Brooding
Introduction
Brooding is a language spoken in the land of Harken. You can't get there from here!
Sounds
Consonants
| b | /b/ | as in 'bee' |
| p | /p/ | as in 'pea' |
| d | /d/ | as in 'deed' |
| t | /t/ | as in 'tea' |
| g | /g/ | as in 'get' |
| k | /k/ | as in 'key' |
| f | /f/ | as in 'fee' |
| th | /θ/ | as in 'thin' |
| s | /s/ | as in 'see' |
| z | /z/ | as in 'zed' |
| sh | /ʃ/ | as in 'she' |
| kh | /x/ | as ch in German 'Bach' |
| h | /h/ | as in 'he' |
| ch | /t͡ʃ/ | as in 'cheek' |
| m | /m/ | as in 'me' |
| n | /n/ | as in 'need' |
| ng | /ŋ/ | as in 'ring' |
| l | /l/ | as in 'leaf' |
| r | /ɹ/ | as in 'reed' |
| w | /w/ | as in 'we' |
| y | /j/ | as in 'yea' |
- All but kh are pretty much pronounced as in standard English
- th is always pronounced as the 'th' in thin (/θ/), never as the 'th' in thee or they (/ð/)
- l always pronounced like the 'l' in leaf (/l/), never like the 'll' in all or ball (/ɫ/)
- g is always pronounces like the 'g' in get (/ɡ/), never like the 'g' in 'gee' (d͡ʒ)
Consonant Blends and Clusters
Several of the sounds have a 'blended' version. A consonant blend is two consonants in a row pronounced one after the other. Most of these blends only appear at the beginning of syllables. While these blends are represented by a single letter in Brooding orthography, they are two consonant sounds (and this subject to Brooding word structure rules that apply to two consonants in a row).
| br | /bɹ/ | as in 'bread' |
| pl | /pl/ | as in 'plea' |
| dr | /dɹ/ | as in 'drum' |
| tl | /tl/ | not an English sound. t followed immediately by l |
| gr | /gɹ/ | as in 'grow' |
| kl | /kl/ | as cl in 'clean' |
| fl | /fl/ | as in 'flee' |
| thl | /θl/ | not an English sound. It sounds a lot like sl as said with a lisp. |
| sl | /sl/ | as in 'sleep' |
| zr | /zɹ/ | not an English sound. z followed immediately by r |
| shl | /ʃl/ | as schl in 'schlep' |
| khl | /xl/ | not an English sound. x followed immediately by l |
| hl | /hl/ | not an English sound. h followed immediately by l |
| sk | /sk/ | as in 'skill' |
| sp | /sp/ | as in 'spill' |
| st | /st/ | as in 'still' |
- As noted above a few of the blends do not occur in English. They take a little practice to say, but aren't hard. Avoid putting a sound between the sounds - English speakers might have a tendency to insert a vowel in there (like some people pronounce sphere as 'suh-fear')
Vowels
| a | /ɑ/ | as a in 'father' |
| aa | /æ/ | as a in 'bat' |
| ae | /e/ | as ay in 'bay' |
| ai | /aɪ̯/ | as ie in 'bit' |
| au | /aʊ̯/ | as ow in 'cow' |
| aw | /ɔ/ | as ou in 'bought' |
| e | /ɛ/ | as e in 'bet' |
| ee | /i/ | as ee in 'bee' |
| i | /ɪ/ | as i in 'bit' |
| o | /o/ | as oa in 'boat' |
| oo | /u/ | as oo in 'boot' |
| uh | /ə/ | as u in 'but' |
Contrasting Vowels
Brooding has a concept of contrasting vowels. These are pairs of vowels that are used in various grammatical operations. Some processes require you to take a vowel from a word and change it to its contrasting vowel. For example, if the vowel is 'oo', it changes to 'o'. If it is 'o', it changes to 'oo'.
Here are the pairs of contrasting vowels:
| oo | / | o |
| ee | / | i |
| ae | / | e |
| aa | / | a |
| aw | / | uh |
| ai | / | au |
General Structure
Languages can be classified (at the extremes) as either synthetic or isolating. Synthetic languages are those languages where much of the sentence and grammar is built into larger words. The extreme are Amerind languages where a single word translates as "I went down to the stream to catch a fish and cook it for dinner". The other end is languages where grammar is based on word order with lots of little words - Chinese is much like this. Most languages are in between (English is more isolating than Spanish, Latin is more synthetic than Spanish, etc). Brooding falls in the middle with some of the core grammar built into words, but in other places, word order is important.
The basic order of a Brooding sentence is Subject-Verb-Object. This means that the subject comes before the verb, and if there is an object it follows the verb. This is like English. This order is somewhat variable due to things like adding words, artistic license, etc. The one thing that is invariable is that the verb is always the second constituent in the sentence. If you were to add something to the beginning of the sentence (an adverbial phrase, starting off with saying something like "So..." or "Meanwhile", etc.), that phrase would take the first place in the sentence. The next phrase has to be the verb phrase, and the subject moves to after the verb. Any object will be after the subject. Languages with this structure are known as V2 languages.
(Note, a 'constituent' can be a single word or a phrase. 'I' in "I love you" is one constituent. In the sentence 'The man down the road loves you', the whole phrase 'The man down the road' is one constituent.)
Nouns
Brooding nouns, in their basic form, always end with the sequence consonant-vowel-consonant (i.e. they cannot end in a blended consonant, see above).
Number
Nouns can be marked as singular, plural or 'mass' (collective). Mass nouns are nouns that where there are multiple entities in the group, but the group is considered as a coherent whole. For example, a bee would be singular, bees would be plural and a swarm of bees would be a mass noun.
Let's look at the word for 'tree': geeth
- The basic noun is singular: geeth
- To make it plural, you take the last vowel in the word and add it to the end of the word: geethee
- To make it a mass noun, you remove the last consonant: gee
Examples:
- raap - a war
- raapaa - wars
- raa - a series of wars, warfare in general
- chendim - a shoulder (part of the body)
- chendimi - shoulders
- chendi - a group of shoulders (probably used to refer to both shoulders at once as in 'you have a good head on your shoulders')