Boselenan

The Boselenan Language (kereba boselenansto) is a constructed language that I created not to be a member of any specific language family, rather to be something unique.

=Phonology=

Sounds
The phoneme inventory of Boselenan should not be too difficult for an English speaker to grasp, as most of the phonemes of Boselenan are also present in English. The sounds that do not have a direct english equivalent are not too difficult to approximate.

Consonants

 * 1. [m] is seen only as an allophone of /n/ before /p/ and /b/, where it is represented by the letter . (see No Bilabial Nasal for more details).
 * 2. [ɱ] is seen only as an allophone of /n/ before /p/ and /b/, where it is represented by the letter .

There are only two voiced fricatives in Boselenan, namely /v/ and /ʝ/. There is no voieless-voiced assimilation with fricatives in Boselenan, meaning that the voiceless consonants are pronounced voiceless regardless of their position in a word.

Syllable Formation
Largely syllables in Boselenan is restricted by its phonotactics. Very few syllables have a coda, only allowing 'n', 'ng', 'q' and 'ğ', with most syllables ending in a vowel.

No Bilabial Nasal
A peculiarity of Boselenan is the absence of the bilabial nasal /m/ phoneme, which is present as a phoneme in it's own right in every european language and almost every world language. The sound does appear as an allophone of /n/ before a bilabial consonant (/p/ or /b/), as in the word umpedĕ meaning "shoe", where it is represented by the letter . As a result, the letter  is only ever found before p and b, and is not found word-initially as [mb] and [mp] sequences cannot be found word-initially in Boselenan.

In foreign words that contain the sound /m/ on its own, the /m/ is usually denasalised to [b] (as in tsebent "cement"). In foreign place names that have a substantial significance (as in country names and cities that have a Boselenan exonym), the /m/ also becomes a /b/, as in Bonako ("Monaco"), Robania ("Romania") and Boritania ("Mauritania"). In less-significant foreign place names, the native spelling is preserved, so as well as preserving the 'm', other less-used letters are preserved, for example Manchester for "Manchester" (note how the 'm' and the 'c' are retained). The pronunciation of the /m/ in these instances is almost always /b/.

Vowels
There are six basic vowels in Boselenan.

Dipthongs
There are numerous phonetic dipthongs in Boselenan. Whenever a sequence of two vowels is encountered, the first vowel glides into the sound of the second.

=Orthography= There are two basic varieties of the Boselenan alphabet, the 'basic' and the 'extended' alphabets - whose names refer to whether or not the four Redundant Letters are included. There are three digraphs - 'ng', 'ts' and 'tš' which are usually considered seperate letters, and have their own names : 'eng', 'tse' and 'tše'. The letters with diacritics: 'ĕ', 'ğ' and 'š' are also treated as letters in their own right, and are collated seperately to their non-diacritic parent letters.

Different Alphabets
The basic alphabet is the most used alphabet, with the three digraphs 'ng', 'ts' and 'tš' treated as seperate letters, altough collated with 'n', 't' and 't' respectively, resulting in this 28-letter alphabet.

A B D E Ĕ F G Ğ H I J K L M N NG O P Q R S Š T TS TŠ U V Y

The extended alphabet is the same as the basic alphabet, with the addition of the four letters which are usually considered redundant in Boselenan.

A B C D E Ĕ F G Ğ H I J K L M N NG O P Q R S Š T TS TŠ U V W X Y Z

Redundant Letters
Boselenan does not productively use the letters 'c', 'w', 'x' or 'z', although they are placed in the 'extended' alphabet due to their use in some foreign place names. The status of 'x' is slightly different to the other three redundant letters, in that it used to be used in a handful of native words, representing the sound 'ks' in the prefix oxe which indicates a 'front' object - as in oxekelĕbĕ "front door", or oxeseleeb "seafront". However, the 'x' has since been replaced with just a plain 's', resulting with osekelĕbĕ and oseseleeb.

=Grammar=

Personal Pronouns
Personal pronouns are used to refer to human beings only, unlike in many european languages when they are used for animals or inanimate objects also.

Demonstrative Pronouns
Demonstrative pronouns are used to refer to non-human objects.

Interrogative Pronouns
Interrogative pronouns in Boselenan remain in situ, i.e. they do not go to the front of the sentence, as what often happens in English.

Reflexive Pronoun
Boselenan only employs one refexive pronoun: tetou, regardless of the person it refers to.


 * Tesĕvedan dĕ tetou - "I saw myself"

Number
There are two grammatical numbers, singular and plural. The plural marker is -i, which is added in various forms to the noun, depending on the ending of the noun itself.

The plural form is always used when there is more than one of the noun, regardless of whether or not a quantity is specifically notified.

If there is a specific quanitiy of the noun, the number is placed after the plural form of the noun. For example: keuba ta "one dog", keubai sei "two dogs".

Cases
The cases of Boselenan nouns are notified by suffixes. There are nine noun cases, which have fairly regular case suffixes.

Articles
Boselenan employs an 'absent' definite article. It uses an article for the indefinate only, so gelen can simply mean "name" or "the name" depending on the context. When a speaker wishes to use the indefinate article, the word for "one" ta is used.

See the following:
 * Koušindĕ tsĕ teolineova "I sat by (the) tree"
 * Koušindĕ tsĕ teolineova ta "I sat by a tree"

Descriptive Prefixes
Whereas suffixes are used to indicate number and case, prefixes alter the actual meaning of the word.

Word Order
Boselenan employs the use of a Verb-Subject-Object word order. So for example a speaker might say engisĕ keuba keubasou meaning "dog eat dog", literally "eat dog dog". The accusative case ending -sou is added to the object.

Adverbs are placed directly after the verb, and therefore usually just before the subject.

Though some languages alter their word order in questions, Boselenan does not, relying instead on intonation and interrogative words.

For example, the sentence Venĕdĕ sepelai dastiaiğ vidoviou can be dissected as the following:

So we can deduce that the sentence means "The teacher read the book".

Valency
Whereas in english, an intransitive verb requires a dummy pronoun, as in it rains, in Boselenan, this dummy pronoun is replaced by the suffix -spai. So dula "to rain" becomes dulaspai "it rains".

Tense and Aspect
There are three basic tenses that are employed in Boselenan verbs, the past, present and future, each of which is divided into a number of aspects, which are represented by the ending of the verb.

The following table shows the basic tense and aspect system of Boselenan, using the verb ampo 'to eat' as an example.

Adverbs
Adverbs are formed basically from adjectives, employing the use of a specific adverbial suffix, -lai, which changes the adjective to an adverb. So for example, the adjective gubĕ meaning "slow" can be changed to gubĕlai when referring to a verb, as in Lapašendĕ gubĕlai kĕ meaning "he walked slowly".

In parallel to the way adjectives follow the nouns they describe, adverbs follow the verbs they describe. Lapašendĕ gubĕlai kĕ literally means "walked slowly he".

They use the same system of comparatives as adjectives, using the suffix -kaš for the comparitive (i.e. "gubĕlaikaš" ("slowlier"), -tung for the absolute (i.e. "gubĕlaitung" ("very slowly") and -tešyš for the superlative (i.e. "gubĕlaitešyš" ("slowliest").

When using an adverb in a two-clause sentence, the verb da is used in place of "as", for example Lapašendĕ gubĕlai kĕ da tsesou "He walked as slowly as I (did)".

Adjectives
Adjectives come in four forms, the basic one which is used for describing nouns in the basic sense, as well as the comparative, absoloute and superlative, all of which are notified by the use of a suffix.

Dictionary
Bonako n. Monaco

Boritania n. Mauritania

deova ip. why?

dĕ p. he, she, it

di p. they

do p. this

engau p. it

faran v. to do

gang n. crash

gelen n. name

hoky n. pig

kelĕbĕ n. door

kešun ip. who?

keuba n. dog

kĕ p. you usage: used when referring to a single person

ki p. you usage: used when referring to a group of people

koušin v. to sit

osekelĕbĕ n. front door etym.: ose- "front" + kelĕbĕ "door"

oseseleb n. seafront etym.: ose- "front" + seleb "sea"

Robania n. Romania

sebendĕ n. when?

seti n. lamp

stau p. that

šeuvĕ ip. how? usage: used when referring to an emotion or a state, as in "how are you". See Also: vaung.

teolin n. tree

teparata v. to leave

tetou p. myself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, themselves usage: which one is used is represented by the use of a preceding pronoun.

teu ip. what?

toselĕ n. person

tsĕ p. I

tsi p. we

umpedĕ n. shoe

vaung ip. how? usage: used when referring to a method of doing something, as in "how do you pronounce this?"

vodiga n. window