Béu : Chapter 1

..... The sounds of béu

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

	labial	labiodental	alveolar	postalveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
stops	p b		t d			k g	ʔ
fricatives		f	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.

The sounds "d" and "ð" are in free variation when inside a word and between two vowels ... hence forth just referred to as d in this document.

The sounds "g" and "ɣ" are in free variation when inside a word and between two vowels ... hence forth just referred to as g in this document.

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 or before the consonant y. 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)

^* Actually all the phonemes are voiced, apart from p, t, k, s, f, h and ʔ.

The béu phoneme inventory is shown below.

	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

The basic vowels are a, e, i, o and u. Also the diphthongs ai, au, oi, eu, ia and ua are used. 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 ... the flow into each other more. And they each represent only one syllable.

béu likes to stress the the first syllable in a word. However if the first syllable is light and the second syllable heavy, then the second syllable will receive the stress. A heavy syllable either starts with a consonant cluster (there are no syllable final clusters by the way), has a diphthong or is closed with n, s, l or r. Every syllable that isn't heavy is light.

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.

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 ... but who isn't :-)

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.

LINGUISTIC JARGON ... "allophone", "voiced sound" and "diphthong" are linguistic jargon. You don't have to worry if you don't understand what they mean.

..... Some interjections

All languages have a small set of interjections. Often these words fall outside the normal phonology of the language ; béu is no exception.

The bottom two words. The words for "yes" and "no" are not usually considered interjections. However I have included them here because they have distinctive tone contours (or at least they do when uttered alone).

Below is how they are written.

The first vowel sound in "ohoo" is usually not quite as long as a double length vowel, and the final vowel sound is usually a bit longer than a double length vowel.

..... Consonant clusters

Word initial

The following consonants and consonant clusters can begin a word;-

ʔ
m	my
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
h

Word medial

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

lʔ

lm

ly

lj

lf

lb

lg

ld

lc

lz/lʒ

lk

lp

lt

lw

ln

lh

ʔ

m

y

j

f

b

g

d

l

c

z/ʒ

k

p

t

w

n

h

nʔ

ny

nj

nf

mb

ŋg

nd

nc

nz/nʒ

ŋk

mp

nt

mw

nh

sʔ

zm

ʒy

zb

zg

zd

zl

sk

sp

st

zw

zn

sh

Actually this is not the full story. You have to conflate the above table with the word-initial-table to get the total number of medial consonant clusters. For example in the first table we see that cw- is allowed. So looking at the above table we see that -lc-, -c- and -nc- are given. So by conflating the two we get -lcw-, -cw- and -ncw- also. So there is actually another 72 medial consonant clusters allowed as well as the 60 given in the table.

So there are 37 initial consonants/consonant-clusters and a possible 132 medial consonants/consonant-clusters.

Word final

The consonants n and s and r can occur word finally.

..... Plurals and duals

In béu the basic noun is undefined as to number. For example the plain noun nambo mean "house" or it could mean "houses" . To unequivocally refer to just one house, the word aja "one" must be included. i.e. aja nambo = "house". To unequivocally refer to more than one house you would use namboi.

The normal way for single-syllable nouns to show plurality is to put the word nò in front of the noun.

nò means number (well it does when it is not qualifying another noun)

The normal way for multi-syllable nouns to show plurality is to change the final vowel of the word.

Most nouns end in one of the vowels a i u e or o.

To show plurality, these are changed to ai ia ua eu and oi respectively.

There are a few nouns (mostly body parts) that have a dual form as well as a plural form. All the word that can take a dual end in a.

The dual form is made by changing the a to au.

wá	eye or eyes	wáu	a pair of eyes	nò wá	eyes
elza	ear or ears	elzau	a pair of ears	elzai	ears
dufa	arm/hand	dufau	a pair of arms/hands	dufai	arms/hands
poma	leg/foot	pomau	a pair of legs/feet	pomai	legs/feet
gluma	breast or breasts	glumau	a nice pair	glumai	breasts
jwuba	buttock or buttocks	jwubau	an arse	jwubai	buttocks
ploka	cheek or cheeks	plokau	cheeks	plokai	cheeks
olna	shoulder or shoulders	olnau	a pair of shoulders	olnai	sholders
kloga	shoes or shoe	klogau	a pair of shoes	klogai	shoes

Actually when we translate, for example, "shoulders" from English into béu, nearly always the word we want is olnau. olnai is hardly ever come across.

A very small number of nouns end in ai or au. For plurality they add a (that is another syllable, a is added to the word). For example ;-

nandau	word	nandaua	words
moltai	doctor	moltaia	doctors

1 multi-syllable word is irregular ;-

glabu means "a person" and has the regular plural form glabua, however it also has a dual form ;-

glabau = a couple (not necessary married but the word gives a very strong connotation that the couple are intimate/having sexual relations)

3 single-syllable words have irregular plurals. These are ;-

glà	woman	gala	women
báu	man	bawa	men
nò	number	nòi	numbers

..... Thread Writing

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.

béu has 5 vowels and 6 diphthongs.

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

These are shown below.

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

Nice, eh ... sort of organic

..... Numbers

béu uses base 12.

one =	aja	10₁₂ =	ajau	100₁₂ =	ajai
two =	aufa	20₁₂ =	ufau	200₁₂ =	ufai
three =	aiba	30₁₂ =	ibau	300₁₂ =	ibai
four =	uga	40₁₂ =	ugau	400₁₂ =	agai
five =	ida	50₁₂ =	idau	500₁₂ =	idai
six =	ela	60₁₂ =	ulau	600₁₂ =	ulai
seven =	oica	70₁₂ =	icau	700₁₂ =	icai
eight =	eza	80₁₂ =	ezau	800₁₂ =	ezai
nine =	oka	90₁₂ =	okau	900₁₂ =	okai
ten =	iapa	10x12 =	apau	10x12x12 =	apai
eleven =	uata	............. 11x12 =	atau	............. 11x12x12 =	atai

You will noticed that 12 numbers over eleven have been shortened. For example the "regular" form for 20 would be aufau, but this is actually ufau.

Also the number 6, ela has been shortened. This would have been eula if everything was perfectly regular.

In the above table, 10 is actually, of course 12 : 90 is (9x12)+0 => 108 etc. etc.

The numbers in the above table combine, to express every number from 1 -> 1727 in one word. For example ;-

543₁₂	idaigauba
503₁₂	idaiba
640₁₂	ulaigau
72₁₂	icaufa
6₁₂	ela

The above explains about the pronunciation of the numbers. But how are they written.

In fact the numbers are NEVER written out in full. See below for the characters corresponding to the five numbers above.

It can be seen that all the vowels are dropped and there is a horizontal line inserted in the top right of the character. The symbol for h is used for inserting zeroes (although never pronounced).

If you had a leading zero you would use the word jù which is usually placed before nouns and means "space/empty/zero/no". 007 would be jù jù oica (three words)

To deal with a telephone number, you would lump the numbers in threes (any leading zero or zeroes by themselves though) and outspeak the numbers. If you were left with a single digit (say 4) it would be pronounced agai. If you were to pronounce it uga, it would of course mean 004. Also you would probably add the particle dó at the end. This means "exactly" (or it can mean the speaker has finished outspeaking the number)

Ordinal numbers

To get an ordinal number you just attach n- to the front of the cardinal number. So we have ;-

first	naja
second	naufa
third	naiba
fourth	nida
etc.	etc.

May be this form originally came from an amalgamation of nò plus the number.

These forms are adjectives 100% and are always written out in full.

Fractional numbers

To get an fractional number you just attach d- to the front of the cardinal number. So we have ;-

a unit	daja
a half	daufa
a third	daiba
a quarter	dida
etc.	etc.

May be this form originally came from an amalgamation of ??? plus the number.

These are fully numbers. They are written in the same way as numbers, except the have a squiggle above them. The squiggle looks like an "8" on its side that hasn't fully closed.

And so ends chapter 1 ...

Béu : Chapter 1

Contents

..... The sounds of béu

..... Some interjections

..... Consonant clusters

Word initial

Word medial

Word final

..... Plurals and duals

..... Thread Writing

..... Numbers

Ordinal numbers

Fractional numbers

..... Index

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