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Basics of NKAP
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The Basics of NKAP
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 15 Nov 2023, 14:45.

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[Public] ? ?
Menu 1. Word Order 2. Adverbs Describe Nouns?! 3. Auxiliary Verbs 4. Questions 5. Verbs 6. Tenses 7. Changing Parts of Speech 8. Plurals 9. Negatives 10. Comparatives 11. Possessives 12. Conjunctions 13. Prepositions 14. Syllabic Stress 15. Changes in Stress 16. Compound Words 17. Notes
[edit] [top]Word Order

Words are arranged in a SVO order with adjectives always going before nouns and adverbs going after the verbs.
The word order does not change in questions, instead it follows the rules stated further down.

[edit] [top]Adverbs Describe Nouns?!

If an adverb is placed after a noun, it takes up the meaning of 'is adjective' (very similar to passive verbs). For example: 'Elō genat' literally translates to 'I furiously' but means 'I am furious'

'hgē īrejun muznel thus hgē skjitos' - 'the book was placed (lit. 'was sat') in the fire'

[edit] [top]Auxiliary Verbs

Unlike in English, auxiliary verbs are placed after the verb and/or adverbs. Except for 'can' (fridjalē) and 'just' (thōsta) which are placed before the verb. E.g:

'tuk thōsta ho knor' - 'it should just happen'
'fridjalē dīnēlalō holīd' - 'I can surely cook'

[edit] [top]Questions

Interrogative words are prefixes in NKAP which will usually be attached to any auxiliary verbs. However, if there are no auxiliary verbs it will be added to the main verb e.g. "tsedhana rōkēst"-"What cats do you have?". How much (kiln-) on the other hand is added to whatever noun or descriptor is being questioned e.g. "Hana kilnrōkēst" - "You have how many cats?"

If the question does not contain a interrogative particle e.g. 'Do you see this?' The sentence is the same as if it was not a question and only the tone and the stress with which it is said changes.

You cannot use these affixes as nouns, adverbs, adpositions, etc. like you can in many languages, these only work as interrogative markers.


If the subject is a pronoun i.e. I, we, he, etc. The corresponding suffix is added to the verb and the pronoun is dropped.

1First person (person)
speaker, signer, etc; I
2Second person (person)
addressee (you)
3Third person (person)
neither speaker nor addressee
SGSingular (number)
one countable entity
-lō-na-tu
PLPlural (number)
more than one/few
-la-nē-tō
FEMFeminine (gender)
feminine or female
NANA-tē
MASCMasculine (gender)
masculine or male
NANA-ta


In other cases the verb is left as is, e.g. 'duthevelō' - 'I walk' and 'ontimast dutheve' - 'men walk'

[edit] [top]Tenses

There are only three tenses in NKAP: Past, present and future. Present is the default tense every verb is in and to change between tenses the last vowel in the verb is changed e.g. 'dutheva' - 'walked'; 'duthevē' - 'will walk.'
The list of vowels is as follows: I, Ē, E, A, Ī, Ā, U, O, Ō.
Moving from left to right makes it past tense.
Moving right to left makes it future tense.
Ō becomes O for past and U for future.
I becomes E for past and Ē for future.

One important thing to know is that most verbs have the connotation of being in continuous tense not simple tense, meaning that 'tenīpnē' means 'you were eating', not 'you ate'.

A quick note: a word cannot end in 'i' so it will become 'ē' if not follow by another letter. E.g. 'hōkrilō' - 'I will think'; 'brjos hōkrē' - 'a woman thinks' or 'a woman will think'

[edit] [top]Changing Parts of Speech

NKAP has the ability to change any of the four main POS to any other. I am too lazy to put all the suffixes in this article, however they are in the PhoMo. If the word ends in a consonant the one starting with the vowel is added and vice versa.
The only exception is if a noun ends in -Vs, when it is changed to a verb the -s is dropped and -re is added. E.g:

blutjē(farm. noun) - blutjēre(to farm. verb) - blutjēren(farming. noun)
jemes(eye. noun) - jemere(see. verb) - jemeren(sight. noun)

[edit] [top]Plurals

If a noun ends is -s or -n, -pa is added.
If a noun ends in a vowel, -st is added.
If its ends in -k, -t or -d, -in is added.
If it ends in -th, it is removed.
And those are actually the only letters a noun can end in, which makes it pretty easy.

[edit] [top]Negatives

When a verb is changed to a negative form 'tho-' is usually added to the beginning, for example: 'lōmemna tuk' - 'you understand it' becomes 'tholōmemna tuk' - 'you don't understand it'.
With descriptors the first letter is sometimes replaced with 'th'. E.g. 'fārat' and 'thārat' - 'east' and 'west'. However most will have a separate word like 'diu' and 'enst' - 'previous' and 'next'.

[edit] [top]Comparatives

Adding -ī (IPA: 'ai') to the end of an adjective makes it a comparative. (Like -er in English)

thumaren(evil) - thumarenī(eviller)
fetsīn(much) - fetsīnī(much more)

In the same way, adding -īsz (IPA: 'aiʃ') makes it a superlative. However they cannot be used a noun.

tsajot(small) - tsajotīsz(smallest)
hgē tsajotīszēk(the smallest(NMNoun (POS)))

-ble on the end acts as a diminutive form. It can be added to any part of speech

gaszton(safe) - gasztonble(not that safe)
vwuts(a pain) - vwutsble(a mild pain)

'Siha' is used to compare two nouns.

elō ladōlkīwid siha ena - i am taller than you

Any suffix to change the part of speech or count must be added after these suffixes.

[edit] [top]Possessives

There are two forms of possessives in NKAP. Open and Closed ('fultesza' and 'thultesza').

Open possession refers to when a pronoun is the possessor. It is called 'open' because there can be no article before the noun. To indicate possession the same affixes used for subject-verb indication are added to the beginning of the noun. E.g:

"lōjuksala szemare elō" - "my dog loves me"

Closed possession refers to when an ordinary noun is the possessor. It is called 'closed' because an article can be added. 'i-' is added to the beginning of the possessor and if the noun starts with a vowel it can be replaced or just made into a double vowel. E.g:

"hgō betērast thostekavasev i-apalabra"
or
"hgō betērast thostekavasev ipalabra" - 'the colours of cloudless dawn'

[edit] [top]Conjunctions

Most conjunctions are very simple in NKAP, working similarly to most other languages. The only tricky parts are 'enveloping' conjunctions and combined conjunctions.

'And' (a... a) and 'in order to' (o... ē) and two enveloping conjunctions, they are placed before and after what they connecting

I am working to get money - hjiborelō o ha brōtsē ē

I like horses and cats - ftōlō ikwenpa a irōkēst a

Combined conjunctions are tricky because their meaning is difficult to judge from the two which make it up:

kin (for) + akri (now that) = kikri (since)
sjōgō (but) + o...ē (in order to) = ojōgō... ē (besides)

[edit] [top]Prepositions

Prepositions are rather limited in NKAP, with there being only a list of about 11 of them. However as with most morphemes they can be combined, often with affixes, to make new meanings:

ula- (post-) + hjōl (at) = ulahjol (behind)

anse (to) + thus (in) + ansthus (into)

For 2nd and 3rd person you use 'anse' and 'ape' whereas for 1st person 'tse' and 'pfe' are used.

[edit] [top]Syllabic Stress

While stress is not indicated nor are two word distinguished by stress; NKAP still has rules in place saying how words are to be stressed correctly.

Firstly if the word contains a long vowel (ē, ō, ā, ī, u) then it is stressed. If it contains multiple then the more 'powerful' one is stressed. The order of power is given in the brackets.
e.g. 'ākuga' - ā > u - 'ā' is stressed

Next if a syllable ends in a vowel it is stressed, if there are multiple then there are two different ways stress can be resolved...
e.g. 'hjibos' - 'i' is at an end - 'hji' is stressed.

The first way of resolving is stressing the open syllable closest to the end of the word. This is also used when no open syllables are present or if two of the same long vowels are in a word.
e.g. 'alasibra' - 'bra' is closest to the end - 'bra' is stressed
e.g. 'methmen' - 'men' is closest to the end - 'men' is stressed

The other way of resolving is using the order of 'power' of the short vowels (e, a, o, i). This is most commonly used when 'i' is after another more powerful vowel.
e.g. 'meninis' - e > i - 'me' is stressed


Sentence example:
'wulba kjēst za kin tosthā, ēstonēk peje' - 'when soldiers go to war, many die'

'u' is long - wulba
'ē' is long - kjēst
NKAP is mainly iambic - za
NKAP is mainly iambic - kin
'ā' is long - tosthā
the first 'ē' is in an open syllable - ēstonēk or 'ēk' is closer to the end - ēstōnēk (depends on whether you think the first syllable is 'ē' or 'ēs')
'je' is the last syllable - peje

'wulba kjēst za kin tosthā ēstonēk (ēstōnēk) peje'

[edit] [top]Changes in Stress

The stress of a word only changes when the Part of Speech changes or when a question is being asked.

migjoa(infinity.NM) - migjape(infinite.ADJ)

fasguznē(you all spread out) - fasguz(do you all spread out)

munja(gem) - akmunja(where is the gem)

[edit] [top]Compound Words

Making compound words in a straight forward process in NKAP:

1. remove the last letter of the first word and the first of the second
(īrejun -> īreju, jajaran -> ajaran)
2. if there are two vowels next to each other remove either (usually from the second, unless it sounds much better with it)
(īreju, ajaran -> jaran)
3. stick them together
(īrejujaran, book-garment (a book cover))


This article is very basic and rough-around-the-edges and there many more complexities in NKAP which I couldn't be bothered to add yet.
I may add more to the article but not for a while

ēlē
huthagōs
(^don't worry about these)
__________________________________________________
Comparison to Other Languages

NKAP technically falls under the Kentar Language Family (KLF, kentar means human) and because it was made to be a universal language there are some words taken from other languages (such as 'njolka' and 'methmea' which come from Elvish), but it is grammatically almost entirely based on KLF.

SVO is very common in KLF (44.3%); slightly more so than SOV (41.7%); the next most common is VSO (6.2%).

Most KLF languages have 2-4 grammatical genders (50.3%), but not having gender was chosen for simplicities sake (34.2%); some older KLF languages have many more (5+, 15.5%), like Kweistru which has 12.

They way adverbs are used in NKAP is surprisingly common in KLF (37.0%) but is almost entirely found only in the older languages.

Not having cases is what sets NKAP from KLF, with only 7.3% also not having any; having 2-3 is also uncommon (8.4%); by far the most normal is having 4-5 (69.8%); weirdly only 6 is the greatest amount found in any KLF language (14.5%)

Another major detour is stress, 67.6% show stress by a marker which rarely changes place, only the 32.4% have a 'natural/ fluid' stress system

Using affixes to show possession is also uncommon (11.3%) considering that most KLF languages have a Genitive or Possessive case (81.3%), using particles is even rarer (7.4%)

Alphabet

Any alphabet could be used to write it, however, the official one is Dījukla Script.
It is difficult to show on a computer as it is similar to Arabic in the sense that there are Initial and Medial forms of letters (vowels have Medial and Final), it is an abjad and written in a cursive way. But that's where the similarities end.

The first consonant is written in Initial form and the next are written in Medial form. Vowels are shown a small symbols below the word and after the letter they follow, unless it is the last letter in a word, then it will be placed as a large symbol which is above the word and stretches all the way across the word.

It is read from left to right but is written from bottom to top, both because I find it is easier but also because it prevents smudging. So the page does have to be turned 90° anticlockwise to write it.

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