Yama-pali-auk
page is under construction!! avert your eyes!!
welcome to the page for yama-pali-auk! this language was created by me, katherine "kaw57" awesome, on 2023 dec 20 at 19:24 utc-6:00 and is actively being worked on by me to this day. i don't remember why i originally created it, but i am currently planning to use it as either the common tongue in my conworld or the ancestor to all the catwoman languages. more about them at some point in the future, maybe. keep your eyes peeled!
phonology/orthography
yama-pali-auk has 6 consonants, 4 vowels, and 2 consovowels. for simplicity's sake, i will put all of the phonemes in one table.
| labial | coronal | back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| sonorant | m | n | l |
| obstruent | p | t | k |
| consovowel | i~j | u~w | |
| mid | e | o | |
| low | a | au |
the consovowels are treated as consonants in the onset and vowels in the nucleus, and should be treated as such. of course, as an imperfect human, there is great variation in how i pronounce these phonemes. i have designed the allophony to account for this.
/n/ can be rendered as [ŋ] preceding /k/ ; /l/ is often [ɫ] ; /p/, /t/, and /k/ are usually fricated in the coda position, becoming [f], [s~θ], and [x~h~ç] respectively ; /i/ may also be [ɪ] at times ; /u/ may be [ʊ], and /w/ may be [v~ʋ] ; /e/ is often [ɛ] ; /o/ can be [ɔ] ; /a/ is likely the most explicitly varied vowel here, with a range of [ɑ~æ~ɐ~ə] ; and /au/ is actually [au̯~aʊ̯]. there is doubtlessly a lot more allophony going on than i've documented, but i'm not a professional and separately don't enjoy listening to clips of my voice repeatedly to figure out exactly what sound i'm producing.
most phonemes are romanized as their ipa representation. /i~j/ and /u~w/ can be represented as ⟨ i / j / y ⟩ and ⟨ u / w / v ⟩ respectively and in free variation.
yama-pali-auk also has a script. that will be covered in its own section, as there are several fine details as to how it works.
punctuation
this part is why i don't like using the romanization. some of the common characters are hard to type, and it looks bad with the latin script.
| symbol | meaning | symbol | meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| ⁎ | start of paragraph | : | start of quote / clarification / list |
| · | end of word; space | " | mid-quote space |
| > | end of clause | ‿ | mid-clarification space |
| | | end of sentence | , | mid-list space |
| ? | end of question | - | first-order compound |
| ⸮ | end of joke | = | second-order compound |
| ! | end of ecstatic statement | etc. | theoretically, this list is infinite |
higher-order compounds are formed by stacking more dashes on top of each other. coumpounds are explained in the grammar section. in writing, «⸮» is given a stroke to differentiate it from «?».
writing
as mentioned earlier, yama-pali-auk has its own script. these images describe the ultra-basics.
when not being used as numbers, the symbols stack together in syllables. blank positions are filled using the filler character. when the filler character is alone, it marks the start of a name, similar to a capital letter. unlike capital letters, this only occurs at the start of names.
if the nucleus of a syllable uses the filler character, it is likely being used as a mathematical variable. that's actually a legacy feature from back when i kept a journal for my random thoughts. now i can share them with other people so this feature is obsolete, but cool. however, a fully blank syllable is used as a general "bad word". think your fucks or shits. it, by definition, cannot be romanized or pronounced, but it can be written, which the language is meant to be.
a fun cosmetic feature is that you can write in any direction you want, provided you mirror/rotate the glyphs accordingly and indicate a change in direction with an arrow. if no arrow is present, assume the previous line's reading direction. if there is no arrow or previous line, assume left-to-right.
grammar
yama-pali-auk has mostly free word order, the only requirement being that the subject is somewhere before the object. this is due to the lack of a subject or object marker. the verb, however, is clear, as it is marked for tense. [SECTION INCOMPLETE FUTURE KATH FIX THIS]