Armavi
| Armavi | |
|---|---|
| Pronounced: | armaβi |
| Timeline and Universe: | Alamanti |
| Species: | human |
| Spoken: | Parizhia, Parsa, Avustrea, Iniwicia, Armaja, Ispirtia, North Ipriqia, Armavi colonies |
| Total speakers: | 90 million native, 125 million total |
| Writing system: | Armavi script |
| Genealogy: | Ayartaic Eryanan |
| Typology | |
| Morphological type: | Agglutinaitve |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | Nominative-Accusative |
| Basic word order: | SOV |
| Credits | |
| Creator: | Nadeem Ahmad |
| Created: | May 2006 |
Armavi is a conlang originally designed as an auxlang for Turkish, hence it shares very many properties with Turkish. Over time, Armavi grew into a fully fledged conlang with its own conworld and conculture
Distribution
Armavi has a total of 90 million native speakers and 35 million speakers who learned the language as a second or third (etc) language.
The majority of speakers are concentrated in and around Parizhia, East Avrupea, and western Aghantia. There are also many speakers in north Ipriquia, however there, the language is inn decline in favour of Ipriquian-Avrupean languages.
Armavi is also spoken in the Armavi colonies, which are scattered throughout the globe, mostly on the Aral continent, just north of Parizhia.
Armavi is being considered as one of the base-languages for the International Language due to its ease of learning.
Phonology
Vowels
Armavi contains the following vowels:
| Vowel sound | Example | |||
| IPA | Description | Transliteration | English translation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| monophthongs | ||||
| i | Close front unrounded vowel | dil | 'tongue', 'language' | |
| y | Close front rounded vowel | günbet | 'dome' | |
| ɯ | Close back unrounded vowel | ımrtasa | 'infantry' | |
| ɛ | Close-mid front unrounded vowel | del | 'heart' | |
| œ | Open-mid front rounded vowel | sönmeğ | 'to play the fiddle / violin' | |
| a | Open front unrounded vowel | halet | 'health' | |
| o | Close-mid back rounded vowel | misos | 'hate' | |
| u | Close back rounded vowel | uğatar | 'large drum' | |
As well as this, there are some diphthongs:
ei is pronounced /i/, and harmonises like i
ai is pronounced /e/, and harmonises like e
As well as this, any unrounded vowel followed by u, the u is pronounced /ɸ/ before unvoiced consonants, and /β/ everywhere else
In any other cases where two vowels are next to each other (which is very rare), they are pronounced individually.
Consonants
Armavi also contains the following consonants (transliteration as well as IPA is given):
| Consonants | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilabial | Labiod. | Dental | Alveolar | Post-alv. | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||||||||
| Nasal | m (m) | n (n) | ŋ (n) | |||||||||||||
| Plosive | p (p) | b (b) | t (t) | d (d) | k (k) | g (g) | ||||||||||
| Fricative | ɸ (f) | β (v) | θ (ť) | ð (ď) | s (s) | z (z) | ʃ (ş) | ʒ (ž) | ç (x) | ʝ (ğ) | x (x) | ɣ (ğ) | h (h) | |||
| Affricate | ts (ts) | |||||||||||||||
| Approximants | j (y) | |||||||||||||||
| Trill | r (r) | |||||||||||||||
| Lateral Approximant | l (l) | |||||||||||||||
| Lateral Fricative | ɬ (l) | |||||||||||||||
Notes
- The sounds ç and ʝ are allophones of x and ğ respectively if they are followed by any front vowels or the approximant j (y)
- The sound ɬ is an allophone of l when it occurs on the end of words. When suffixes are attached that start with a vowel, it retains its pronounciation
Syntax
Simple syntax
The basic word order in Armavi is SOV - the subject goes first, followed by the object, with the verb coming last.
However, with adverbs or time or place, the time phrase always goes to the start. Indirect objects go before the verb. Any nouns that are used as an instrument go after the subject. Any other noun phrases or adverbial phrases can be placed anywhere.
Questions
Closed questions
Closed questions take the interrogative mood of the verb. This is formed by taking the personal ending off the verb and putting the suffix me- before it:
- Gidiyrim I am going ---> Gidiyr meyim? Am I going?
- Rüvdüş You went ---> Rüvdü meş? Did you go?
- Koştulažğ S/he has been killed ---> Koştulažğ ma? Has s/he been killed?
- Ahmet vazara gitti me, ekmeği xeritteğ?
- Did Ahmet go to the shop to buy bread
- Ahmet vazara gitti ekmeği xerit medeğ?
- Was it to buy bread that Ahmet went to the shop?
This is usually accompanied by a change in intonation.
As well as this, there is the particle ne?, which can be put at the end of sentences, as if to ask for confirmation:
- Ahmet vazara gitti ekmeği xeritteğ, ne?
- Ahmet has gone to the shop to buy bread, hasn't he?
In more archaic languages, the particle aya, which is placed at the start of the clause, serves both these functions:
- Aya Ahmet vazara gitti ekmeği xeritteğ?
- Ahmet has gone to the shop to buy bread, hasn't he?
- Did Ahmet go to the shop to buy bread
Open questions
Open questions are characterised by question words:
- Ne - What, which
- Neyec - Who
- Neyže - Where
- Ne bera - Why, what for
- Ne vekt - When
These question words simply take the position the answer would in a sentence.
- Neyec var?
- Who's there
- Neyi keriyriş?
- What are you doing
- Meni neyžene gideniyriş?
- Where are you leading me?
- Ne bera şuvu kerdiş?
- What did you do that for?
- Ne vekt sinemana gidiyriş?
- When are you going to the cinema?
There are other question words:
- Kodam - How much, how many
The word kodam is borrowed from Aryan, and it always goes at the start of the clause.
- Kodam yeyilşer yedi?
- How much food did he eat?
- Kodam vekt tvaletvere gidiyriş
- How many times are you going to the toilets?
- Kodam portmoneme var?
- How much is in my wallet?
- Ce ... - How ... (an adverbial quantifier)
Used in a similar way to kodam:
- Emrüz ferda ce ğuyukuş?
- How tall are you nowadays?
- Cera - Why
Like kodam, this word is borrowed from Aryan and also goes at the start of clauses.
- Cera osu ketlediş?
- Why did you hit her?
- Cetor - How, in what way
Likewise, goes at the start of the sentence:
- Cetor haletin?
- How are you?
- Cetor bužana geliyrimiz?
- How did we get here?
Subordinate clauses
Formation of subordinate clauses are generally easy. They take the position of a noun phrase depending on the type of subordinate clause it is (with a few exceptions)
Adverbial time clauses
These are clauses of when X happened, Y happened. For this, the verb in the subordinate clause must be turned into a past participle by adding the suffix -erte / -arta (see further on for more detail on participles).
Examples:
- Gelmeğ (to go) --- Gelerte (having gone)
- Aklamağ (to clean) --- Aklarta (having cleaned)
As time phrases always go at the start of clauses, likewise this type of subordinate clause goes at the start.
Examples:
- Evim gelinertem, annem portu baz kerdi.
- My house having been reached by me, my girlfried opened the door
- When I reached home, my girlfriend opened the door
- Köştülerte, düşmenver eğitti
- Having been defeated, the enemies fled
- The enemies fled once they had been defeated
- Dev pe-orbitalvar hemeşe kererte, siğma-exette saxtılar
- When two p-orbitals overlap, a σ-bond is formed
Relative clauses
There are 2 ways of forming relative clauses:
- The most common way is by Participles (see below). This is very simple, especially in simpler relative clauses where the entire clause can be expressed in a participle. The participle clause goes after the noun it is attached to.
Examples:
- Enüşesi sužada hören dittim
- There sitting the girl I saw
- I saw the girl who was sitting there
Note: this is different from "I saw the girl when she was sitting there, which would be: "Şužada hörerte, enüşesi dittim"
- Hafte-ye-piş madayesi mene deydeyilerte leğdim
- I read the book you lent me last week
- The other way of expressing relative clauses is with relative pronouns and other related words. This is very uncommon and participles should be used wherever possible. The important lexical units for this type of construction are:
- Ke --- who, what, which
- Hemciz --- whatever
- Hemkis --- whoever
- Hemje --- wherever
Like normal nouns, these decline like normal nouns.
Examples:
- Hemjene gider, daşarım.
- Wherever she goes, I follow her
- Kelem kele yordum emrüz şekaste.
- The pen with which I used to write is now broken
- Hemcizi istiyriş istiyrim
- I like whatever you like
Conjunctions
Conjunctions are rarely used in spoken Armavi, but literary Armavi dating from 1600 - 1800 AI are littered with them. The main ones are:
- aat - then
- ve - and
- tağ - in order that
- ke - that (used for expressing degrees of adjectives)
- ama - but, however
- at - but (switching from positive to negative)
- cünke - because
All these are borrowed from other languages. Out of the above list, only ve, ke, and tağ occur in modern Armavi.
To construct a sentence using conjunctions is easy. The conjunction simply comes between two normal sentences. Often a comma is placed after the preposition.
However, modern Armavi uses a completely different method of indicating conjunctins. Suffixes are added to the end of the verb in the second clause. These suffixes change in accordance with the laws of vowel harmony and consonant mutation. They are:
- -den / -dan / -ten / -tan - and
- -en ğuu / -an ğuu - then
- -eher / -ahar - after
- -ele / -ala - before
- -işle / -ışla / -üşle / -uşla - while, during
- -tağ / -teğ / -dağ / -değ - so that, in order that
- -at / -et - but, however
- -toloo / -tölöö / -doloo / -dölöö - because
- -el / -al - that (used in degrees of adjectives
Examples:
