Tahnish

General information
Beiya is the language of a fantasy race, the Ba'eiya, I am creating for a potential novel. The Ba'eiya are an elvish-like race, but are in fact an older race then the other three elvish races I have in my world. They are traditionally from the desert, but as the world currently stands at a post globalizationish type phase, they are spread throughout the world. They culture is highly based on loyalty to family, clan, village, race, etc. and that feature will likely affect the development of the language.

Another important feature is that the Ba'eiya only have 6 fingers (3 on each hand). As a result, there numbering system is in fact base-6.

Beiya is heavily influenced by French, particularly in its grammar, however it is intended to have more of an exotic feel to it characteristic of other elvish-like languages. This is largely accomplished through the phonology of Beiya. Thus, while words may resemble their French counterparts, they may be pronounced slightly or greatly different.

(I will be taking a introduction to linguistics course this semester, and so hopefully I will develop a better understanding of the terminology involved so I can structure this language better. I thought that this would be a good project to be working on at the same time as that class)

Phonology
(this section will continued to be updated as I develop my language.)

Vowel Pairing
There are two main ways that vowels can be 'paired'. If a vowel directly follows another vowel, the word is pronounced by sliding between them. A good example of this is the name of the language itself: Beiya. Both the e and the i are pronounced but are also part of the same syllable -- [bǝ e-ja]. This also happens to be an example of approaching the sound, largely due to the vowel slide.


 * the vowel u (ɘ ) never slides to the vowel e (ǝ ). Thus if a word has ue in it, it is always the sound  ʉ.


 * the vowel a (a) can slide to e (ǝ ). To avoid confusion with ae (ɛ ), the slide will be notated as 'a-e'. In the actual alphabet, this will be easily recognizeable as the a, the e, and the ae will all have unique characters.

The second way vowels can follow each other is a vowel stop. If the vowels are separated by an apostrophe, then both vowels are each completely pronounced, forcing a syllable break. For instance, in Ba'eiya, the a is pronounced followed by a new syllable with the e-a slide.

Only two vowels can be used in a pairing, thus a word like ba'e'o... is impossible as well as beio... However, a stop pairing can proceed to a slide pairing because it treats the slide as a single vowel. (ba'eiya) This is not valid in reverse, though (bei'a...)

A word cannot end with a paired vowel. This is obvious in the previously used example as the paired vowels are followed by another syllable. A word cannot begin with a slide vowel pair. It can, however, begin with a stop pair, but this is typically only seen when a prefix is added to a word.

Syllables
The shortest possible syllable is a single vowel. This is typic all only in the case of prefixes or suffixes, however. The typical syllable is constructed as follows:

(C)-V-(SV^)-(C)

^Slide Vowel

The largest possible syllable is this:

C-C-V-SV-C-C

Other Pronouns
^ Direct and Indirect object pronouns are identical

^^ Masculine/Feminine/Plural

It should be noted that while 'jes' is technically a plural pronoun, it is treated as a singular pronoun. 'Jes' is also used for constructions that take an impersonal pronoun similar to the French 'on'. Likewise, 'vue', technically singular, is treated as a plural pronoun. This also is noticeable when verbs are conjugated in these forms.

Structure
[Tense/Mood]-[Root]-[Person/Number]-[Aspect]

Types
Regular Beiyan verbs are divided into three categories:

[Root]-[er] verbs are typically associated with physical action. (to move, to walk, to swim, etc.)

[Root]-[ir] verbs are typically associated with mental action. (to think, to believe, to count, etc.)

[Root]-[ul] verbs are typically associated with passivity. (to be, to have, to wait, etc. )

Irregular verbs typically do not fall into these categories or they fall into multiple categories. For instance, to make/do (equivalent of the french 'faire') is irregular because while it seems to imply activity, there is little specificity as to what action is taking place. For instance, it could be used to say 'to do nothing' or 'to make an assumption'.

Conjugation
Person/Number:

Aspect:

Tense/Mood:

Example:

buejer = to move

(if we could) we would have been moving = past conditional continuous + jes/nues(unknown without context)

jes aesbuejan

nues aesbuejosan

nombrir = to count

Start counting! (singular > tue) = present imperative inceptive

Tinombrisa!

Numbering System
As mentioned in the General Info section, the Ba'eiyans use a base-6 numbering system.

They have unique symbols for each of the values 0-5 as well as a symbol for 6 that is typically only used for describing a position (the 6's, the 36's, etc.)

Numbers are structured in sets of three seprated by an apostrophe. ( ###'###

).

The first six positions are as follows: 7776 1296 216 ' 36 6 1

I will add the symbols eventually, but for now, these are the words. Numbers in the six position ( # # ) take the suffix -[era]. The exception is 'carat'. While at one time it a 4 in the six position would be said 'caratera', it is now shortened to 'carera'.

Numbers in the thirty-six position ( # ## ), take the suffix -[esa]. The same rule applies to 'carat' as for the -[era] suffix.

At the apostrophe, you say 'elaer' and the digits to the left of it take the same suffixes as the first block.

For instance the number 103'041 (8449) would be written like this: uenesa tor elaer carera uen

Vocabulary
http://valisor.wikia.com/wiki/Beiya_Vocabulary