Tunialuka

English•

* this page is currently undergoing a LOTTA changes*

Classification
Tunialuka is an IAL (International Auxiliary Language) with a mostly isolating grammar (thought there are affixes and word combination, each part remains unchanged). It's phonology is extremely simple. Words originate mainly from the world's five most spoken languages: Chinese (Mandarin), English, Spanish, Hindi and Arabic.

It is an a posteriori isolating SVO language.

Phonology
Tunialuka uses 16 letters of the basic Latin alphabet.

Writing System
Their names are a, ce, e, fe, he, i, ke, le, me, ne, o, pe, se, te, u, xe.

Stress
Stress falls on the first vowel of a root. When a word is a combination of roots, stress is kept for each root, but the main strass falls on the last root of the combination.
 * tunia
 * luka

Phonotactics
Tunialuka is a CV language. No consonant is allowed at the end of syllables and thus, words.

Onset:

 * c, f, h, k, l, m, n, p, s, t, x, -

Nucleus:

 * a, e, i, o, u

Diphthongs
Diphthongs are not phonemic in Bumiluga. The letters i and u might be pronounced as the nucleus of their own syllables, palatalizing/labializing the previous consonant, or forming a diphthong with another vowel. When u and i are the first vowel in a root, thay can't form diphthongs.

Pronouns
Plural pronouns are created adding -me.

The impersonal pronoun
The impersonal pronoun "hito" is in fact the word "person", and according to context it can be used like the English pronoun "one", although English also used "you" and "they" sometimes instead of "one". This pronoun represents an unimportant or generalized person.
 * len pixu manca si len taka haia = one has to eat if one wants to live (generalized person)
 * len sel pan en pelasa = they sell bread in the square (unimportant person)

The reflexive pronoun
Bumlan has the reflexive pronoun "se" which can be used as the reflexive pronoun for all other grammatical persons (not just 3rd person as in some languages). These are its uses:

To make the sentence reflexive for any subject (not mandatory): To specify or emphasize who is the owner of something:
 * mi limpia se = I wash/bath myself
 * ni hēl si cī = You feed yourself
 * māw sī si = The cat sees itself
 * tā sī si te dōm = He saw his own house
 * wo ày si te mèy = I love my sister

The dummy pronoun
The dummy pronoun "ti", also known as expletive or pleonastic pronoun, is a pronoun that carries no meaning, instead it is used as a placeholder when the grammar requires a pronoun but a verb or expression does not. In English the pronoun "it" and the word "there" are sometimes used as dummy pronouns in sentences such as "it rains", "it appears that ...", "there is bread", etc. Let's see its different used in Bumlan:

The verb takes no argument, it carries all the meaning by itself: The verb takes arguments but requires a dummy pronoun (appears, seems, turns out, happens): The argument is a phrase that is displaced syntactically:
 * ti plú = it rains
 * ti him = it snows
 * ti tēm = it is time
 * ti sím ni kān cī twō = it looks like you ate a lot
 * ti sùl tā rē dór = it turns out they were sleeping
 * ti kur wo nō kàn dú só = it happens that I can't do it
 * ti sòn an rē ay àw = it sounds like there are animals outside
 * ti bén ni dú dà = it's good that you did that (that you did that is good)
 * ti twō mey kúr wa = it is very beautiful to run (running is very beautiful)