User:NickKimata/sandbox

Talise, is a Southeast Solomonic language native to Guadalcanal, with a speaker population of roughly 13,000. While some consider Talise to be its own language, others use it as a blanket term to group the closely related dialects of Poleo, Koo, Malagheti, Moli, and Tolo. It is a branch of the Proto-Guadalcanal family which comes from the Southeast Solomons language group.

Dialects
Even though Talise in of itself is a language on its own, it is also widely considered as a way to group other similar dialects like Tolo, Moli, and Koo. They are also extremely similar consonant and vowel correspondences among these. Many words like "aso" (sun) and "vula" (moon) are also identical across all of the dialects. However, numerous languages and dialects in Guadalcanal besides Talise share in these identical phonemes and words.

Consonants
The Tolo language has thirteen consonants and there is no 'c','f','j','q','w','x','y' or 'z'. Most of the phonemes are pronounced like they would be in English, with a few notable exceptions. The phoneme 'v' is pronounced as the 'v' in "vote", however it is also pronounced like the 'w' in "win" in certain cases. Another special phoneme would be 'ts' as it is nearly always pronounced like the 'ch' in "church", except when used in the word "katsa" (bark skirt). In this case it is pronounced like the 'ts' in "cats".

Vowels
Tolo has five short vowels consisting of the phonemes 'a','e','i','o','u' similar to English. 'e' can either be pronounced as in "ever" or as in "shake", while 'i' can either be pronounced as in "tree" or as in "sit".

Diphthongs
There are eight diphthongs in the Tolo language and they are all pronounced the same way as if spoken in English. 'ae' and 'ai' are both pronounced like "sigh", 'oe' and 'oi' are both pronounced like toy, and 'ao' and 'au' can both be pronounced like "low". However, even the similarly pronounced diphthongs are slightly different from each other in their pronunciations.

Prenasalisation
The nasal sounds of 'm','n', and 'ng' are always placed before the phonemes 'b','d', and 'g' respectively. However the extent to which someone hears this prenasalisation depends entirely on the speaker, as some stress it more if 'b','d', or 'g' come at the middle of a word instead of at the beginning.

Stress
Stress in Tolo is almost always put on the second to last syllable despite however many syllables may be present in a word. Some of the rare exceptions are the pronouns 'hamitou' and 'hamutou' as the stress in these two words is placed on the first syllable.

Adjectives
Adjectives in Tolo almost always immediately follow the noun that they modify in a sentence. The only exception to this rule is any numeral that precedes the noun in a sentence. For example,'big child' in English translates to 'baka lava' in Tolo, where 'lava' is the adjective 'big' that is modifying the noun.

Possessive Adjectives
The use of either a prefix or a suffix is used to denote possession, depending on if the modified noun is determined to be an important part of something or not, such as a person’s hand or other body part. This idea is known as alienability. However, there is no specific rule that can be used to determine whether or not a noun is alienable or inablienable, so it is left up to each individual speaker.

Adverbs
Adverbs tend to come after the verb that they are modifying, however they come before the verb when they are describing direction. A phrase like "He went yesterday" would translate to "Hia e ba bongi", where 'bongi' is the Tolo word for 'yesterday' that is modifying the verb 'went'. Despite this there are exceptions to both of these rules. As an example of this exception, even though somebody could say “mai kesa” (come quickly), he or she has to say “savua mai” when 'savua' is being used to mean 'quickly'.

Prepositions
The most common prepositions are 'i' and 'na', and in some cases they can be interchanged. Some other common prepositions are hinia, sania, vania, tavallia, sana, tania, and ovea. Some prepositions also change their endings as the object they are describing changes.

Verbs
Tolo verbs are divided into transitive and intransitive.

Transitive verbs come before an object and change their endings as the objects being described change.

Intransitive verbs are not followed by any objects and do not change their endings.

Passive Voice
There is no established grammatical way to denote passive voice in Tolo. Passive voice can only be implied by using 'kesana' (someone) or 'hira' (they) along with an active verb. For example, "Hira belia na kaui Bobi" translates to "Bob's dog was stolen".

Future Tense
Future tense is denoted by a verb particle that comes after the subject but before the verb in a sentence. An indicator for future tense always has to be used, regardless of how far into the future the the sentence talks about.

Plural Nouns
In English, nouns are commonly made plural by either adding an 's' to the end of them or by changing the noun's form. In both cases however, the article that comes before the noun remains the same. For example, "the dog" is changed to "the dogs" to denote a plural noun. In Tolo however, the noun is what remains unchanged while the article that precedes it is made plural. For example, "a daki" which translates to "the woman" is changed to "hira daki" which translates to "the women".

Negative Questions
Questions with a negative in them are commonly answered according to the sense of the question being asked, not necessarily according to the answer. For example, a question like "Don't you want it?" can either be answered with "Yes, I want it" or "No, I don't want it". In this case, an answer is given based on the idea the question is posing, not necessarily on the way it is worded. However, the same question in Tolo can be answered with "Eo, nau taiha ngaloa" which translates to "Yes, I don't want it" or "Taiha, nau ngaloa" which is "No, I want it".