30000 BC

This proto-lang will be made in the equivalent of 30,000 BCE. This constitutes the Upper Paleolithic.

It will be for an alien species which is (what a coincidence) biologically very similar to humans, but is probably different in some way. Maybe their hands are made differently or they can climb trees a bit better, or maybe their mouths are even shaped slightly differently.

But their linguistic capabilities are slightly different as well, which I hope will cause some changes.

What words?

Vowels
/a/ - most variable sound; [a] or [ə] before bilabial and alveolar sounds, [ɑ] elsewhere, usually [a]~[]

/e/ - [ɛ]~[e], can degrade to [ə] in fast speech

/i/ - [i]; similar to [j] in intensity when alone

/u/ - mostly distinguished from /a/ by closeness of the lips; always a back vowel; most similar, at its core, to the Japanese u

a only counts as a back vowel if it is alone or before u. Otherwise, it is neutral in the sense that it doesn't change consonants as if it's a back vowel.

There are 8 acceptable diphthongs: /ae/ [aɛ], /ai/[əi], /au/[ɑu], /ei/[ei], /eu/[o], /ie/[ie], /ua/[u], and /ue/[ue]. No more than two vowels can occur in a row.

Consonants
/b/ - bilabial plosive;

/m/ - bilabial nasal;

/d/ - alveolar ; inches closer to the front of the mouth before /e/ and /i/ and diphthongs and closer to the back before back vowels

/s/ - alveolar fricative; partially voiced and palatalized before /e/ or /i/

/n/ - alveolar nasal; follows the same rules as /d/

/l/ - alveolar lateral; is an affricate before back vowels and an approximant elsewhere

/g/ - velar stop; is palatalized before /e/ and /i/

/h/ - back fricative; palatal fricative before /e/ and /i/, while is uvular/glottal fricative before back vowels

Words
aenalabe - to see

aene - to be an eyeball

aihi - to make noise

ahuedi - (to be) nature or god

aliebu - to be many

aliehie - (to be) beautiful

aniedu - to flee

asiena - mysterious, new

asae - to cut

aseu - wind

asue - to die which is bad

auguma - (to be) a large herbivore, to be eaten, to be edible

bae - (to be) fruit

bau - (to be) (a) bone

biema - to be similar to another thing

budumua - to lightning and/or thunder, to shake, to make the ground electric, to arrive or come nearer (of the mythical monster)

bueda - (to be) the color of the sky right now

buha - to do, make, or speak of something

dage - to be done, to be made, to be a theoretical thing spoken of

dude - (to be) a carnivore/killer which is undesirable

edugu - (to be) a home, where someone lives generally

eida - (to be) day, the sun

elahi - (to be) a bird in the sky

elali - (to be) the earth, its creator, its bounty

emabe - stone

enaule - flatland, plain

esiba - to be affected by something

eugabi - an animal which isn't fit to be eaten due to moral circumstances

gigu - to listen and/or learn

gu - rain, (of rain) to fall, to attack ineffectively but relentlessly

ibi - to be the speaker

idule - to be similar

igu - to be the listener/audience

ihaedi - to sit

imau - to be at a specific place

inaeba - to charge forward

inihi - to stop

labe - to have fun with something
 * adverb: indicates that the following happens after the previous thing stops

laela - (to be) grass

mau - sad sound

nasi - (to be) a human

naude - (to be) a herbivore which is undesirable

nausu - (to be) a bird on the ground

nese - to be caught, to be obtained; used to create object for theoretical verbs

sase - specific knife used to cut things open most cleanly, to cut

sigi - (to be) jutting up and down, such as mountains

sima - sneakily stalk

sidi - indicates that the previous word is false

uba - walk brashly

ude - to die which is good

uedau - to be wise

uge - (animal) to be dangerous in an admirable way, (human) to be renowned

ulali - to be happy, to be bright, to be near something which is good

ugebe - club to break things; to smash

ugeuba - to walk (like) an animal, with grace

ulaehu - (to be like a) flower

umau - be approached (by something else which was walking)

umi - (to be) a cloud

usisu - to whisper

Compound Words in General (with b- for clarity)
bisigi benaule - a jocular word for their mountain home, which is like a flatland to them

buge beugabi - used to specify an exalted animal buge banasi - used to specify an exalted human

Grammar
Basic Sentence Structure

These are prefixes which attach to the beginning of the word and signify connected things. They generally go in this order, from first to last:
 * b-
 * m-
 * d-
 * n-
 * g-
 * h-

When the predicate comes before a consonant, a vowel goes between the two consonants. This vowel is the

Predicates which refer to the same thing have the same prefix.

Simple sentences can be represented in English by making the second word a verb. However, this is not actually a change in the word. Generally, the word in the front is written as a noun in the transcription, though it is not different from a verb in practice.
 * Bauguma bimau bapau.
 * SUBJ1-eaten.animal SUBJ1-be.at.place SUBJ1-be.bone
 * The animal which could have been eaten is now at a specific place and is now a skeleton.
 * Bapau bimau baugama.
 * SUBJ1-be.bone SUBJ1-eaten.animal SUBJ1-be.at.place
 * The skeleton of an animal is over there.

The slightly more complex transitive sentences have a setup where two words with different prefixes are next to one another, and they interact in such a way that the first one is implied to be related to the other.


 * Buge bisima mumau mibi.
 * SUBJ1-be.exalted SUBJ1-sneakily.stalk SUBJ2-be.approached SUBJ2-be.speaker
 * The exalted one sneakily stalks me.

Generally, mumau is used for the objects of verbs involving the subject's physical motion towards something. However, this is not necessary.


 * Buge bisima mesiba mibi.
 * The exalted one sneakily stalks and it affects me in some way.

Reduplication


 * Reduplication of the first syllable implies an iterative nature.
 * Reduplication of the last two syllables implies a habitual/gnomic nature.
 * In reduplication, /i/ after /u/ becomes /e/; igigu -> igigu{igu} -> igiguegu

Sentences
Bisima buge mumau mibi. - The one who stalks is exalted and comes near me.

Bisima buge mesiba mibi. - The one who sneaks is exalted, which affects me somehow.

Story
Bauguma binaeba (mesiba) masue manasi.

The herbivore charges and kills one person.

Banasi baliebu bubuha mesiba meugabi.

Many people talk about the disgraced animal*.

(They have to find the animal. Then the story continues.)

Baliebu bugu mesiba meugabi balaliebu mesiba maniedu.

The crowd attacks the animal, albeit ineffectively, but the sheer number of attacks affects it, and it flees.

(When they find the animal, they go to kill it, but lightning strikes. This shows that the animal was not meant to be eaten, and they show it the way out of the fire. Then its children become more friendly.)

*The animal is bad, and so it cannot be eaten because it has done evil and has killed for a reason other than eating. Therefore, it is referred to as an eugabi.

Culture
Names come from the baby's first babbling; they can have phonemes and phonotactic structures which don't appear in the language, like consonant clusters or syllable-final sounds.

These