La"n'u wa"ka:

History
Some time ago, I began a project to create the most maximally concise conlang possible. I came up with a bunch of different designs, but soon encountered a problem. The shortest possible conlang would have to use as many distinguishable phonemes as possible. But how many of those are there? Infinite? And what qualified a phone as being "distinguishable"; one day two phonemes could seem distinguishable from each other, the next day, the exact same thing. So I quit the project for some time. Then I figured it would be even more impressive to have created a conlang that is both maximally concise, but also easy to pronounce (i.e., use a comparatively small phoneme inventory). I also began trying to base its system off of Ithkuil, which manages to be maximally concise but also maximally specific. In the end, I failed to really achieve either goals: the language was neither that concise, nor even that easy to pronounce. But, it came out looking cool. Thus is the (short) story of la"n'u wa"ka:. Currently I have re-returned to continue my actually maximally concise conlang (which will be ridiculously hard to pronounce), but for now, I hope you can enjoy this failed attempt at a maximally concise engelang, and instead enjoy it as an interesting artlang (which just so happens to not have any real verbs or adjectives -- eat your heart out Kelen).

Consonants
Many phonemes can be pronounced differently for easier pronunciation if need be. [n], [t], and [d] can be be made dental, [f] and [v] can be made bilabial, [ŋ] and [x] can be made palatal or uvular, [ks] and [gz] can be [kʃ] and [gʒ], [ɬ] can be [θ] or [ð], [l] can be made velar ([ɫ] or [L]), [ʃ] and [ʒ] can be made retroflex, and [r] can be made uvular or retroflex, or can be made into a tap or flap of any kind, or it can be made into an alveolar, postalveolar, or retroflex voiced approximant.

Vowels
All vowels can be pronounced differently for easier pronunciation if need be. [i] can be made near-high instead of high [ɪ], [a] can be made near-low instead of low [æ], or low back, ([ɑ]), [e] or [ɛ] can be pronounced as a mid vowel [ə], but not both, [o] can be made low-mid instead of high-mid ([ɔ]. All vowels and possible vowel variants can be unrounded or rounded as needed.

Writing System
This is the preferred way of writing if no IPA keyboard is present (because it uses the least number of ', and no capital letters). If an IPA keyboard is present, it is preferred over this one. If no IPA keyboard is present, the X-SAMPA phonetic alphabet can be used, but the above system is preferred.

Diacritics
The table shows how gemination, tone, and both are written using the vowel "a" and the consonant "t" as an example. Geminated high, low, falling, and rising vowels can be written with doubled diacritics (i.e. a//), or with hyphens (i.e. a-/).

Structure of a Word
Words in la"n'u wa"ka: are made of two parts: the root can the suffix. Without a root, the suffix is a loose stem without substance, and without the suffix, the root has no actual meaning. Take the name of this conlang for example. The first word, la"n'u, is made of two parts. The first part, la"n', is the root, whose meaning revolves around language, and the second is the suffix, u, which indicates what type of noun the root is. Since it is u, it means the word is a verbal noun: language, so la"n'u means: language.

How to Express Things Other Than Nouns
la"n'u wa"ka: is a language composed entirely of nouns. There are no verbs or adjectives inherently; there are only three types of nouns that can be used to indicate verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc. First, there is the verbal noun. This is the most common noun. This is most nouns in general, things like soap, water, car, baseball, dream, word. The second kind are what I call participants. They are basically the person doing the thing. For example, you can have a conlang; that would be the verbal noun, but a conlanger is a participant. "Life" is the verbal noun, but a "being" (something that lives), is the participant. A writing (like a book) is a verbal noun, but a writer is a participant. Finally, there is the process of something. This noun seems odd, but it is really only used to express verbs and adjectives. There is the writing and the writer, but the process is the process of writing as a whole. You can have a market (verbal noun), a market-er (someone who goes to market: the participant), but the process of marketing is the process.

There is only one verb in this conlang, but it is somewhat invisible. It is in all words inherently but is not written. Here's how: if you want to say: "I am a writer", you just say: "I writer"; the "am" is interpreted through the context. The same applies to "I am cool"; you just say, "I cool". But, if you wanted to express other tenses besides the infinitive, like "I was cool", you would say "I cool", but would inflect the word "cool" into the past tense. This is because all words can be inflected for tense: it is inherent. It is just that the infinitive, which is the most common tense, is invisible. Inflections for tense (which can get quite elaborate like the are in English), can be applied to any word at all.

Verbs are expressed by saying that one "is the process of something". If you want to say, "I run", you say, "I am the process of run". If you want to say, "I could have ran", you say, "I am the process of run", inflecting the word "process of run" for conditional past perfect tense, making it: "I could have been the process of run", or "I could have been the process of running".

Adjectives are expressed by saying one is "of the process of something". Similar to the way verbs are expressed, but adding the conjunction "of". If you want to say, "I am cool", you say, "I am of the process of coolness", or "I am of the process of cool". If you want to say, "I will be cool", you say, "I of cool", inflecting the "cool" into the simple future tense, making it, "I will be of cool", or "I will be of coolness".

Roots
How do you know what part of a word is the root and what part is the suffix? You have to know the four ways a root can appear. First, it can be a single consonant, appearing before the suffix (i.e. ta). In the word "po", meaning people, "p" is the one-letter consonantal root, and "o" is the suffix, indicating an indefinite, plural, verbal noun: "people". Second, the root can be two letters: a vowel followed by a consonant followed by the suffix (i.e. ata). Third, when the root is three letters long, it is a consonant followed by a vowel followed by a consonant followed by the suffix (i.e. ta:ta). In this case, the vowel is marked with a high tone to indicate that the vowel is the middle letter in a three-letter root. Finally, the fourth appearance of a root (which is by far the rarest), is a four-letter root: a consonant followed by a vowel followed by a consonant followed by a consonant followed by the suffix (i.e. ta"sta). In this case, the vowel is marked with a low tone to indicate that the vowel is the third-to-last letter in a four-letter root. The most common words are one-letter roots, the less common are two-letter roots, the rarer still are three-letter roots, and the rarest are four-letter roots.

Primary Suffixes
There are three kinds of suffixes: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary suffixes are the vowels you see appearing right after the root (i.e. in the word "po", the "o" is the primary suffix, appearing right after the root "p"). They indicate what part of speech the root is, what form it is (i.e. singular, plural, etc.) as well as indicating all prepositions and conjunctions. If the last root letter (sometimes the only root letter) is geminated, the word in question is definite. For example, "po" means "people", but "ppo" (geminated "p"), means "the people". The type of vowel that occurs after the root indicates what the part of speech is, and if the word is plural. The table below illustrates. The chart shows the different primary suffix vowels that can occur after the root. Any word in any form can be made define if the last (or sometimes only) root letter is geminated. Different kinds of nouns (parts of speech) have different endings.

The second thing primary suffixes can do is indicate prepositions and conjunctions, which, as explained earlier, also help to indicate adjectives and verbs. The table below illustrates. The table shows all of the conjunctions and prepositions (more can be added if necessary using the "etc." cells). They are added by putting tone on the vowel (in this table, the example vowel is "a", used to indicate a singular process of something -- see above chart), and sometimes adding an extra letter ("z" or "j" -- called a helping letter) after the vowel.

Other things can be indicated using the above system. Adding the word "not" (i.e. "I am not a writer" as opposed to "I am a writer") can be accommodated for by geminating the helping letter that appears after the vowel. If no helping letter is present (like when indicating the words of, i, to, on, for, with, at, but, and by), then a geminated helping letter is added: z'. For example, "of the people" is "ppo:", but "not of the people" is "ppo:z'z'" (the "o:" indicates "of" and the "z'z'" indicates "not" because there is no helping verb in the suffix). "From the people" is "ppoz", but "not from the people" is "ppozz" (in this case a helping verb is present in the suffix, so the helping verb is just geminated).

Adding the word "this" to the word is done similar to the way "not" is added (see above), except that if a helping verb is present in the suffix, the helping letter becomes unvoiced, and if no helping letter is present is the suffix, the helping letter "c" is added. For example, "pu"" means "in a person", but "pu"c" means "in this person", and "pu"cc" means "not in this person" (the "not" is added because the helping letter "c" was doubled). "puj" means "after a person", but "puc'" means "after this person" (because the "j" was unvoiced, becoming a "c'").

Finally, adding the word "that" (not the relative clause but the determiner, i.e. "that is a dog", not "the man that runs") is done by adding the helping letter "d'" to suffixes that have no helping letter, adding "q" to suffixes that have the helping letter "z", and adding "g'" to suffixes that have the helping letter "j". For example, "pu"" means "in a person", but "pu"d'" means "in that person". "puz"" means "from a person", but "puq" means "from that person", and "puuz" means "after a person", but "puug'" means "after that person".

Secondary Suffixes
These suffixes indicate tense. All words can be inflected for tense. For example, you can inflect the word "dog" into past tense, making it "was a dog". That alone doesn't mean anything, but adding a subject, like "you", adds meaning, making it, "you were a dog". Subjects are added using tertiary suffixes, which will be explained later. The table below shows all the many tenses that can be accounted for using secondary suffixes. Not every tense here is ever used: many are just illogical, but are here for completeness. The acronyms on the top of the table stand for: PR - Present Tense, PA - Past Tense, FU - Future Tense, FP - Future-In-The-Past Tense, IM - Imperative Tense, CON - Conditional Tense, SON - "Should" Tense (as in, "he does" versus "he should do" or, "he must do"), MON - "Might" Tense (as in, "he might do"), AS - "As" Tense (as in, "as he does"), and IF - "If" Tense (as in, "if he does). Simple Present Tense has no suffix: it is always implied when needed.

The acronyms on the right side of the table stand for: Sim - Simple Aspect, Con - Conditional Aspect, Perf - Perfect Aspect, Perf-Con - Perfect-Continuous Aspect, Pros - Prospective Aspect, and Keep On - Keep On Aspect (as in, "he ran" versus "he kept on running"). The table below shows many additives to these suffixes that can be made. Passive refers to "he killed" versus "he is being killed", Interrogative refers to "he runs" versus "does he run?", Back refers to "he wrote" versus "he wrote back", Again refers to "he threw" versus "he threw again", and About refers to "he threw" versus "he threw about". These additional letters are added after the tense and aspect. For example: Past Tense is -t, but Passive Past Tense is -th, Present Perfect is -n, but Interrogative Present Perfect is -nf, and Future Prospective is -rk, but About Future Prospective is -rkl'.

Tertiary Suffixes
These suffixes indicate who is the subject and the object of a sentence, as well as possessives pronouns. These can only be used for pronouns. For example, you could say,"I like her" using these suffixes because the subject and object of the sentence is a pronoun, but you could not say "the dog likes the cat" because they are not pronouns and you would have to use the words for "dog" and "cat" as the subject and object. The same applies to possessives. The chart below shows how pronouns that are the subject of the sentence are indicated through suffixes. These pronouns can be made reflexive by geminating them. For example: "I like" would be "lat", but "I like myself" (reflexive), would be "latt" (geminated suffix).The chart below shows the pronouns that are used when they are the object of the sentence. These suffixes are added after subject pronouns, but on the same word. For example, to say "I like you", you take the word "like" (la), and add the subject pronoun "I" followed by the object pronoun "you", making the single word: latf. The table below shows how possessive pronouns are indicated through suffixes. These suffixes are added after subject and object pronouns, but on the same word, even though they will almost almost always occur on their own without the the subject and object pronouns (see below).

Sentence Structure
You know all the suffixes, now it's time to see how and when they are actually used.