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 v	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.

v is an allophone of f when inside a word and between two vowels.

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, 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 stresses the first syllable in a word.

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 :-)

I am representing the high tone with a full-stop sign after the syllable (in a similar manner the béu writing system places a small dot to the right of a high tone syllable). If single syllable words are come across that are not followed by a full-stop, they can be taken as low-tone (as happens in the native béu writing system).

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. Usually they party fall outside the normal sound system rules. béu is no exception.

iʃʃ ... an exclamation expressing sympathy (neutral tone)

xaa ... an exclamation of disgust (it starts of as a neutral tone, falls quickly then sort of lingers at a low level)...(the "x" represents the last sound in "loch")

aido ... an exclamation of frustration (rapidly rising tone on the "ai", a short break, then the "do" is a lowish level tone)

oho ... an exclamation of awe ("o" is a normal high tone, "ho" starts quite high and rises to the normal high tone level)

..... Consonant clusters

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

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

l@

lm

ly

lj

lf

lb

lg

ld

lc

lz/lʒ

lk

lp

lt

lw

ln

lh

@

m

y

j

v

b

g

d

l

c

z/ʒ

k

p

t

w

n

h

n@

ny

nj

nf

mb

ŋg

nd

nc

nz/nʒ

ŋk

mp

nt

mw

nh

s@

zm

ʒy

zb

zg

zd

zl

sk

sp

st

zw

zn

sh

The consonants n and s can occur word finally.

..... Plurals and duals

In béu the basic noun is undefined as to number. For example the plain noun báu could refer to any number of men. You can optionally use the plural form bawa to indicate a number more than one. To unequivocally refer to just one man, the word aba "one" must be included. i.e. aja báu = one man

báu = man or men

aja báu = one man

bawa = men

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

To make a plural, these vowels undergo the following transformation.

a => ai

i => ia

u => ua

e => eu

o => oi

There are 8 nouns (that name parts of the body) that have a dual form as well as a plural form. They are ;-

wá = eye

elza = ear

duva = arm or hand

poma = leg or foot

gluma = breast

jwuba = buttock

ploka = cheek

olna = shoulder

The dual form is made by a => au. For these 8 words the plural form means "3 or more" as opposed to "2 or more".

Also there are some other word that have a dual.

glabu = person

glabua = people

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

kloga = shoe

klogau = a pair of shoes

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

nandau = word, nandaua = words

moltai = doctor, moltaia = doctors

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

glà = woman

gala = women

báu = man

bawa = men

Usually single-syllable words indicate plurality by having nò in front.

nò = number ... actually this is one of the few single-syllable nouns that creates its plural in the same way as multi-syllable nouns ... 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.

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	auva	20₁₂	uvau	200₁₂	uvai
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	120 i.e.(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 auvau, but this is actually uvau.

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	icauva
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 left 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 by itself 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	nauva
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	dauva
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.

..... Pronouns and what is meant by S, A and O

béu is what is called an ergative language. About a quarter of the world languages are ergative or partly ergative. So let us explain what ergative means. Well in English we have 2 forms of the first person singular pronoun ... namely "I" and "me". Also we have 2 forms of the third person singular male pronoun ... namely "he" and "him". These two forms help determine who does what to whom. For example "I hit him" and "He hit me" have obviously different meanings (in English there is a fixed word order, which also helps. In béu the word order is free).

timpa = to hit ... timpa is a verb that takes two nouns (LINGUISTIC JARGON ... a transitive verb).

pás ò timpari = I hit him pà ós timpori = He hit me ... OK in this case the protagonist marking in the verb also helps to make things disambiguous. But this will not always help, for example when both protagonists are third person singular.

So far so good. And we see that English and béu behave in the same way so far. But what happens when we take a verb that takes only one noun (LINGUISTIC JARGON ... a transitive verb). For example doika = "to walk". In English we have "he walked". However in béu we don't have *ós doikori but ò doikori (equivalent to saying "*him walked" in English). So this in a nutshell is what an ergative language is.

It is the convention to call the doer in a intransitive clause the S argument. For example ò_S flomporta = She has tripped

It is the convention to call the doer in a transitive clause the A argument. For example ós_A timpori jene = He hit Jane

It is the convention to call the "done to" in a transitive clause the O argument. For example ò timpori jene_O = He hit Jane

The S was historically from the word "Subject" and the O historically from the word "Object", but it is best just to forget about that. In fact when I use the word "subject" I am talking about either the S argument or the A argument.

If you like you can say ;-

In English "him" is the "done to"(O argument) : "he" is the "doer"(S argument) and the "doer to"(A argument).

In béu ò is the "done to"(O argument) and the "doer"(S argument) : ós is the "doer to"(A argument).

Below are two tables showing the two forms of the béu pronouns.

I	pás	we (includes "you")	yúas
		we (doesn't include "you")	wías
you	gís	you (plural)	jés
he, she	ós	they	nús
it	ʃís	they	ʃís

me	pà	us	yùa
		us	wìa
you	gì	you (plural)	jè
him, her	ò	them	nù
it	ʃì	them	ʃì

There could be another member it the above table. When a action is performed by somebody on themselves, a special particle tí is used.

Just as in English, we do not say "*I hit me", but "I hit myself" ... in béu we do not say *pás pà timpari, but pás tí timpari.

LINGUISTIC JARGON ... "myself" is what is called a "reflexive pronoun". In English there are many reflexive pronouns (i.e. "myself", "yourself", "herself", etc. etc.) : in béu only one.

One other point ... béu has generally a pretty free word order. But in a sentence such as jene tí laudori (Jane washed herself) it would be pretty unusual to have the tí before jene

There is an emphatic pronouns based on the possessed form of bùa "body". The emphatic forms are given below ;-

me myself	bapua	we ourselves	bayua
		we ourselves	bawua
you yourself	bigua	you yourselves	bejua
him himself, her herself	bonua	them themselves	bunua
it itself	bisua	them themselves	bisua

The above forms come just after the normal pronouns and the two words stand in apposition. If a pilana is applied to one, it must be applied to the other as well. For example ;-

pás bapuas ò timparu => I myself will hit her

..... 64 Adjectives

good	bòi	bad	kéu
long	yàu	short	wái
high, tall	hái	low, short	ʔàu
happy, glad	ʔoime	sad, unhappy	heuno
white	ái	black	àu
young	sài	old (of a living thing)	gáu
clever, smart	jini	stupid, thick	tumu
near	nìa	far	múa
new	yaipe	old, former, previous	waufo
big	jutu	small	tiji
hot	fema	cold	pona
open	nava	close	mapa
simple, easy	baga	complex, difficult, hard	kaza
sharp	naike	blunt	maubo
wet	nuco	dry	mide
empty	fene	full	pomo
fast	saco	slow	gade
strong	yubu	weak	wiki
heavy	hobua	light	ʔekia
beautiful	hauʔe	ugly	ʔaiho
contiguous, touching	yotia	apart, separate	wejua
fat	somua	thin, skinny	genia
bright	selia	dull, dim	golua
thin	pilia	thick	fulua
east, dawn, sunrise	cúa	west, dusk, sundown	dìa
tight	taitu	slack, loose	jauji
neat	ilia	untidy	ulua
soft	fuje	hard	pito
wide/broad	juga	narrow	tisa
rough	gaʔu	smooth	sahi
deep	gubu	shallow	siki
right	sèu	wrong	gói

In the above list, it can be seen that each pair of adjectives have pretty much the exact opposite meaning. However in béu there is ALSO a relationship between the sounds that make up these words.

In fact every element of a word is a mirror image (about the L-A axis in the chart below) of the corresponding element in the word with the opposite meaning.

ʔ
m
y
j		au
f		o
b		oi
g		i
d		ia		high tone
l	===========================	a	============================	neutral
c		ua		low tone
s/ʃ		u
k		eu
p		e
t		ai
w
n
h

Adjectives and how they pervade other parts of speech

The main parts of speech in béu are nouns, adjectives and verbs (there are also particles but they are a mixed bag, it is hard to generalise about them). However we can generalise about nouns, adjectives and verbs. Nouns (N), adjectives (A) and verbs (V) are called "parts of speech". In béu, sometimes, aNn unmodified word can belong to 2 or 3 different parts of speech at once.

For convenience I am going to introduce another part of speech : the geladi (G). You find the G-form a lot in complement clauses (that will be explained later). In our linguistic tradition we call it the infinitive form of the verb. This is the "base form" of the verb and it resembles a noun in many respects.

For example solbe means "to drink" and is a geladi. But more often you find this word in other forms. For example if you came across solbarin which means "I drank, so they say". I am counting the form solbarin as a verb (V), and the form solbe as a geladi(G). That is I am treating them as different parts of speech. This is just for convenience. I do not want to get into an argument about linguistic theories etc. etc. This is just to make things easy to discuss.

Let us start of with a single-syllable adjective. Let us see what "forms" a single-syllable adjective can take and what "parts of speech" these forms can belong to. Consider the word gèu "green" ;-

Along the top of the above chart you can see N, A, V and G. These are different part of speech. The form under these 4 headings, shows the form géu takes when it is one of these 4 parts of speech. Now géu is fundamentally an adjective (that is what that pentangle around the "A" means).

You can see that we have two nouns in the above chart. One has its original form, I call this one "the substansive noun", i.e. "the green one". The other changes its form by taking the affix -ma. I call this one "the qualitative noun", i.e. "greenness".

Now how can we tell if the unmodified géu is representing an adjective or a substansive noun. Well we can tell by its position with respect to other elements in the clause.

gèu is an adjective if it comes immediately after the copula^* sàu. For example báu rì gèu => The/a man was green. (if you wanted to put a substantive after sàu, you would stick aja "one" in front of it).

gèu is also an adjective if it comes immediately after a noun i.e. báu gèu dí => This green man ((An aside ... (báu gèun dí = the green one's man here) ))

In other positions géu represents a substansive noun^**.

^*gèu is a qualitative noun if it comes immediately after the copula of existence gaza. For example ʔá pona => It is cold ... or ... ʔá pona paʔe => I am cold

^**Well actually in one other position géu represents a qualitative noun ... after the "copula of existence" (just to make things complicated).

We can see that we can derive two verbs from géu. By affixing -du we get an intransitive verb meaning "to become green". And by affixing -ldu we get an transitive verb meaning "to make green". You can see that the V-forms and the G-forms are the same.

Actually the V-form is not geudu or geuldu. The V-form is actually a myriad of forms. But they are all built up from the geudu or geuldu foundations. As an example let us build up one of the myriad of forms that the V-form can take. First we delete the final vowel ... then we add a vowel that represents the subject ... then we add, either r, n or s (depending on if we want the indicative mood, the subjunctive nood or the imperative) ... then we add a vowel (or consonant + vowel) as a tense/aspect marker ... then we possibly add an optional evidential marker n, s or a. So we could get geudu + i + r + i +a => geudiria = "you became green, I saw it" ... one of the many forms considered as a V-form.

OK. We have seen how a single-syllable adjective works. Now for a 2-syllable adjective. Consider the word naike "sharp" ;-

We can see that in this case it is possible to have 3 parts of speech from only one form. However in this case the "finite" verb (V) is built up directly from naike and not from the G-form. So, for example, we have naikiria = "you sharpened (it), I saw you do it". Rather than *naikediria. The G-form is built up from the base form by adding the affix -du.

Notice that with géu we had two verbs generated by adding affixes. In this case we only have one verb and it is transitive.

And above we see one more possibility for a word that is fundamentally an adjective. You will see that the G form has a irregular ending. Quite a number of common adjectives act like mapa (so maybe I should not call them irregular). You will see that there is also a pentangle around the "G". This is because we can not say if this word is basically an infinitive verb or an adjective. There would be two entries in a dictionary.

Again only one verb and it is transitive. There are three ways that we can make an intransitive clause.

1) pintu tí mapori = The door closed itself ... this form strongly implies that there was no human agent. Possibly the wind closed the door (or a supernatural element when it comes to that).

2) pintu lái mapori = The door was closed ... this is the standard passive form. It strongly implies a human agent but the agent is either unknown or unimportant.

3) pintu lí mapa = The door became closed ... this uses the adjective form of mapa and the "copula of becoming" láu. This form has no implication as to the humanness of the agent.

By the way, the G-form of nava "open" is navai

Let us go back to gèu and consider gèu in an intransitive clause. As above we have 3 ways.

1) báu tí geuldori = The man made himself green ... this form implies that there was some effort involved.

2) báu lái geuldori = The man was made green ... this is the standard passive form. It strongly implies a human agent but the agent is either unknown or unimportant.

3) báu lí gèu = The man became green ... this uses the adjective form of gèu and the "copula of becoming" láu. This form has no implication as to the humanness of the agent.

And of course gèu has a fourth way ...

4) báu gèudori = The man became green

Actually 3) and 4) have the same meaning.

Any single syllable adjective, must have the suffix du in all its verbal forms. For example ;-

audu = to become black, auldu = to blacken, maŋkeu = faces

aulduri maŋkiteu = they blackened their faces ... interesting construction ... we use the transitive form even tho' they perform the action on themselves.

Verbs and how they pervade other parts of speech

slaii is pronounced as two syllables ... as you would say "sly "e" " ... glottal stop between the syllables ... quite easy to say.

slaianais pronounced as three syllables ... slai ... a ... na ... also easy to say.

Nouns and how they pervade other parts of speech

nambo meaning house is a fairly typical non-single-syllable noun and we can use it to demonstrate who béu generates other words from nouns.

nambodu

Not many nouns can be used as verbs. However when an action is associated to a certain noun, usually, with no change of form, it can be used as a verb. For example lotova means bicycle and you get lotovarwi meaning "I used to ride my bicycle". For the infinitive, du must be affixed to the basic form.

The meaning given to the verb nambo is arrived at through metaphor, it is not so straight forward as the bicycle example.

The use of all tools can be expressed in a similar manner to lotova.

nambon

Sometimes in English a bare noun can be used to qualify another noun (i.e. it can act as an adjective). For example in the phrase "history teacher", "history" has the roll usually performed by an adjective ... for example, "the sadistic teacher". This can never happen in béu, the noun must undergo some sort of change. The most common change for nambo is it to change into its genitive form nambon as in pintu nambon "the door of the house". Other changes that can occur are the affixation of -go or -ka. These are used with certain nouns more than others. They are not used that much with the noun nambo so I haven't included them in the chart above. You could use the forms nambogo or namboka if you wanted tho' (they would mean "house-like"). Maybe you would use one of these terms in a joke ... it would stike the listener as slightly odd however.

nambia

This is a very common derivation. Nearly all nouns can take this transformation.

nambia is an adjective meaning "having a home". And its use as a noun is quite common as well, in which case it would probably be translater as "a home owner"

nambua

Also a very common derivation. The opposite of nambia.

nambua means homeless or the homeless

Note that although ia and ua are exact opposites, the usage of the words produced from these affixes do not completely mirror each other. It all depends oner what the base word is.

For example, in this case, the form nambia is a bit rarer than nambia. Also nambua is used more often as a noun than as an adjective, while nambia is used more often as an adjective than a noun.

nambwan

The form changes that produce nambia, nambua, nambuma, nambita, *nambija are *nambeba affected by deleting the final vowel (or diphthong) and then adding the relevant affix. However with this change of form this is not always possible to delete the final vowel (example). In this example it is possible. In fact it is possible if the final consonant of the base word is j, b, g, d,c, s, k, t, l or m.

wan is affixed to a few nouns, a few adjectives plus a few. Its has the sense of "tending towards","accustomed to" or "addicted to".

ái	white	aiwan	faded
lozo	grey	lozwan	grizzled
pà	I	pawan	selfish
mama	mother	mamwan	motherbound
nambo	house	nambwan	domesticated
toili	book	toilwan	bookish