Dama Diwan: Difference between revisions

|script        = [[Latin alphabet]]<br>*any script of the world<br>*the 10 digits 123456789.<br>*Dama Braille consisting of only 10 symbols.

It took me 5 days to learn all the '''Dama Diwan''' vocabulary. It can take a week, but once you know it, you have a treasure: the International Auxiliary Language, minimal but all efficient, artistic and perfectly logical, flexible syntax and permanent vocabulary yet with unlimited possibilities for creating new terms. It is not based on any human language. All the vocabulary comes from the sky, hence the name Dama (or tama) "of the sky" Dewan (or tiwan) "with the earth".  

If there is no question whether the adverb joins primarily to the previous or to the next, -a is taken to mean "of" or "in relation to" the word it marks, while -an is taken to mean "with" / "at" / "to" the word it marks.

Informal Dama can also lengthen (double or triple) the first or only vowel of a word in order to show enlargement, or the second vowel (that of the suffix in disyllabic words) to show a diminutive; if an "a" is lengthened in this way, there must be a separatiting mark (') after the first "a". E.g. ba'ako =a big body (bako), ta'aamo =the huge sky, muuko =a big volume, wiiiwo =huge water (ocean), raboo =small tree (rabo), taroo= a small animal, jutooo is a tiny piece of skin, and so on. Formal Dama uses no enlargement / diminutive devices unless adjectives as miwo (big) and sano (small).

Another feature of informal Dama is its possibility to omit a weak o / u of words, except in case of a possible confusion when a final o / u is preceded by nasal (n / m).

By the oriental style disyllabic words use open vowels in the first syllable and closed vowels in the suffix; by the western style, closed vowels are used in the stem and open ones in the suffixes of disyllabic words. E.g. “space, room” is “biro” (western style) or “beru” (oriental style). None of these is objectively better than the other, although the western style has prevailed in actual usage until now.

* simply personal taste: a user may prefer "tsawo" instead of "tawo" (sharp / acid / sour), just because the "tsawo" sounds more "acid" to his/her feeling.

It is strongly recommended that the dissylabic words have different stress / pitch / length / vowel openness (height) on their two syllables, or at least monosyllabic words should take as much time as disyllabic ones in pronunciation when not pronounced together with the previous word.

To pronounce Dama words together is not only permitted but also encouraged, for showing in speech how words group together (in writing this can be facilitated by hyphens and punctuation). The 6 monosyllabic words a, i, o, un, in, an can freely be enclitics or proclitics (joined in pronunciation with the previous or next word), but the 27 monosyllabic words starting with consonants and ending with vowels can be joined (as enclitics) to their preceding word only; it can be a bad habit (for possibly creating some confusion) to pronounce such monosyllabic words joint (as proclitics) to their following ones.  

Only the 16 letters a b d e g i j k m n o r s t u w (including the combinations ts and ds) may be used when writing Dama with the Latin alphabet. Palatal sounds (e.g. /c/, /ɟ/) should be considered phonetically same as velar (k/g), and not same as dentals (t/d). The sound /p/ should be avoided, at least by making it emphatic or ejective, and lateral sounds should not be accepted in Dama.

These limitation define the acoustic "flavor" and character of Dama, just like a Pythagorean or analogous musical scale that has limited positions so that everything played on it sounds pleasant and harmonious.

Dama has 3 vowel phonemes: a, i/e, u/o. It is also possible to use two allophones of "a" like Hungarian "a" and "á", for native speakers of such a language.

:(In Dama, the difference between i/e, u/o is not phonemic. J and W as phonemes are different, but Dama words only start with CONSONANTS (including j, w), and then there is always a vowel after each consonant with the exception of final n (which is better, but not compulsory, to be pronounced as ŋ). Therefore, 14102 can only be jajon or jajun, both correct in Dama; and the same happens with all other Dama words: they can be rendered totally correctly by the use of only the 10 digits, that is with a pad of only 10 digits plus a space key. The connection of the 10 digits to Latin letters is obvious, based on similarity of shape.)

and in https://crete.academia.edu/GiannhsKenanidhs/Dama-Diwan-Language, including the [https://www.academia.edu/12434367/theory_history explanation why] Dama is not really a language constructed by a person or people. Although Dama Diwan is a perfect language, human knowledge of it is still (2015) not perfect; We know that it is the ideal international auxiliary language because it has already been proven capable to create many good texts conveying successfully knowledge of any kind.