Dama Diwan: Difference between revisions

Although so simple, the Dama Diwan language can be personalized in as many ways as there are people on earth. There are two main styles of using Dama: the oriental style, and the western style.

 

By the oriental style disyllabic words use open vowels in the first syllable and closed vowels in the suffix; by the western style, closed vowels are used in the stem and open ones in the suffixes of disyllabic words. E.g. “space, room” is “BIRO” (western style) or “BERU” (oriental style). None of these is objectively better than the other, although the western style has prevailed in actual usage until now.

 

Apart from these two, the user of Dama can choose between k/g, t/ts/d, o/u, e/i depending on many factors that can influence one’s choice; such factors are:

* differentiation: a user may choose to use open vowels (o/e) with /n/ and closed vowels (u/i) with /m/; or (o/e) with /t/ and (u/i) with /k/. If you feel a chance to confuse m to n, you can pronounce m somewhat longer (like mm), and if you feel a "k" might be confused with "t", pronounce "t" aspirate (just like English "t", or even Japanese "ts").

* dissimilation for taboo reasons: e.g. those who have Turkish as their first language, may choose to pronounce sek or sig instead of sik- which in Turkish means "penis". While Greeks can prefer "mon" (door, window, gate) to "mun" which reminds of the Greek word for "vulva".

* facilitating the memory; e.g. an English speaker may prefer to pronounce "godu" instead of "kuto" (high), so as to connect the word to "God" in memory; while a Turkish speaker may find it better to pronounce the same "kuto", so as to be reminded of "kut" (divine favor).

* influences of the speakers' first language: e.g. if the speaker has no /w/ sound in his/her native language (as happens with Germans, Greeks, Italians, Turks, and others), can pronounce ɸ / β / f / v / ʋ in the place of /w/. Hungarians may pronounce a Hungarian "a" in the second syllabe and a Hungarian "á" in the first syllable.

Some languages make the vowels e/o when stressed and i/u when unstressed, while other languages do the opposite.

*It is strongly recommended that the disyllabic words have different stress / pitch / length / vowel openness (height) on their two syllables, or at least monosyllabic words should take as much time as disyllabic ones in pronunciation when not pronounced together with the previous word.

*To pronounce Dama words together is not only permitted but also encouraged, for showing in speech how words group together (in writing this can be facilitated by hyphens and punctuation). The 6 monosyllabic words a, i, o, un, in, an can freely be enclitics or proclitics (joined in pronunciation with the previous or next word), but the 27 monosyllabic words starting with consonants and ending with vowels can be joined (as enclitics) to their preceding word only; it can be a bad habit (for possibly creating some confusion) to pronounce such monosyllabic words joint (as proclitics) to their following ones.

*To write Dama words together as one word might help to show how the words combine together, but that can greatly confuse the learners. Writing several words without word division might be used some time in the future if people are proficient in Dama; even in that case, the rule should be that no monosyllabic word starting with a consonant should be jointly written with other words, unless that monosyllabic is in the end of the set or is ending with -n in the beginning of the set. The best way to join Dama words together is by using a hyphen and not absence of dividing space.  

*Only the 16 letters a b d e g i j k m n o r s t u w (including the combinations ts and ds) may be used when writing Dama with the Latin alphabet. Palatal sounds (e.g. /c/, /ɟ/) should be considered phonetically same as velar (k/g), and not same as dentals (t/d). The sound /p/ should be avoided, at least by making it emphatic or ejective, and lateral sounds should not be accepted in Dama.

Dama has 3 vowel phonemes: a, i/e, u/o. It is also possible to use two allophones of "a" like, for example, /ɑ/ and /ɐ/, if that feels better for native speakers of a language that differentiates between a higher and a slightly lower "a";

and 9 consonant phonemes: k/g, t/d/ts, b, n, m, j, r, w, s.

There are many possible allophones, such as /v/ or /ɸ/ for w, but the use of "p" and especially of "l" (lateral sounds articulated with the tongue) is not acceptable. The word final -n is best pronounced as /ŋ/ if possible, or it can conform to the articulatory position of the following consonant.

:(In Dama, the difference between i/e, u/o is not phonemic. J and W as phonemes are different, but Dama words only start with CONSONANTS (including j, w), and then there is always a vowel after each consonant with the exception of final n (which is better, but not compulsory, to be pronounced as ŋ). Therefore, 14102 can only be jajon or jajun, both correct in Dama; and the same happens with all other Dama words: they can be rendered totally correctly by the use of only the 10 digits, that is with a pad of only 10 digits plus a space key. The connection of the 10 digits to Latin letters is obvious, based on similarity of shape.)

*Dama Braille (described in the last pages of https://www.academia.edu/12434367/theory_history) also uses only 10 symbols and it can be learnt in 3 minutes, while formal Braille has a repertoire of 256 possible signs and requires at least 3 months to be learnt with the quickest teaching course.

and in https://crete.academia.edu/GiannhsKenanidhs/Dama-Diwan-Language, including the [https://www.academia.edu/12434367/theory_history explanation why] Dama is not really a language constructed by a person or people. Although Dama Diwan is a perfect language, human knowledge of it is still (2015) not perfect; We know that it is the ideal international auxiliary language because it has already been proven capable to create many good texts conveying successfully knowledge of any kind.

:i jetu boma nomu ma jetu / i jito buma numo ma jito / 1 1170 6034 2030 34 1170