Jayus
| Jayus | |
|---|---|
| Pronounced: | /ʒaˈjuʃ/ |
| Timeline and Universe: | here and now |
| Species: | humans |
| Total speakers: | 3 |
| Writing system: | syllabary |
| Genealogy: | isolate |
| Typology | |
| Basic word order: | OVS |
| Credits | |
| Creator: | Sara, Yunta, Labas |
| Links | |
| CALS | |
Jayus /ʒaˈjuʃ/ is a colllang sketch by Sara, Yunta and Labas. The language has been designed with 2 things in mind:
- It was to be a secret language, used only by the three members of its team.
- It was to be easily usable over phone or VoIP calls.
Phoneme inventory
| Consonants | ||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilabial | Labiod. | Dental | Alveolar | Post-alv. | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||||||||||
| Nasal | n | |||||||||||||||||
| Plosive | b | d | g | |||||||||||||||
| Fricative | f | v | θ | ð | ʃ | ʒ | χ | ʁ | ||||||||||
| Approximants | j | |||||||||||||||||
| Trill | ||||||||||||||||||
| Lateral Approximant | l | |||||||||||||||||
| Vowels | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Near-front | Central | Near-back | Back | ||||||
| High | i | u | ||||||||
| Near-high | ||||||||||
| High-mid | ||||||||||
| Mid | ||||||||||
| Low-mid | ||||||||||
| Near-low | ||||||||||
| Low | a | |||||||||
Syllable structure
The structure of Jayus syllables can be described in pseudo-awkwords-code as:
CV(N)
with the following parameters:
- C=b/d/ɡ/n/v/f/ð/θ/ʒ/ʃ/ʁ/χ/j/l
- N=n/ʃ/l/f/θ/χ
- V=a/i/u
in all syllables that are not the last syllable in a word, the N parameter (the syllable coda) is reduced to /n/. This consonant's place of articulation is assimilated to the following consonant, similar to /n/ in Japanese. For example, /ˈyun.θa/ becomes [ˈyun̪.θa].
Orthography
Jayus has a syllabary which is currently unfinished.
More commonly, Jayus is simply written in the Latin aplhabet. Each letter represents one phoneme:
- <a> /a/
- <b> /b/
- <d> /d/
- <f> /f/
- <g> /ɡ/
- <i> /i/
- <j> /ʒ/
- <l> /l/
- <n> /n/
- <r> /ʁ/
- <s> /ʃ/
- <t> /θ/
- <u> /u/
- <v> /v/
- <x> /χ/
- <y> /j/
- <z> /ð/
When mixing Latin-mode Jayus into texts in other languages written in the Latin alphabet, it is surrounded by pseudo-angular brackets (less-than and greater-than signs, “<” and “>”).
Grammar
The basic word order is object-verb-subject.
A notable feature of Jayus is its lack of first and second person pronouns. Since Jayus was originally intended as a secret language to only be spoken by the three members of its team, their names are never replaced by a pronoun, but frequently dropped. Someone who is involved with the Jayus language may choose a Jayus name for themself and enter it into the vocabulary. If someone does not have a Jayus name, they are always addressed by <Li> “he/she” and never by another name.
Jayus uses reduplication for multiple purposes. A word is always reduplicated in its entirety, except if its last syllable has a coda. For example, <Jani> becomes <Janijani>, but <Jayus> becomes <Jayujayus>.
- A reduplicated noun indicates plural.
- A reduplicated adjective indicates superlative.
Adjectives are placed after the noun. The comparative is formed by simply placing the noun to be compared to after the adjective. For example, <Li tu yunta> could be translated as “that which is taller than Yunta”.
Morphology
Every word in the vocabulary is a word root. There are several suffixes for word classes. The word root is normally used by itself, but the implied word class can be explicitly expressed using a suffix for added clarity.
Vocabulary
- Jani — hello
- Jayus — language
- Labas — Fenhl
- Li — 3rd person singular pronoun he/she/it
- Lili — 3rd person plural pronoun they
- Niza — good
- Nix — negative
- Nuvu — bye
- Sa — yes
- Sasa — yes as a reply to a negative statement or question, like «si» in French or „doch“ in German
- Sara — Deathcat13
- Tu — tall
- Yunta — Nina one of the team members
Suffixes
No suffixes have been defined yet.
