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. 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)

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The béu phoneme inventory is shown below.

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	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

There are 5 basic vowels ... a, e, i, o, u plus ə. However the schwa is only used in the grammar and does not appear in any actual words. There are 6 diphthongs ... ai, au, oi, eu, ia and ua. 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 ... they flow into each other more. And they each represent only one syllable. Certain people pronounce e and o more open, when they occur at the end an open syllable, but for others, e and o are the same in all environments.

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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.

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For non-monosyllables the main stress is always on the first syllable, and it is articulated by adding approximately 100 ms more length to the stressed vowel. Stress does not cause any measurable modifications in vowel quality. Stress is never strong. In this regard béu is like the languages descended from Latin ,,, and unlike the slavic languages.

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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, you will be understood virtually all the time.

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In the béu writing system a small dot is placed to the right of the word if it has a high tone. If single syllable words are come across that do not have a dot .... well then you know that they must be low tone.

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..... Some interjections

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All languages have a small set of interjections. Often these words fall outside the normal phonology of the language ; béu is no exception. These words are normally elucidated singly. Also they usually have a set pitch contour. The pitch contours of the interjections below are shown by the red lines and the interjection is shown in the next column in IPA (well ... sort of IPA). These interjections also have their own symbol.

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These words break the normal rules of béu phonology by ... (1) ʃ usually only occurs before i plus usually no consonants have double length (2) "x" (the sound in "loch) usually doesn't occur plus usually no vowels have double length (3) the glottal stop is usually not syllable final (4) the final i has double length (5) the final o has double length plus ... the initial o is longer than usual (6) the length of the l is longer than usual. In fact it is quite variable. Especially these days where you have video action replays. The commentator tends to match the length of the l to the length of the fail. Actually this interjection is probably related to the verb ulpa which means to make a mistake ... often used as the first element of a SVC to give a meaning similar to "mis" in "mis-hit" or "mis-pronounce" (7) ... ʔaa / ʔaaa ... usually no vowels have double or treble length (8) emm / eemm / mmm ... this consonant is not normally syllable final, the consonant is double length, the vowel can be double length on occasion.

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(9) and (10) are not normally considered interjections. However ʔaiwa is said when some good news materializes (compare to English "YES !" or "Oh yeah"). Also aiya is said when some bad news materializes (compare to English "Oh No").

(11) is not an interjections. But is included here as it breaks the normal tone rules.

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(9) ... ʔaiwa meaning "yes". When said in isolation (i.e. nearly always) it takes a definite tone conture.

(10) ... aiya meaning "no". When said in isolation (i.e. nearly always) it takes a definite tone conture.

(11) ... ʔai is a sentence final yes/no question particle. Now other mono-syllables have either a high tone or a low tone. This one has a tone conture. From now on I will transcribe this as ? ... to stop it being confused with ?ài or ?ái.

ʔaiwa and aiya are written as words normally are. However ʔai with its rising contour is given a special sign. In my transcription of this sound, I will use ʔai? ... well I can not honestly transcribe it as either ʔài or ʔái.

There are two other words that can be called interjections. To encourage somebody that is physically straining in some task or competition you would say uhozo. Likewise exhorting/encouraging is yala ... meaning "come on" or "let's go". Actually copied from an Arabic word with the same meaning ... it fits in very neatly with béu morphology.

By the way ... as well as ʔaiwa and aiya being suitable responses to an ?ai? question, waron is often found [ I think so ]. Less commonly found is waron aiya [ I think not ]

[ Note to self : what president does this set for complementation ? ]

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Note ... there are no exclamations for Anger, Displeasure or Embarrassment. These emotions are suffered in silence. Related to the aforementioned is the fact that béu is a languages that has no swear words.

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..... Consonant clusters

Word initial

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The following consonants and consonant clusters can be found at the beginning of a word ;-

ʔ				|
m	my			|	m̩b	m̩p
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			|	n̩j	ŋ̍g	n̩d	n̩c	ŋ̍k	n̩t
h				|

Above are 45 consonants/consonant-clusters. Actually there is a zero option as well. For example àu (black). So we can say there are 46 possibilities (114₆). The 37 on the LHS have a nice pattern to their distribution. The 8 on the RHS have syllabic nasals as their initial element.

By the way ... from this point on I will not give the IPA diacritic for the syllabic nasals.

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Word medial

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

ʔ

m

y

j

f

b

g

d

l

c

z/ʒ

k

p

t

w

n

h

lʔ

lm

ly

lj

lf

lb

lg

ld

-/-

lc

lz/lʒ

lk

lp

lt

lw

ln

lh

nʔ

-/-

ny

nj

nf

mb

ŋg

nd

-/-

nc

nz/nʒ

ŋk

mp

nt

mw

mn

nh

sʔ

zm

ʒy

-/-

sf

zb

zg

zd

zl

-/-

-/-

sk

sp

st

zw

zn

sh

Above are 62 medial consonants/consonant-clusters. Actually there is a zero option as well. For example kli.o (knife). So we can say there are 63 possibilities (143₆).

Notice that -mn- is allowed but -nm- is not.

Also it would be strange to disallow consonant clusters which are allowed word initially, so we must add my jw fy fl by bl bw gl gw dw cw ky kl kw py pl and tw.

So 80 possibilities (212₆).

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Word final

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The consonants n, s, r and h can occur word finally. However no basic words end in r and h. When r occurs word finally it is showing a certain conjugation, and when h occurs word finally it is showing a certain inflection.

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..... Vowel clusters

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The vowels and diphthongs are ... ai e eu u ua a ia i oi o and au.

When I write béu words using the latin alphabet, I will sometimes insert a dot "." to indicate syllable breaks. For example ...

iyo.ito (itsy-bitsy, tiny) is a 4-syllable word. If I had written it without the dot it would have been a 3-syllable word. Of course when written in the béu script there is no ambiguity.

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..... Word structure

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To get an idea of the word structure of the language it is good to look at the toze. A toze is an animal emblem that can be considered to preside* for a year. Quite similar to the group of animals that the Chinese use for their 12 years cycle. The toze are representative of the béu nouns structure for the most part.

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There are 125 toze. They come from every place and time ...

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?eble	iguana	?usfa	giraffe	?inte	ant	?intebian	anteater	melba	gecko
mazna	lemur	mias?a	Steller's sea cow	moa	moa	myata	duck	myolan	swan
mbu?o	badger	mboza	hyena	mpaipe	spider	mpau	dove	yeme	frog
yuatua	walrus	yizgi	black skimmer	yoihu	swordfish	jàin	lion	jambe	pelican
jolomo	mole	jo?ila	cheetah	jwufu	triceratops	jwí	rabbit	felu	jackal/fox
juages	opossum	fanfa	horse	fi.ambo	frill-neck lizard	fyake	springbok	wombana	kangaroo
fleu?en	falcon	flimi	snail	bazlin	wolverine	badwa	bullfinch	biabia	butterfly
baumal?o	gnu/wildebeest	byema	cape buffalo	byoas	cobra	bletus	auroch	blauna	Irish Elk
bwebwe	humming bird	bwo?uma	colossal squid	gaifai	flamengo	guputa	parrot	gialti	glyptodon/doedicurus
goizon	chameleon	glufan	driprotodon(wombat)	gloyun	hornbill	gwúa	python	gwía	gemsbok
demotis	gorilla	dalpan	capybara	dospondo	aardvark	daugomo	porcupine	dwolhe	crocodile/alligator
dwòi	lobster	lea	red panda	launga	jaguar/panther	lidilika	dragonfly	loitoma	ostrich
celigo	hedgehog	caltin	lama	calai	tiger	cau?en	bat	cwemen	whale
cwitopa	octopus	seloki	lynx	sadu	elephant	salubi	megatherium	sinti	squirrel
slaikan	cormorant/shag	slianiŋki	chimpanzee	sweton	wartho	swoljo	musk oxe	kaimyai	vulture
kendo	goat	kuakua	seahorse	kiampi	seal	kiwon	rhino	kaukwa	grouse
kyohazlo	praying mantis	klekle	cicada/cricket/grasshopper/locust	klozo	hawk	kwuha	polar bear	kwono	raccoon
paibian	panda	palbuma	T-rex	pikau	peacock	pingolo	penguin	pyès	manta ray
pyiaʒi	meerkat/mongoose	plantos	weasel/ermine/stoat/mink	plona	NA bison	tufla	beatle	tiaŋgo	dolphin
tostuya	beautiful armadillo	tauta	shark	two?a	bear	wenye	scorpion	wetalau	zebra
wolos	glyptodon/doedicurus	waulo	wolf	negus	woolly mammoth	nùa	rat/mouse	niala	kingfisher
nozdi	beaver	njele	raven/crow	njogo	seagull	ŋgulo	owl	ŋgohis	crane/stork/heron
ndode	bear cuscus	nceloŋko	yak	ncoin	deer	ŋkele	swift	ŋkaus	baboon
ntiga	smilodon	ntí	crab	nyafi	okapi	nyauti	pangolin	hailai	toucan
habian	bee	huatua	turtle/tortoise	haulau	eagle	ujama	camel	ozgin	puffin

If you analyse them, it can be seen that just over 15% have a final -n and just under 5% a final -s.

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Over 10% have pre-nasals.

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Over 50% are bi-syllabic, followed by tri-syllabic, followed by monosyllabic.

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Here is a breakdown of the toze soundshape ....

S = monosyllabic SS = bi-syllabic etc. etc.

N = a pre-nasal

The béu toze is in red and the English translation is in black. In brackets is the total occurrences out of the 125 samples.

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The above gives some idea of what a noun looks like. Verbs look pretty much the same.

Adjectives have an even greater percentage of "SS" (bi-syllabic) forms. Most have the structure "CVCV" (as in ki?o "yellow").

Particles are mostly monosyllabic (as you would expect from Zipf's law).

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And what about diphthong distribution ? Well here is a toze breakdown ...

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SS words having two diphthongs (like yuatua) is definitely a toze thing. This pattern is a lot rarer among normal nouns.

In fact the whole middle row does not represent well the béu nouns situation. The numbers for nouns in general would be [15/125] : [10/125] : [ 5/125] instead of [20/125] : [3/125] : [ 9/125].

When it comes to SS adjectives, around 15% have a diphthong as their final vowel.

And more notable yet, when it comes to verbs, more than 30% have a diphthong as their final vowel.

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* A chinese totem presides for exactly one year. A toze presides for slightly more than a year ... 374 days in fact.

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..... Plurality

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Normally a naked noun is unspecified as to singular/dual/plural.

For example tìa can mean "house" or "houses".

But of course you can add words to modify the bare noun if you want to be more specific as to number.

I guess the addition of yè [see Ch2, Quantity] is the nearest béu equivalent to the plural form in a language in which the singular/plural distinction is mandatory.

Actually in a large number of situations, this strict singular/plural distinction serves no purpose. However if your natlang has such a distinction it is hard to get rid of the idea that the singular/plural contrast is always essential.

A small group of words have a special dual form ...

wá	eye or eyes	wáu	a pair of eyes
elza	ear or ears	elzau	a pair of ears
mba	arm/hand or arms/hands	mbau	a pair of arms/hands
poma	leg/foot or legs/feet	pomau	a pair of legs/feet
gluma	breast or breasts	glumau	a nice pair
jwuba	buttock or buttocks	jwubau	an arse
ploka	cheek or cheeks	plokau	cheeks
olna	shoulder or shoulders	olnau	a pair of shoulders
kloga	shoe or shoes	klogau	a pair of shoes
noda	nostril or "blow hole" or nostrils	nodau	a pair of nostrils

............. (horn, tusk, antler)

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And a small group of words have a special singular form ...

yinki	crumpet	yinkai	a young unmarried woman, an attractive girl, a virgin
toti	children	totai	a child
wazbo	distance	wazbai	3,680 m (the unit of distance ... the béu km or mile)
malkufa	cabbages	malkufai	a cabbage
alha	flowers	alhai	a flower

.. . all the base forms above have a collective meaning ... they are all uncountable or "mass" nouns.

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And 4 words have irregular plurals ...

bàu	man	bawa	men
glá	woman	gala	women
cái	fairy *	cai.a	fairies
nò	number	nòi	numbers

* Actually a fairy-like creature. It is the only supernatural creature in the culture of béu ... so no elves, dwarves, goblins etc. etc. cai.a on the whole are neutral as far as the good/bad continuum is concerned although certain individuals are considered naughty and other individuals are considered kindhearted.

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yildos = storehouse,barn, yildos yè = barns, yildos ú = all barns

seklas = a glass, seklas yè = glasses (not spectacles)

There is one word that doesn't end in a that has a dual form ...

pú = "person" and has the regular plural form mpu, however it also has a dual form ...

páu = "two people" or "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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yè belongs to a small set of words that are never spelt out. They have a special "short hand" symbol. The yè symbol is shown below.

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húa = head, húa yè = heads ..........

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..... Thread writing

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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.

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béu has 5 vowels and 6 diphthongs.

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

These are shown below.

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

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Nice, eh ... sort of organic

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..... Saying the letters

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When speaking out the letters, each letter has a word associated with it. This is a bit like when we say "sierra tango echo ..." to spell out a name over the telephone.

letter	associated name	meaning
ʔ	ʔusfa	a giraffe
m	moŋgo	a gibbon
y	yeme	a frog/toad
j	jambe	a pelican
f	fanfa	a horse
b	biabia	a butterfly
g	gaifai	a flamenco
d	duzu	an oryx
l	lata	a cow
c	compa	a palm tree
s	sadu	an elephant
k	kiŋki	a fir tree
p	pikau	a peacock
t	tauta	a hammerhead shark
w	wenye	a scorpion
n	nùa	a mouse/rat
h	habian*	a bee

We use a different system for the vowels. We add the vowel to san to speak out the vowels. For example ...

To spell naike (sharp) we would say nùa sanai kiŋki sane dù

To spell a vowel that has left.dot (high tone) you substitute dit for san. For example ...

wías (we) would be spelt wenye ditia sadu dù

r is designated by huka (which means hook)

dù is a particle, used with numbers and when spelling, that indicates you have finished a word.

Note ... there is a word dito which means "dot" or "point". Also there is a word santai which means vowel.

táu = letter, character, "symbol used to represent a sound, syllable, word or number"

When a letter is mentioned by itself ( i.e. not as part of a string) it takes the form produced by word building with the above. For example ...

táu gaifai = the symbol given to the sound "g" in béu

táu nùa = the symbol given to the sound "n" in béu

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* This word has an interesting etymology. alha = flower : alhabian = the one attracted to flowers

So habian can be seen to be a rubbed down version of alhabian

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..... Printing

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Punctuation and Page Layout

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The letters in a word are always contiguous, that is there is always a line running right through the word. Writing is primarily from top to bottom and secondarily from left to right.

Between words there is a small "break" in the line. The break should be 25% the height of a letter.

Between some words there is a gap. This represents a pause. In béu every place an orator draws breath (or could draw breath) should be reflected in the writing system with a "gap". A gaps hould be 75% the height of a letter.

There are occasions where the grammar of béu demands a gap. I will represent in in my transcription as an underscore.

Side Note ... [ Presumable in English, commas originally were always used for pauses in speech. However nowadays in English many pauses are not represented in any way ... in these places when comma's are not necessary for reading comprehension. Also in English, in a surprising amount of text comma's are found where they shouldn't be. ]

Side Note ... [ When listing items, béu is similar to English ... there is pause between every item except the last two items. Between these items, béu has lé and English has "and" ]

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............................... suna_dunu_celai lé àu = "orange, brown, pink and black" ... [ notice the 2 gaps and the 2 breaks in the béu script ]

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By the way, this would be spelled out as ... sadu sanu nùa sana jù_duzu sanu nùa sanu jù_compa sane lata sanai dù_táu lé_sanau dù dù ... [ dù for a break and jù for a gap ]

Note that the word lé has a special symbol ... táu lé. There are about 30 common words that have short-hard symbols. They are never written out in full.

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Single gaps are very common. Occasionally you can have "double gaps" and even "treble gaps". These rare creatures represent "pregnant pauses" which are sometimes used for comic effect.

Note the single point used in the "double gap" and the pair of points used in the "treble gap".

For a "double gap" there should be 75% letter height space above and below the dot. For a "treble gap" it is the same 75% letter height above and below the dots plus a 25% letter height between the dots.

There is also a punctuation mark called the koipa "sunmark" ( kòi = sun faspa = mark koipa = "sunmark" ) ... always red infill. This is basically a full-stop. The koipa has double the diameter of omba (omba means "circle" and is used as a decimal point).

There are also punctuation marks called deupa "moonmark" ( dèu = moon faspa = mark deupa = "moonmark" ) ... always gold infill. These are basically brackets. The opening one is called deupa damau and the closing one is called deupa dagoi.

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The deupa are solely used as quotation marks. For other sorts of bracketing the form shown above on the RHS should be used. .......... to be named ... "above shelf" / "below shelf" ???

Usually everything is written in "textblocks". Three and a bit "textblocks" are shown on the demonstration page below ... [ I could note be arsed wording all the textblocks, so reverted to dotted lines towards the RHS ]

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This is the first page in a "chapter" in a paperback book. Notice the symbol at the top left hand side of the first "textblock". This is called a "tile" and is always the first thing in a chapter.

Textblocks fit in between "rails" (the dark horizontal lines) about 4 inches apart. The width of a block should be between 60% and 90% ^* of the block height. Of course it is best to start a new block when the scene of the narrative changes or there is some other discontinuity of the action, but this is not always possible. One then just must arbitrarily split the text into two blocks. The standard practice is to stretch the text a bit so that the tops and bottoms of every column line up.

There is no way to split a word between two lines as we can do in the West by using two hyphens. A koipa starts of every textblock.

The first text block starts at the top left (as you would expect). The second textblock starts below where the first text block stops. In fact the vertical space between the stop and the start of the two textblocks is equal to the horizontal "interblockspace"). Between textblocks there is a one culumn gap.

In every textblock, one word or short noun phrase is highlighted in blue. The shape of the highlighted area is rectangular with rounded edges. Usually a noun is chosen and the more iconic the better. Statistically these highlighted words tend to come towards the beginning of the "textblock".

There are two sizes for books. For all hardback books the size is about 8 inches by about 11 inches. For all paperback books the size is about 5 inches by about 8 inches. They are stored as shown in the figure below.

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Unlike books produced in the West, these books are held with the spine horizontal when being read. The hardback page has two "rails" per page (i.e. three dark horizontal lines instead of two).

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On the paperback book, the title is written on the spine and on the front of the book. On the hardback book the title is written on the front, also there is a flap that slides into the spine. However when the book is stored on a shelf, it is pulled out and hangs down. Hence the hardback books can be easily located, even when they are in the bookshelf.

A book will be divided into chapters. A chapter will have a number and usually a title as well. Either at the end of the book or just after the chapter, there will be a page, in which all the highlighted words for a chapter are listed in order. Instead of referencing things by page number, things are reference by chapter and textblock (indictated by the highlighted word(s) ).

Any particular word in a book can be reference by 5 parameters ...

1) "title of book"

2) number of the chapter .... will perhaps have a title as well

3) the highlighted word(s) ... these will be numbered ... [ number corresponds to textblock ]

4) the number of koipai passed.

5) the number of the word in the sentence

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... 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