User:Nicomega/Kareyku

Kareyku is a case-heavy language with 11 cases and 6 evidentials. Here I was trying a new concept using more evidentials than verb-heavy morphology and being influenced from Japanese and Quechua, among others. It also uses some particles not unlike Chinese. Mostly the idea was to create a language where a lot of meaning could be conveyed as shortly as possible and using suffixes that convey a who-to-who relationship rather than personal suffixes.

Sample:

qappakas pilelcha

Of course I'm eating fish!

Introduction

Kareyku is a language that was long due. While I was working on some college exams I came across a very old paper with, what it seemed to be, notes on a language I had apparently abandoned. When I started looking at it I realized immediately that it was a very old jotting and that it had been discarded long ago, but as time had passed I decided I could give this language a better finale.

The notes were very inconsistent and even contradictory at times, with few examples jotted down with no translation which cannot be understood now. I tried to take as much of the original flavors of the language as I could and structure it, while giving sense and meaning to the sentences. What resulted is Kareyku.

Many years of reading about this language and that language gave me plenty of ideas I didn't have at the time I discarded it. Mostly this language consists of these new ideas rather than the original which is scarce and impossible to decipher, but not very developed.

Phonology

Kareyku uses a five vowel system similar to Latin. These are the Kareyku consonants:

Stops: p, t, k, b, d, g Palatal: ch /tʃ/, j /d͡ʒ/ Fricative:s, sh /ʃ/, h /x/ Nasals: n, m Laterals: l Liquid: r /ɾ/ Uvular: q /q͡χ/ Semi-consonants: w /w/, y /j/

These are all the sounds in Kareyku. The diphthongs being: ay, ey, oy, au, eu, ou.

An accent is used to mark where a particular word should be stressed when it is not in the second to last syllable.

Grammar

Kareyku doesn't use pronominal affixes per se. Although it does have independent pronouns the verb is inflected with what are called "transitions". The transitions indicate the "who to whom" character of the verb. There are 3 main transitions:

From 1st person to someone else From 2nd person to someone else From 3rd person to someone else

In the last two cases independent pronouns are provided to avoid confusion when needed. The logic for Kareyku speakers behind this is that you can only know your intentions. When someone has a present only the giver can know if you are going to give the present to me or to him, hence, the most complete transitions are from the first person, the one I'm sure.

Transition 1 is expressed by infix -ka Transition 2 is expressed by infix -da Transition 3 is expressed by infix -ta

This transitions are only for the Present tense. Kareyku doesn't use a negative particle, there are two different conjugations, positive and negative, for each tense. The negatives being:

Transition 1 is expressed by infix -ke Transition 2 is expressed by infix -de Transition 3 is expressed by infix -te

So, if you have the verb qappa 'to eat', qappaka means 'I eat (it)'. If you use pilé meaning 'fish' then you get qappaka pilé 'I eat fish' and the negative would be qappake pilé 'I don't eat fish'. The transitions are needed even when there is a subject present, and intransitive verbs take a transition as a subject but regardless the object. Thus, qappaka, can mean 'I eat (it)' as well as 'I am eating'.