Constructed Language AYBAY CONLANG (ABCL)
“AyBay ConLang”, (abbreviated as ABCL) is a constructed language (conlang), developed and issued by Dr. Aydin Baykara in 2022. It is an a priori language, which means that the complete vocabulary has been created entirely new, starting from zero. ABCL is a conlang containing partly the features of philosophical and logical languages. It is less agglutinative, but fairly inflective and derivative too.
Living world languages are difficult to learn also because of many irregularities, ambiguities and of grammatical rules of differing complexity. Most of the conlangs aim to be easy learning international auxiliary language (IAL) by avoiding them. Accordingly such a conlang –to be easy and simple- should fulfil the following conditions:
- Introducing logical rules in grammar, which should be however as little as possible.
- High degree of unambiguity. It means that each word has exactly one grammatical interpretation. Their grammatical relation to each other should be in exactly defined.
- The words shall be classified in predefined, clearly distinguishable classes.
- Phonologically it should be avoided to define a different word by aspiration, shortening, lengthening, and stressing or accenting a phoneme, consonant or vowel.
- For the ease of utterance and fluency the diphthong and double consonants in a syllable shall be avoided.
- The words shall be as short as possible for short expressions and for saving printing paper.
ABCL is built up in two levels. The basic one (Level 1) is for normal use (about B2 level of CEFR) and the second level (Level 2) is for the full utilization of all aspects for higher purposes like printed papers and literature.
ABCL tries to achieve these goals by:
- Clearly defined syntax (SVO), fixed order of affixes, simple and reduced number of tenses, moods, aspects if compared with living languages.
- ABCL defines for Level 1 basic (root) words with one interpretation only. Other words with closer variable meaning will be expressed by addition of suitable adverbial or other particles. For Level 2 such words, if frequently used, may be defined as root word too.
- Words are created according to a certain scheme systematically as detailed below (Title: Vocabulary) Thus a learner can easily identify with this scheme which role a word in the sentence play (adverb, noun etc.) without knowing its meaning before. Except verbs (even after conjugation) and conjunctives/prepositions all words ends up on a vowel. This way (one vowel follow the other) it will not possible to merge two particles in one if somebody speaks too fast (inevitably he must stop before second vowel).
- This scheme avoids diphthongs and clusters in a syllable too, with three exemptions only (the modal prefixes, plural and antonym suffixes _i and _x)
- ABCL relies up on the Turkish alphabet and orthography and follows the principle "one letter per sound."
Another goal of ABCL is to use as less letters as possible for an expression compared with native languages. As for example, because the conjunctives, prepositions and pronouns are the most used words in many languages, we have created such words as two and three letters words. This way ABCL needs about half of the characters of English language to express the same content. That means, we could save half of the pages of a book written in English and so on.
Here are some guidelines for easy understanding of the following text: (where “C” indicates consonants and “V” vowels) The sign “*” attached to a “V”(V*) or “C”(C*) indicates that the vowels vary from “a” to “ü” and the consonants from “b” to “z” respectively. The sign “#” is a placeholder for a varying vowel or consonant. The point “.” between syllables of ABCL words is used to indicate an affix. It is just a demo to make the role of the suffixes clearer in this article. It will not be applied in normal usage of the language.
ORTHOGRAPHY
ABCL exploits eight vowels available in different languages, but without lengthening and lowering them. Besides the common vowels “a, e, i, o, u”, also “ö and ü” (from German and Turkish for example) and “ı” (ɯ- close back unrounded vowel, which is not common in ABC’s but in Turkish), will be utilized.
It is not difficult in pronunciation at all, even though it seems so for outsiders. Although it doesn’t exist in English ABC, it can be heard very often in daily talks, for example in vocabularies ending with “_tion” like “station”, which would be written in ABCL as “sıteyşın”. The first “ı” may not be distinguished (as in clusters “st”) but the second one is articulated also in English, lengthened and stressed. Even though ABCL abstains from using it in case of nouns, where we have huge possibility of the word creation without utilization of ”ı” (and others as the consonants “j” and “h” for example), in some cases however (like verbs and particles) they are needed for the creation of the sufficient numbers of the words.
Close/similar sounds of the vowel “e” (like a-umlaut in German) have been also dismissed.
ABCL uses 20 consonants, however only 18 will be utilized generally. These 18 include also the consonants “ç” and “ş” (English digraphs ch and sh). The “w” has been omitted for sounding very close to “v” and “q” close to “k”. The “j”, itself sounding as in the French word “je”, has been included for marking the questions and numerals.
Besides it will be necessary for the second level of ABCL, if there is a shortage in the creation of CV and VC type ‘two letters’ particles (adjectives, prepositions, pronouns) in Level 2.
The last questionable consonant used here seldom (e.g. for ordinal numbers), is “ğ” which sound like “gh” in “though” in English. “x” sounds same as in English and is used for negations only (at the end of the word it modifies). See next sheet for the complete table of the spelling pronunciation with other examples.
ALPHABET and PRONUNCIATION
| Letters | Examples in English | IPA | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| a | as in father | a | ||
| b | as in below | b | ||
| c | as in jungle, jar | ʤ | ||
| ç | as in CHair, CHallange | ʧ | ||
| d | as in dark | d | ||
| e | as in bed | e | ||
| f | as in food | f | ||
| g | as in dog, ago | g | ||
| ğ | as in thouGH | - | ||
| h | as in hallo, has | h | ||
| ı | as in opEN | ɯ | ||
| i | as in meet | i | ||
| j | as in measure | ʒ | ||
| k | as in cop | k | ||
| l | as in length | l, ʎ | ||
| m | as in measure | m | ||
| n | as in nice | n | ||
| o | as in pore | o | ||
| ö | as in sir | ø | ||
| p | as in piece | p | ||
| r | as in rice | r, ɹ | ||
| s | as in sick | s | ||
| ş | as in SHare, SHade | ʃ | ||
| t | as in tip | t | ||
| u | as in today | u | ||
| ü | as in jury, fUture | y | ||
| v | as in village, vertical | v | ||
| y | as in bay, yes | j | ||
| z | as in zero, zodiac | z | ||
| x | as in six | x |
ABCL does not rely on the exact pronunciation of the letters. Words are constructed such a way that it is not sensitive to the diversions such as aspect and accenting. But it is essential to stress the vowels in V, VC, CV, VCV, CVC formations and the second vowel in CVCCV and longer formations.
NOUNS of ABCL
BASIC/ROOT NOUNS
“Basic/root nouns” consist principally of five letters (CVCCV). There are however nouns derived from verbs, adjectives and other nouns having six-seven letters. They all end on a vowel same as the basic nouns. Adding the sixth and seventh letter was necessary to avoid ambiguities with the root nouns and the double vowels. The root nouns are classified in 15 noun groups, each of them heading a special area of use, such as “body”, “human”, “animals”, plants, “mental”, psychology-spirit”, social”, “daily home”, “health”, “pastime”, ”nature and environment”, “science”, “construction-technic-transport”, “time” and “others”. Each of them has its own special initial consonant. Considering “S” is being the mostly utilized initial consonant in many languages, we preferred it for the “heading” BODY and HUMAN, which are mostly mentioned in daily speaking.
This partly philosophical approach of word creation are not favoured by some critics, saying words differing by an end vowel (or consonant) only, could be mixed up easily. This may seem at first sight true but many world languages have many similar words which is not considered as a problem for them. Even so, the grouping and classification of words as done in ABCL have the big advantage of connotation for memorizing or remembering a word.
Nouns are created by the use of an Excel matrix; an example for the main topic “BODY” is shown below. For this heading, CVCCV is selected as S#N##, whereas S and N being basic consonants for the heading “BODY”. The subtopics are constructed by varying first vocal in lateral line of the matrix from “A” to “Ü” (also 8 vocals=8 columns) (here, for example, for subtitle “Head”, first varying vowel being “E”, first syllable is SEN and for the following subtitle “Upper Body”, it is SİN ). Now for each subheading having a fixed CVC (e.g. SEN), the fourth letter (consonant) will be kept, the fifth letter (a vowel) will be varied from “A” to “Ü” (“SEN”C#), building a block with 8 columns. ((In the matrix below, for the sake of vowel harmony (applied for the “Level 1” only) some columns (e.g. “sanbe, sınbi, sünbo..) haven’t been utilized.)) Vertically, at the each column of the matrix the fourth letter (a consonant) will be varied from “B” to “Z” (“SEN”C*”a”… 20 in total). This way for each subtopic 8×20=160 nouns could be created theoretically. For one heading (e.g. “BODY” with the corresponding fixed consonants “SAN”##, “SEN”## etc. as here) we could have 8×160=1280 nouns. Varying “N” in this scheme from “B” to “Z”, we will have 20×1280=25 600 nouns beginning with “S”. And for 20 initial consonants, we could have created 20×25 600=512 000 nouns with this matrix scheme.
We aim to utilize for the Level 1 about 5000 nouns only, so we can effort dropping combination with difficult pronunciations (for example with the letters “J” or “I” and for the sake of vowel harmony etc. Fully utilization of the matrix might be required for the medical and technical terms only, if any. The matrix scheme would also allow using of the computer programs for word creation and translation. The matrix allows further sub-subheading such as of the “Head”, the first column (S-ENe) indicating sense organs like eye, nose, ear (denoted as Sene: primary) and further columns right of them, the subparts of first noun at the beginning (denoted as “seconders”). For example: eye (senge) (first column), then in the same row; eyelid (sengi), eyelash (sengo), iris (sengö). Being Excel table, the matrix allows right click explanation for each cell, where we can put the meaning of a word in any language.
ABCL nouns of group S#N##* (BODY) (selected partially as example)
SEN: HEAD
| Sen#e: Primary | Sen#i: Secondary | Sen#o: Secondary..... |
|---|
| SEN#e | SEN#i | SEN#o | SEN#ö | SEN#ü | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| senbe | head | senbi | ... | senbo | ... | senbö | ... | senbü | ... | ||||
| sence | skull | senci | scalp | senco | ... | sencö | chin | sencü | cheekbone | ||||
| sençe | tooth | sençi | foretooth | senço | gum | sençö | canine tooth | sençü | grinder | ||||
| sende | mouth | sendi | lip | sendo | palate | sendö | poach | sendü | tongue | ||||
| senfe | nose | senfi | nostril | senfo | phlegm | senfö | nosal bone | senfü | sinus | ||||
| senge | eye | sengi | eye lid | sengo | eye lash | sengö | iris | sengü | pupil | ||||
| senhe | ear | senhi | earlobe | ... | senho | ... | senhö | middle ear | senhü | inner ear | |||
| ........... | |||||||||||||
| senne | ... | senni | ... | senno | ... | sennö | ... | sennü | ... | ||||
| ........... | |||||||||||||
| sense | eye brow | sensi | ... | senso | ... | sensö | ... | sensü | ... | ||||
| senze | face | senzi | forehead | senzo | ... | senzö | jaw | senzü | cheek |
Prosodics are generally not required. However to avoid the misunderstanding due to close sounds of some vocals the (especially second) syllables must be accentuated.
DERIVED NOUNS
Nouns will be derived from nouns, verbs and adjectives by adding suffixes according to a fixed scheme. They will typically end also on a vowel as the root nouns.
Deverbal Nouns
| ABCL Suffix | ABCL Suffix | Example: ABCL noun | English Suffix | Some English Nouns (Examples) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (Level 1) | (Level 2) | (incl. Level 2) | (only nouns in italic translated into ABCL) | ||||
| _şe | _şe | yin.şe, dek.şe | to (infinitive) | to run, to eat | |||
| _aya | _aya | kas.aya | _, _age, _ure | cut, bore, leakage, creature | |||
| _aya | _aya | çol.aya | _/t)ion | protrusion, indication, motion, division, organization, evaporation | |||
| _aya | _aya | her.aya | _ing | building, being, writing, dead, smell, piping | |||
| _aya | _aha | mes.aha | _ence | joy, fun, thought, excellence | |||
| _aya | _aha | hün.aha, tad.aha | _ment | employment, enjoyment, amazement, imprisonment, replacement | |||
| _aya | _ada | tüm.ada | _(t-,s-)ion | relaxation, attention, selection, evaporation, introduction | |||
| _ana | _ama | hün.ama | _er,_ent,_ory,_ak,_ier | employer, student, servant, baker, liar, governor, waitress, signatory, cashier, cleaner | |||
| _ana | _ana | vük.ana | _er | counter, cleaner, recorder, opener, obstacle, scale, viewer (for _scope: as microscope) | |||
| _aya | _aşa | dan.aşa | _ | dress/clothes(ing)/wear/garment | |||
| _asa | _asa | hün.asa | _ee | employee, refugee, trainee | |||
| _aça | _aça | vös.aça | _(e)ry | refinery, bakery, laundry, laboratory, dormitory | |||
| _aça | _aca | dir.aca | _ing, _tion | bedding, station (bus stop), aim/target, passage | |||
| _aka | _aka | yin.aka | _ing (gerund) | running, beginning, rejoicing |
According to the meaning they add to the derived nouns, English suffixes can be grouped in to e.g.: nomina acti, nomina actionis, nomina agentis (acting), nomina patientis (affected), noun loci (place); result/product of act for real and abstract objects, result as process etc. These groups are shown in the second column (Level 2) of the above table.
One can see in the table that there is not a different noun created from the same verbal root by different suffix groups "aya, aha, ada" and "aşa". Even it seems sometimes so as for "expectance via expectancy", the meaning remains almost the same. It means, we can use one suffix only instead of those three. (Seemingly different meanings by different suffixes arises by the root verb, not by the suffix, accordingly no need for such suffix diversity.)
So, in ABCL for the Level 1 we will lessen the suffixes of mentioned group to one suffix "aya" only. Suffixes "ama" and "ana" will be merged to "ana" indicating the subject of the act (independently person or thing) only. Passive subject suffix "asa" remains as it is. Third merged suffix is "aça" including also "aca" which denotes the place. Fourth is "aka", stand for "-ing" and some "-tion" suffixes naming the action itself by the name.
Thus ABCL has finally five derivational suffixes for deverbal nouns as shown in first column. The suffixes of the second column at the table above may be used however for the Level 2 if needed.(Shortened in the lists above and below; complete lists of this group can be seen at my URL: http://aydinbaykara.com)
With the help of those five suffixes and assumed two thousand suitable verbs, it would be possible to create 10 000 new nouns for Level 1 only.
Denominal Nouns
| ABCL Suffix L1 | ABCL Suffix L2 | Examp.: ABCL noun L2 | English Suffix | Some English Nouns (Examples) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| _da(abstr.nouns) | _da | salya.da | _hood,_ness,_ity | motherhood, friendship, military, kingdom | ||
| _da | _ha | senge.ha | spectacles, woodshed, cucumber, Spielzeug(German) | |||
| _da | _ya | salya.ya | -y/-n/-en/-on,-ling,-ette | mummy, doggy, chicken, kitten, maiden, darling, diskette | ||
| _na(people-group) | _ma | pesçe.ma | -ian/-er/-man/-ist | politician, librarian, musician, porter, fireman, artist, dentist, racist, Buddhist, atheist | ||
| _na | _sa | Türkiye.sa | -ish/-ian/-an/-er/-se | Turkish, Algerian, Roman, Chinese (citizen of that country) | ||
| _na | _na | paskö.na | _ish,_ien,_an,(e)r | citizen, villager, republican, English, German (folk) | ||
| _ta(branch-area) | _ta | banya.ta | _logy,_nomy,_graphy | biology, psychology, astronomy, stenography, geography, photography | ||
| - | country name | as in the original language, not in English | ||||
| -meter | thermometer (Suffix replaced by compound words such as "heat gauge") |
For the similar consideration as the deverbal noun derivation above, ABCL will have the suffix "da" for the suffixes of the Level 2 (L2)"da, ha, ya"; the suffix "na" for "na, ma, sa, ra"(all human related) and "ta" for scientific nouns.
Even if rarely, it is possible that one Level 1 suffix covers two nouns with differing meaning (In the table above "motherhood" and "mummy" are both derived from "mother". With one Level 1 (L1) suffix "da" only, we would have an ambiguity. Therefore we need here to go back to Level 2, where we have two different suffixes ("da" and "ya").
If a noun very frequently used, we defined beside derived one also a root noun for it directly in ABCL as e.g. above pesçe.ma (=pesce). Derivation rules, once memorized, can be applied for new cases also but the word will be longer, other way we have to learn the new noun additionally to derived one, which we consider adequate for the Level 2 only.
Noun Derived from Adjective
| ABCL Suffix | Examp.: ABCL noun | English Suffix | Some English Nouns (Examples) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| _ka | heha.ka | -y | pinky | |
| _ka;(x)_ka | ebi.ka, ebix.ka | - | beauty, ugliness | |
| _ka | açü.ka, abax.ka | _dom,_hood | freedom, boredom, falsehood | |
| _ka | ehi.ka, atü.ka | _th, _(en)ce | depth, strength, prominence, absence | |
| (x)_ka | avax.ka | _ness | sadness, kindness, darkness, business | |
| _ka | silbi.to.ka | _(al)ity,_ty,_y | sexuality, normality, formality, loyalty, jealousy, victory | |
| (x)_ka | göd.amox.ka(*) | _cy | vacancy, fluency, frequency | |
| (x)_ka | avax.ka | _ness | sadness, kindness, darkness, business | |
| _vunye | şı.vunye, ki.vunye | _gon | polygon, pentagon |
(*)Nouns will not be derived from deverbal adjectives but directly from verbs, so it will be “göd.ayax”
Noun Derived from Adverb
| __sı/si | oye.si | -side | outside |
Compound/Combined Noun Derivations
| adjective.verb | edu.çeni | telephone |
| adjective.verb | edu.biyi | television |
| adjective.verb | edu. bayı | telescope |
| adjective.verb | edux.bayı | microscope |
| adjective.noun | eme vondi | lens/magnifier |
| verb.noun | ene.n. vondi | magnifying glass |
| adjective.noun | şo.bangı | something |