Kaidu

Background

English

Hi, I am the creator of the Kaidu language, Kyle Farrington. Kaidu is currently three years old. I started making this language when an older language of mine died. Kaidu is used mainly as a personal artlang, there is currently no specific conworld for it, but I use it in a number of stories. I have drawn inspiration from several languages, namely English, Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, and some Bantu languages. Conlanging has been my hobby for many years. Kaidu’s grammar is simple for English speakers; the hardest parts are the verbs and adjectives because they are different from English. Kaidu’s syllable structure is simply (C)V(C). Kaidu has a lot of the basic consonants, but it has some unique consonants as well. For instance, it has prenasalized consonants that can occur in initial positions. I have designed Kaidu’s lexicon to be somewhat more minimal than English. Kaidu words are created in the style of Chinese compounds.

Kaidu

Dimu, ka ziurim fu Kaidui niurme, Caier Ferincton. Mpos Kaidu mpusim hop doit. Ka sondiores Kaidui niur font can mob vintric du nuses. Kaidu zintdampric zoroicim az can kabenric ziomtu, mpos wint ziurim vai niurud pod se, vef ka zorim se nac suizric nkob. Ka siadiomoices tem suizric duru, nac zintdamp Angerdu, Espaniadu. Nihondu, Arapdu, af zai Pantui du. Duniur ton ziures kai sosdoim pod suizric doitru. Kaidui cutupud mpizric pod Angerdui nkabme. Fu kuimob wimpizric zampru ziurim fu zorfoi af merfoi pod se porim to Angerdu. Kaidui nacdampi moi mpizric ziurim (C)V(C). Kaidu mpusim suizrinc mpizric fereznaw, vef wet mpusim zai candempric feresnaw. Pod can zemp se mpusim fiuvmpimpnaw dant ziuroidkim nac fu canric mu. Ka ton siatoes Kaidui mafoiti bus dant femob redzuizrim Angerdu. Kaidui poi niuroices nac fu Zonckuodui gaimpfoii zemp.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Uvular
Plosive	p	t		[c] <c>	k <c>	q <k>
Prenasal Plosive	ᵐp <mp>	ⁿt <nt>		[ᶮc] <nc>	ᵑk <nc>	ᶰq <nk>
Nasal	m	n		[ɲ] <n>
Fricative	f[ɸ] v	s z		[ɕ ʑ] <s z> [ç ʝ] <h g>	χ ɣ <h g>
Approximant	β̞ <b>	ð̞ <d>	ɻ <r>		ɰ <w>

Spelling given where it differs from IPA.

Consonant Allophony

Several of the velar and alveolar consonants also have palatalized allophones when preceding the diphthongs of /ia/ /io/ and /iu/. The alveolar fricatives become alveo-palatal fricatives, while the velar stops and fricatives and alveolar nasal become pure palatal. /f/ is also [ɸ] at the end of syllables. /m/ also lightly palatalizes before the aforementioned diphthongs.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Near-back	Back
Close	i	[ɨ]		u
Near-close			[ʊ]
Mid	e			o
Open-mid	[ɛ]			[ɔ]
Near-open		[ɐ]
Open		a

Vowels come in stressed unstressed pairs, except for /i/.

	Unstressed	Stressed
/e/	[e]	[ɛ]
/o/	[o]	[ɔ]
/u/	[u]	[ʊ]
/a/	[ɐ]	[a]

Diphthongs

	Rising	Falling
/a/	/ai/	/ia/
/o/	/oi/	/io/
/u/	/ui/	/iu/

Rising diphthongs all are realized with the second element as nonsyllabic: [aɪ̯], [oɪ̯], [uɪ̯]. Falling diphthongs work similarly, the second element is also usually nonsyllabic, but the realization of the /i/ in the diphthong depends on the preceding consonant. In most cases, it will be [ɨ], but in a few others it is different. /t/ /f/ have the /i/ be [j] and the second element is syllabic. With /ð̞/ the first element remains as [i] and the second element is nonsyllabic.

Phonotactics

In Kaidu all syllables can be a maximum of CVC. C can be ANY consonant, including prenasalized stops in initial positions. When a prenasal stop is syllable final, it becomes a homorganic cluster of nasal+stop. Certain consonants become palatal versions when before the diphthongs ia, io and iu. When compounding causes two like consonants to meet (except for prenasalized consonants which follow their own rules), the first of the two is deleted. This is reflected both in Latin and Kaikak. A further exception to this is verbal endings, which can cause double r, m, and w, which is not deduplicated.

Stress

Kaidu stresses the last syllable of the root, previous to any verbal inflections.

Orthography

Kaidu's Latin alphabet, called Romakak, is very straightforward, as it is a 1 to 1 correspondence with the conscript, called Kaikak. Kaikak is extremely phonemic but there are a couple deviations from purely phonetic.

Quarter sized Kaikak

Grammar

Morphology

Nouns

There are no cases in Kaidu. Possession is shown with -i on the possessor. Plurals exist but the rules are different than English. They are optional when number is being specified, and in general as well.

Verbs

Verb conjugate for tense and moods. The available tenses are past, present, and future. There is also a progressive suffix after the tense. The moods in Kaidu are imperative, volitional, necessitative, desirative, permissive, abilitative, suggestive, attemptive and samplative. They are all first created by making the verb irrealis with -oi, suffixed with the moodm and then conjugated for tense (except imperative and volitional). There are also several aspect prefixes that are lexical in nature. These are negative (different from grammatical negative), causative, dynamic, cessative, defective, intensive and moderative. There is also the present and non-present participles.

Adjectives

Adjectives work almost exactly like verbs, they end in -ra instead of just -a. One does not use the verb for "to be" with adjectives and instead conjugates the adjective ending to the appropriate tense. You use the participle ending to apply an adjective to a noun.

Adverbs

Adverbs are just adjectives. To make an adjective an adverb, use the participle adjective before a verb instead of a noun.

Syntax

Kaidu word order is SVO. Adpositions are prepositional.