User:Masako/nkala

kamalo

phonology

consonants

• nasals: /m n ɲ/ m n ny
• plosives: /p t k kʷ/ p t k kw
• affricates: /t͡ɬ/ tl
• continuants: /l h~ɦ/ l h
• semivowels: /j w/ y w

All plosives, except the glottal stop, can be prenasalized: /ᵐp ⁿt ᵑk ᵑkʷ/.

vowels

Kamalo only uses three vowels; /a e o/, occasionally they contrast for length. ā ē ō

morphology

Kamalo is an agglutinative and polysynthetic language that makes extensive use of compounding, incorporation and derivation. That is, it can add many different prefixes and suffixes to a root until very long words are formed, and a single word can constitute an entire sentence.

nouns

pronouns

• wa- - speaker(s)
• ne- - person(s) spoken to; listener(s)
• ko- - someone else; them; other

noun modifiers

• he- - color of ~
• ye- - feminine; female [FEM]
• tla- - masculine; male [MASC]
• -o - marks noun; nominalizer [NOM]

verbs

verb modifiers

• -a - active; present tense [ACT]
• -atl- - tentative; possible [TENT]
• -e - past tense; perfective [PST]
• -ok- - negative [NEG]

particles

• ma - interrogative particle [INT]; "is it that"

roots

• t- - be; exist; copula [COP]
• n- - see; know; be aware; look
• mak- - love; affection; romance
• nyak- - burn; fire
• yem- - food; eat; sustenance; drink

samples

• wanemaka - 1-2-love-ACT - I love you.
• koyematloka - 3-eat-TENT-NEG-ACT - He might not eat.
• ma newane - INT 2-1-see-PST - Did you see me?

wordgen seed

C=ptkqmnfhwylx
V=aeo

q|kw
f|ny
x|tl
wo|wa