User:Rangi42/Jangli

Jangli is a simple constructed language invented for the 2011 Eton College King's Scholarship Examination.

Parts of speech
There are N parts of speech: nouns, determiners, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions.

Nouns
Nouns are singular by default. They can be made plural by adding the suffix -tin, e.g. waldantin, "writers."

Determiners
Had is like "the."

Verbs
Verbs have suffixes to agree with the person.

Tenses are formed by markers after the verb. A verb by itself, without any marker, is in the present indefinite tense, e.g. razu, "I write."

We need markers for modality (allowed to = may, supposed to = must/should, conditional = would, possible = could, necessary = need/have to, desire = want to, responsibility = allow/cause to, etc).

Adjectives
Adjectives come after the determiner and before the noun, e.g. had dek man, "the tall man."

Morphology

 * wal + dan = write + do-er = writer
 * wal + om = write + thing = book
 * ba + wal = place + write = office
 * ba + wal + om = place + write + thing = library

Clause and sentence structure
Jangli is a SOV (subject–object–verb) language. It is also pro-drop; subject pronouns can be omitted when they can be inferred from the verb's conjugation.

Dependent clauses
Dependent clauses come after the determiner and adjectives, but before the noun, and are introduced by ko, which is like "that;" e.g. had dek ko walom wala ga man, "the tall man that wrote a book." Or: Had ko Jane pe it lata ga la at balat maku, "I work at the school that Jane used to teach in."

Vocabulary
Primitive vocabulary: http://www.percepp.com/primvoc.htm

5000 most common words: http://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/common-words-5000.htm

Basic English: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Basic_English_ordered_wordlist

We'll need: numbers, days/months/seasons, family relations, common locations and actions, food, etc.