Amal
- See also:
Introduction
Amal is meant to be a personal conlang and despite appearances and structure is not intended as an IAL.
Vocabulary and grammatical features are inspired by or taken directly from:
- Arabic (ara)
- Basque (bas)
- Japanese (jap)
- Quechua (que)
- South Slavic (sla)
- Spanish (spa)
- Turkish (tur)
Phonology
23 of the 26 Latin letters are used, leaving q, w and x unused. All letters are pronounced like their IPA equivalents with a few exceptions.
- c - /ʃ/, /t͡ʃ/ or /t͡s/ without confusion
- e - /e/ or /ɛ/ without confusion
- j - /ʒ/
- u - /w/ when followed by another vowel
- y - /j/
- ' - /ʔ/ the glottal stop separates non-diphthonged vowels.
Word Order
Amal has a mostly regular word order. The general word order is SVO:
- Ivan haca
- Ivan run-3SG
- Ivan runs.
- Marya duya Ivan
- Maria hear-3SG Ivan
- Maria hears John.
A noun phrase has this order:
- (determiners —) noun (—quantifiers) (— stative verb)
- Al muj uc buyum
- DEF.ART man three be.large-3PL
- The three large men...
A verb phrase has this order:
- (leading verb —) verb(tense/mood) (— adverb)
- ..necra yemek sarelya..
- need-PST eat.INF be.quick-ADV
- ..needed to eat quickly..
- A prepositional phrase generally follows what it modifies, and has this order:
- preposition — noun phrase
- See also: case
- ..bada cinya
- after midnight
- ...after midnight
Verbs
tense
The future tense is marked with -ay-/-y(a)-. Past tenses, including perfect and pluperfect, are marked with -ar-/-r(a)-. The present tense is unmarked:
- Ganan. – I sing / I am singing.
- Ganyat. – You will sing / You are about to sing.
- Ganara. – He sang / She was singing / It has sung.
Stories often describe events that take place in the past (or an imagined past), or whose location in time is of no concern to the reader. In such cases, the -ar-/-r(a)- may be omitted.
