Br'ga

Location & Origin

Br'ga is spoken on an island about midway between Sri Lanka and Madagascar. The language has phonetic and grammatical features found in both African and Indic languages, though it appears to be an isolate. There are, however, very many loan words from various trade languages — some estimates place the portion of borrowed lexicon at between ⅓ and ½ of the attested roots. However, in everyday speech, this group of roots makes up well over ¾ of the common lexicon. Borrowings come from English, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Sanskrit, Hindi, Pali, Arabic, and Swahili at the very least, with many "second generation" loans of words that were loaned into those languages from around the world.

Phonology

The phonology is shown below using the Latin mode. There are a Devanagari-derived mode, and an Arabic mode, and an attempt is being made to create a featural alphabet that draws graphically from all of them.

Consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Voiced Stops	b	d	ḍ	j	g
Voiceless Stops	p	t	ṭ	c	k
Aspirated Stops	ph	th	ṭh	ch	kh
Implosive Stops	bh	dh	ḍh	jh	gh	qh
Nasals	m	n	ṇ	ñ	ṅ
Plain Affricates		ts	ṭṣ	cç	kx
Plain Fricatives		s	ṣ	ç	x		h
Voiced Fricative							ḥ
Lateral Affricate		tlh
Lateral Fricative		lh
Trills	br	dr			gr
Plain Click		q
Nasalized Click		nq
Lateralized Click		lq
Rhotic Approximants		r	ṛ
Liquids	w			y	ħ
Lateral		l

Note: The implosive stops are voiced glottalic implosives, except qh, which is voiceless.

Note: Affricates and fricatives are unmarked for voicing (except h / ḥ), but the "target" pronunciation is voiceless.

Vowels

Written	IPA
a	ɑ
e	e
ê	ɛ
i	ɪ
u	ʊ
ü	ʏ
'	ə

Phonotactics

Syllable sequence in root words is strictly CV. Word structure is (V)?(CV)+(C)? Single-phoneme particles / glue-word proclitics may be any non-obstuent, or any click. For instance, the noun class for languages is q-, thus q-Br'ga or q-Iṅ'laṃ (vs al-Br'ga and al-Iṅ'laṃ for Br'ga Island and England respectively). The full set of adpositional and noun class proclitics will be covered below.

Final Nasalization

In words ending with a vowel, that vowel may be nasalized by placing the letter ṃ after it, and this nasalization (and its mark) persist in compound words.

The most common place that this marking is found is in heṃ and naheṃ the positive and negavite copulas.

Grammar

Copulas

There are in fact many prefixed versions of heṃ with many different desiderative, optative, dubitative, meanings.

Form	General meaning
heṃ	Yes / is
naheṃ	No / isn't
jiheṃ	Doubt
küheṃ	Want
ḥeheṃ	"Yesno?"

Vocabulary

Noun Prefixes

Prefix	Meaning
ç	danger
lu	aquatic life
q	language
al	country
biṃ	female