L’ewa: A Personal Language

Christine Dodrill

All Rights Reserved

Abstract

A personal language for use in linguistics research and for a diary.

Introduction

I’ve been curious about how language works for a very long time. This curiosity has lead me down many fascinating rabbit holes, but for a long time I have either been cribbing off of other people’s work or studying natural languages that don’t have a cohesive plan or core to them. Constructed Languages (or conlangs as I will probably be calling them from here on out) are a simpler model of this. You might be familiar with Klingon from the Star Trek series, the various forms of Elvish as described by J. R. R. Tolkien or Dothraki from Game of Thrones. This series will show an example of how one of those kinds of languages are created.

Recently a challenge came up on /r/conlangs called ReConLangMo and I’ve decided to take a stab at this and flesh this out into a personal language.

The language I am going to create will be called L’ewa (⁄l.ʔɛ.wa⁄, also romanized lewa for filesystems). This word is identical in English and in L’ewa. It means “is a language”. The name came to me in a shower a while ago and I’m not entirely sure where it came from.

This language is being designed as a personal language to help me keep a diary (more on that later) and to act as a testbed for writing a computational knowledge engine, much like IBM’s Watson. I do not expect anyone else to use this language. I may pull this language into fiction (if that ever gets off the ground) or into other projects as it makes sense.

Some of the high level things I want to try in this language are ways to make me think differently. I’m following the weak form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis by this logic. I want to see what would happen if I give myself a tool that I can use to help myself think in different ways. Other features I plan to include are:

- A seximal number system

- A predicate-argument system similar to Lojban

- Nounlessness (only having verbs for content words) like Salishan languages

- An a-priori (or made up) vocabulary

- Grammatical markers for the identity of the thinker of a sentence/phrase/word

- Make each grammatical feature and word logical, or working in one way only

- Typeable with standard QWERTY en-US keyboards

- A decorative script that I’ll turn into a font

L’wea as A Diary Language

When I was younger, I used to keep a diary/journal file on my computers off and on. I was detailed about what I was feeling and what I was considering and going through. This all ended abruptly after my parents were snooping through my computer in middle school and discovered that I was questioning fundamental aspects of myself like my gender. I have never really felt comfortable keeping a diary file since then. I have made a few attempts at this (including by using a dedicated diary machine, air-gapped TempleOS machines and the like), but they all feel too vulnerable and open for anyone to read them.

This is my logic for using a language that I create for myself. If people really want to go through and take the time to learn the ins and outs of a tool I created for myself to archive my personal thoughts, they probably deserve to be able to read them. Otherwise, this would allow me to write my diary from pretty much anywhere, even in plain sight out in public. People can’t shoulder-surf and read what they literally cannot understand.

Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.

The format is based on Keep a Changelog, and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning.

[Unreleased]

Added

- Initial setup and formatting

- First Section on introduction stuff

- Phonology chapter

- Morphosyntactic typology chapter

- Fun with Nouns and Verbs chapter

- Color words section

- Dictionary appendix

- Sentence Structure Semantics chapter

- Lexicon chapter

Phonology and Writing

I am taking inspiration from Lojban, Esperanto, Mandarin Chinese and English to design the phonology of L’ewa. All of the phonology will be defined using the International Phonetic Alphabet. If you want to figure out how to pronounce these sounds, a lazy trick is to google them. Wikipedia will have a perfectly good example to use as a reference. There are two kinds of sounds in L’ewa, consonants and vowels.

Phonology

Consonants

Consonant inventory: /d f g h j k l m n p q r s t w ʃ ʒ ʔ ʙ̥/

Manner/Place

Bilabial

Alveolar

Palato-alveolar

Palatal

Velar

Labio-velar

Uvular

Glottal

Nasal

m

n

Stop

p

t d

k g

q

ʔ

Fricative

f

s

ʃ ʒ

h

Approximant

j

w

Trill

ʙ̥

r

Lateral approximant

l

The weirdest consonant is /ʙ̥/, which is a voiceless bilabial trill, or blowing air through your lips without making sound. This is intended to imitate a noise an orca would make.

Vowels

Vowel inventory: /a ɛ i o u/

Diphthongs: au, oi, ua, ue, uo, ai, ɛi

Front

Back

High

i

u

High-mid

o

Low-mid

ɛ

Low

a

Romanization

L’ewa’s romanization is intentionally simple. Most of the IPA letters keep their letters, but the ones that do not match to Latin letters are listed below:

Pronunciation

Spelling

/j/

y

/ɛ/

e

/ʃ/

x

/ʒ/

z

/ʔ/

’

/ʙ̥/

b

This is designed to make every letter typeable on a standard US keyboard, as well as mapping as many letters as possible on the home row of a QWERTY keyboard.

Phonotactics

I plan to have two main kinds of words in L’ewa. I plan to have content and particle words. The content words will refer to things, properties, or actions (such as tool, red, run) and the particle words will change how the grammar of a sentence works (such as the or prepositions).

The main kind of content word is a root word, and they will be in the following forms:

- CVCCV (/ʒa.sko/)

- CCVCV (/lʔ.ɛwa/)

Particles will mostly fall into the following forms:

- V (/a/)

- VV (/ai/)

- CV (/ba/)

- CVV (/bai/)

Proper names should end with consonants, but there is no hard requirement.

L’ewa is a stressed language, with stress on the second-to-last (penultimate) syllable. For example, the word “zasko” would be pronounced “ZAsko”.

Syllables end on stop consonants if one is present in a consonant cluster. Two stop consonants cannot follow eachother in a row.

Writing

I haven’t completely fleshed this part out yet, but I want the writing system of L’ewa to be an abugida. This is a kind of written script that has the consonants make the larger shapes but the vowels are small diacritics over the consonants. If the word creation process is done right, you can actually omit the vowels entirely if they are not relevant.

I plan to have this script be written by hand with pencils/pen and typed into computers, just like English. This script will also be a left-to-right script like English.

Morphosyntactic Typology

Word Order

L’ewa is normally a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) language like English. However, the word order of a sentence can be changed if it is important to specify some part of the sentence in particular.

I haven’t completely finalized the particles for this, but I’d like to use ka to denote the subject, ke to denote the verb and ku to denote the object. For example if the input sentence is something like:

/mi/ /mad.sa/ /lo/ /spa.lo/

mi   madsa    lo   spalo

I   eat      an   apple

You could emphasize the eating with:

/kɛ/ /mad.sa/ /ka/ /mi/ /lo/ /spa.lo/

[ke] madsa    ka   mi   lo   spalo

V    eat      S    I    an   apple

(the ke is in square brackets here because it is technically not required, but it can make more sense to be explicit in some cases)

or the apple with:

/ku/ /lo/ /spalo/ /kɛ/ /mad.sa/ /mi

ku   lo   spalo   ke   madsa    mi

O    an   apple   V    eat      I

L’ewa doesn’t really have adjectives or adverbs in the normal indo-european sense, but it does have a way to analytically combine meanings together. For example if qa'te is the word for is fast/quick/rapid in rate, then saying you are quickly eating (or wolfing food down) would be something like:

/qaʔ.tɛ/          /mad.sa/

qa'te             madsa

is fast [kind of] eat

These are assumed to be metaphorical by default. It’s not always clear what someone would mean by a fast kind of language (would they be referencing Speedtalk?)

L’ewa doesn’t always require a subject or object if it can be figured out from context. You can just say “rain” instead of “it’s raining”. By default, the first word in a sentence without an article is the verb. The ka/ke/ku series needs to be used if the word order deviates from Subject-Verb-Object (it functions a lot like the selma’o FA from Lojban).

Morphological Typology

L’ewa is a analytic language. Every single word has only one form and particles are used to modify the meaning or significance of words. There are only two word classes: content and particles.

Alignment

L’ewa is a nominative-accusative language. Other particles may be introduced in the future to help denote the relations that exist in other alignments, but I don’t need them yet.

Word Classes

As said before, L’ewa only has two word classes, content (or verbs) and particles to modify the significance or relations between content. There is also a hard limit of two arguments per verb, which should help avoid the problems that Lojban has with its inconsistent usage of the x3, x4 and x5 places.

As the content words are all technically verbs, there is no real need for a copula. The ka/ke/ku series can also help to break out of other things that modify “noun-phrases” (when those things exist). There are also no nouns, adjectives or adverbs, because analytically combining words completely replaces the need for them.

Nouns and verbs do not inflect for numbers. If numbers are needed they can be provided, otherwise the default is to assume “one or more”.

Fun with Nouns and Verbs

Other Noun Things

At a high level, noun-phrases can be marked for direct ownership or number. The general pattern is like this:

<article> [pronoun] [negation] [number] <verb>

Pronouns

Here’s some of the pronouns:

English

L’ewa

me, I

mi

My system and I

mi’a

you

ro

we (all-inclusive)

mi’o

your system and you

ro’a

This (near me)

ti

That (near you)

ta

That (far away)

tu

Numbers

Numbers are in base six. Here are a few numerals:

Decimal

Seximal

L’ewa

0

0

zo

1

1

ja

2

2

he

3

3

xu

4

4

ho

5

5

qi

6

10

jazo

36

100

gau

Here are few non-numerals-but-technically-still-numbers-I-guess:

English

L’ewa

all

to

some

ra’o

number-question

so

Negation

As L’ewa is more of a logical language, it has several forms of negation. Here are a few:

English

L’ewa

contradiction

na

total scalar negation

na’o

particle negation

nai

na can be placed before the sentence’s verb too:

ti na spalo

This is something other than an apple

Verb Forms

Verbs have one form in L’ewa. Aspects like tense or the perfective aspect are marked with particles. Here’s a table of the common ones:

English

L’ewa

past tense

qu

present tense

qa

future tense

qo

perfective aspect

qe

Modality

Modality is going to be expressed with emotion words. These words have not been assigned yet, but their grammar will be a lot looser than the normal L’ewa particle grammar. They will allow any two vowels in any combination that might otherwise make them not “legal” for particles.

- VV (ii)

- V’V (i’i)

Explicitly Ending Noun Phrases

In case it is otherwise confusing, ko can be used to end noun phrases grammatically.

Color Words

L’ewa uses a RGB color system like computers. The basic colors are red, green and blue, with some other basic ones for convenience:

English

L’ewa

blue

blanu

red

delja

green

qalno

yellow

yeplo

teal

te’ra

pink

hetlo

black

xekri

white

pu’ro

50% gray

flego

Colors will be mixed by creating compound words between base colors. Compound words still need to be fleshed out, but generally all CVCCV words will have wordparts made out of the first, second and fifth letter, unless the vowel pair is illegal and all CCVCV words are the first, second and fifth letter unless this otherwise violates the morphology rules. Like I said though, this really needs to be fleshed out and this is only a preview for now.

For example a light green would be puoqa'o (pu'lo qalno, white-green).

Connectives

Connectives exist to link noun phrases and verbs together into larger noun phrases and verbs. They can also be used to link together sentences. There are four simple connectives: fa (OR), fe (AND), fi (connective question), fo (if-and-only-if) and fu (whether-or-not).

OR

ro au madsa lo spalo fa lo hafto?

Do you want to eat an apple or an egg?

AND

ro au madsa lo spalo fe lo hafto?

Do you want to eat an apple and an egg?

If and Only If

ro 'amwo mi fo mi madsa hafto?

Do you love me if I eat eggs?

Whether or Not

mi 'amwo ro. fu ro madsa hafto.

I love you, whether or not you eat eggs.

Connective Question

ro au madsa lo spalo fi lo hafto?

Do you want to eat apples and/or eggs?

Sentence Structure Semantics

Independent Clause Structure

Most of the time L’ewa sentences have only one clause. This can be anything from a single verb to a subject, verb and object. However, sometimes more information is needed. Consider this sentence:

The dog which is blue is large.

This kind of a relative clause would be denoted using hoi, which would make the sentence roughly the following in L’ewa:

le wufra hoi blanu xi brado.

The particle xi is needed here in order to make it explicit that the subject noun-phrase has ended.

Similarly, an incidental relative clause is done with with joi:

le  wufra  joi              blanu    ke brado

the dog,   which by the way is blue,    is big.

Questions

There are a few ways to ask questions in L’ewa. They correlate to the different kinds of things that the speaker could want to know.

ma

ma is the particle used to fill in a missing/unknown noun phrase. Consider these sentences:

ma   blanu?

what is blue?

ro  qa madsa   ma?

you are eating what?

no

no is the particle used to fill in a missing/unknown verb. Consider these sentences:

ro no?

How are you doing?

le wufra xi no?

The dog did what?

so

so is the particle used to ask questions about numbers, similar to the “how many” construct in English.

ro madsa so spalo?

You ate how many apples?

le so zasko xi qa'te glowa

How many plants grow quickly?

Lexicon

Word Distinctions

L’ewa is intended to be a logical language. One of the side effects of L’ewa being a logical language is that each word should have as minimal and exact of a meaning/function as possible. English has lots of words that cover large semantic spaces (like go, set, run, take, get, turn, good, etc.) without much of a pattern to it. I don’t want this in L’ewa.

Let’s take the word “good” as an example. Off the top of my head, good can mean any of the following things:

- beneficial

- aesthetically pleasing

- favorful taste

- saintly (coincidentally this is the source of the idiom “God is good”)

- healthy

I’m fairly sure there are more “senses” of the word good, but let’s break these into their own words:

L’ewa

Definition

firgu

is beneficial/nice to

n’ixu

is aesthetically pleasing to

flawo

is tasty/has a pleasant flavor to

spiro

is saintly/holy/morally good to

qanro

is healthy/fit/well/in good health

Each of these words has a very distinct and fine-grained meaning, even though the range is a bit larger than it would be in English. These words also differ from a lot of the other words in the L’ewa dictionary so far because they can take an object. Most of the words so far are adjective-like because it doesn’t make sense for there to be an object attached to the color blue.

By default, if a word that can take an object doesn’t have one, it’s assumed to be obvious from context. For example, consider the following set of sentences:

mi qa madsa lo spalo. ti flawo!

I am eating an apple. It's delicious!

I am working at creating more words using a Swaedish list.

Family Words

Family words are a huge part of a language because it encodes a lot about the culture behind that language. L’ewa isn’t really intended to have much of a culture behind it, but the one place I want to take a cultural stance is here. The major kinship word is kirta, or “is an infinite slice of an even greater infinite”. This is one of the few literal words in L’ewa that is defined using a metaphor, as there is really no good analog for this in English.

L’ewa has a fairly custom kinship system. Here is a high level of conversion between English and L’ewa:

English

L’ewa term

L’ewa word

brother/sister

sibling

xinga

mother/father

parent

pa’ma

grandfather/grandmother

grandparent

gra’u

aunt/uncle

parent

pa’ma

cousin

sibling

xinga

These terms can also be applied to anyone, not just your immediate genetic family.

Idioms

L’ewa strives to have as few idioms as possible. If something is meant non-literally (or as a conceptual metaphor), the particle ke’a can be used:

ti firgu

This is beneificial

ti ke'a firgu

This is metaphorically/non-literally beneficial

Conversations

This chapter will cover basic conversation making in L’ewa. TODO(Mai): more filler text here.

Greetings and Farewell

“Hello” in L’ewa is said using xoi. It can also be used as a reply to hello similar to «ça va» in French. It is possible to have an entire conversation with just xoi:

<Mai> xoi

<Cadey> xoi

<Mai> xoi

The other implications of xoi are “how are you?” “I am good, you?”, “I am good”, etc. If more detail is needed beyond this, then it can be supplied instead of replying with xoi.

“Goodbye” is said using xei. Like xoi it can be used as a reply to another goodbye and can form a mini-conversation:

<Cadey> xei

<Mai> xei

<Cadey> xei

Feelings

Feelings in L’ewa are marked with a family of particles called “WI”. These can also be modified with other particles. Here are the emotional markers:

L’ewa

English

a'a

attentive

a'e

alertness

ai

intent

a'i

effort

a'o

hope

au

desire

a'u

interest

e'a

permission

e'e

competence

ei

obligation

e'i

constraint

e'o

request

e'u

suggestion

ia

belief

i'a

acceptance

ie

agreement

i'e

approval

ii

fear

i'i

togetherness

io

respect

i'o

appreciation

iu

love

i'u

familiarity

o'a

pride

o'e

closeness

oi

complaint/pain

o'i

caution

o'o

patience

o'u

relaxation

ua

discovery

u'a

gain

ue

surprise

u'e

wonder

ui

happiness

u'i

amusement

uo

completion

u'o

courage

uu

pity

u'u

repentant

If an emotion is unknown in a conversation, you can ask with kei:

<Mai> xoi, so kei?

hi,  what-verb what-feeling?

<Cadey> madsa ui

eating :D

Information Structure

L’ewa doesn’t have any particular structure for marking previously known information, as normal sentences should suffice in most cases. Consider this paragraph:

I saw you eat an apple. Was it tasty?

Since an apple was the last thing mentioned in the paragraph, the vague “it” pronoun in the second sentence can be interpreted as “the apple”.

L’ewa doesn’t have a way to mark the topic of a sentence, that should be obvious from context (additional clauses to describe things will help here). In most cases the subject should be equivalent to the topic of a sentence.

L’ewa doesn’t directly offer ways to emphasize parts of sentences with phonemic stress like English does (eg: “I THOUGHT you ate an apple” vs “I thought you ATE an apple”), but emotion words can be used to help indicate feelings about things, which should suffice as far as emphasis goes.

Discourse Structure

Conversationally, a lot of things in L’ewa grammar get dropped unless it’s ambiguous. The I/yous that get tacked on in English are completely unneeded. A completely valid conversation could look something like this:

<Mai> xoi

<Cadey> xoi

<Mai> xoi madsa?

<Cadey> lo spalo

And it would roughly equate to:

<Mai> Hi

<Cadey> Hi, you doing okay?

<Mai> Yes, have you eaten?

<Cadey> Yes, I ate an apple

People know when they can speak after a sufficient pause between utterances. Interrupting is not common but not a social faux-pas, and can be used to stop a false assumption from being said.

Utterances

An utterance in L’ewa is anything from a single content word all the way up to an entire paragraph of sentences. An emotion particle can be a complete utterance. A question particle can be a complete utterance, anything can be an utterance. A speaker may want to choose more succinct options when the other detail is already contextually known or simply not relevant to the listener.

L’ewa has a few discourse particles, here are a few of the more significant ones:

L’ewa

Function

xi

signals that the verb of the sentence is coming next

ko

ends a noun phrase

ka

marks something as the subject of the sentence

ke

marks something as the verb of the sentence

ku

marks something as the object of the sentence

Formality

The informal dialect of L’ewa drops everything it can. The formal dialect retains everything it can, to the point where it includes noun phrase endings, the verb signaler, ka/ke/ku and every single optional particle in the language. The formal dialect will end up sounding rather wordy compared to informal slangy speech. Consider the differences between informal and formal versions of “I eat an apple”:

mi madsa lo spalo.

ka mi ko xi ke madsa ku lo spalo ko.

Nearly all of those particles are not required in informal speech (you could even get away with madsa lo spalo depending on context), but are required in formal speech to ensure there is as little contextual confusion as possible. Things like laws or legal rulings would be written out in the formal register.

Dictionary

This chapter of the book will hold a list of all of the words in L’ewa as the time of this book being rendered. This may not be the most up-to-date list of words. See (TODO(Mai): ko finti le vlaste kibystu) for more words.

Root Words

L’ewa

gloss

English

blanu

blue

is blue (color)

blodo

long

is long

brado

big

is big/large/great in size

danma

animal

is an animal

delja

red

is red (color)

dextu

meat

is meat/flesh

fawzo

skin

is skin/bark

fergo

thick

is thick in dimension

firgu

beneficial

is beneficial/nice to

fi’xe

fish

is a fish (kind of animal)

flawo

tasty

is tasty/has a pleasant flavor to

flego

gray

is 50% gray (color)

futjo

tail

is a tail

genza

root

is a root (body part of a plant)

glowa

grow

to grow/get larger/increase in size

gra’u

grandparent

is a/the grandparent of

hafto

egg

is an egg

helbo

heavy

is heavy/has a lot of weight

hetlo

pink

is pink (color)

hu’te

fruit

is a fruit

jaflo

bird

is a bird/avian

jandi

grass

is grass

jexlo

tree

is a tree

jifto

fat

is fat

kligo

rope

is a rope/cord

kirta

Creator

is an infinite slice of an even greater infinite/our Creator/a Creator

kwaro

wide

is wide/broad

l’ewa

language

is a language

lifta

leaf

is a leaf

li’li

small

is small/tiny/little

lorne

horn

is a horn

lufta

feather

is a feather

madsa

eat

eats/consumes/is eating/to eat

mlato

cat

is a cat/feline

modlo

thin

is thin in dimension

n’ixu

pleasant

is aesthetically pleasing to

ni’he

blood

is blood

nlaro

narrow

is narrow

pa’ma

parent

is the/a parent of

pu’ro

white

is white (color)

qalno

green

is green (color)

qanro

healthy

is healthy/fit/well/in good health

qa’te

fast

is fast/rapid in rate

qonmu

non-binary

is non-binary/not defined by commonly used binary systems of classification

renma

person

is a person (not always implied to be human)

retna

snake

is a snake

ristu

network

is a network/graph/transportation system/distribution system

rosgi

flower

is a flower (plant body part)

spalo

apple

is an apple

spiro

holy

is saintly/holy/morally good to

sposu

spouse

is a/the spouse of

stugi

stick

is a stick

te’ra

teal

is teal (color)

ti’ko

child

is a child

tulpa

construct

to build/construct

txana

node

is a station/node of/in/on a network/graph/transportation system/distribution system

wogno

bone

is bone

womjo

worm

is a worm/earthworm

wufra

dog

is a dog

xekri

black

is black (color)

xinga

sibling

is a/the sibling of

xitsa

short

is short/of little length

xu’zo

seed

is a seed

yeplo

yellow

is yellow (color)

zasko

plant

is a plant/is vegetation

zlose

louse

is a louse/flea

’amwo

love

to love

Particles

L’ewa

family

gloss

English

mi

MI

me, I

the current speaker

mi’a

MI

we (system)

the system of the current speaker, inclusive

mi’o

MI

we (all)

any speaker, any listener and any others

ro

MI

you

the listener

ro’a

MI

you (+ system)

the system of the listener

ti

TI

this

the currently referenced object near the speaker

ta

TI

that

that (near listener)

tu

TI

that

that (far away)

ka

KA

subject marker

explicitly marks noun-phrase as the subject of the verb

ke

KA

verb marker

explicitly marks following phrase as a verb

ku

KA

object marker

explicitly marks following phrase as the object of the verb

lo

LO

a/an

indefinite article

le

LO

the

definite article

la

LO

proper noun

proper name article

zo

JA

zero

zero

ja

JA

one

one

he

JA

two

two

xu

JA

three

three

ho

JA

four

four

qi

JA

five

five

gau

JA

nif

nif (dec 36)

to

JA

all

all/every

ra’o

JA

some

some amount of/a few

so

JA

how many?

how many/number question

na

NA

total negation

something other than, total negation

na’o

NA

scalar negation

the opposite of

nai

NA

particle negation

negation of a particular particle

qu

QA

past tense

marks noun phrase / verb as past tense

qa

QA

present tense

marks noun phrase / verb as present tense

qo

QA

future tense

marks noun phrase / verb as future tense

qe

QA

perfective aspect

marks noun phrase / verb as perfective, or completed

ko

KO

end of noun phrase

explicitly ends a noun phrase when the grammar is otherwise ambiguous

fa

FA

or

logical or

fe

FA

and

logical and

fi

FA

connective question

which connective?

fo

FA

if-and-only-if

connects two units with the if-and-only-if connotation

fu

FA

whether-or-not

logical connective of two units with the wehther or not connotation

xi

XI

subject-verb separator

the optional separator between the subject and the verb, sometimes needed when it is otherwise grammatically vague

hoi

HOI

relative clause

creates a relative/descriptive clause giving more context to a given noun phrase, arguments should be verbs

joi

HOI

incidental relative clause

creates a relative/descriptive clause giving more incidental context to a given noun phrase, arguments should be verbs

ma

MA

what/which

used to fill a missing noun-phrase

no

NO

verb question

verb question, used to fill a missing/unknown verb

ke’a

KE’A

metaphor

metaphorically/non-literally

xoi

XOI

hello

hello, etc

xei

XOI

goodbye

goodbye, etc

a’a

UI

attentive

attentive emotional indicator

a’e

UI

alertness

alertness emotional indicator

ai

UI

intent

intent emotional indicator

a’o

UI

hope

hope emotional indicator

au

UI

desire

desire emotional indicator

a’u

UI

interest

interest emotional indicator

e’a

UI

permission

permission emotional indicator

e’e

UI

competence

competence emotional indicator

ei

UI

obligation

obligation emotional indicator

e’i

UI

constraint

constraint emotional indicator

e’o

UI

request

request emotional indicator

e’u

UI

suggestion

suggestion emotional indicator

ia

UI

belief

belief emotional indicator

i’a

UI

acceptance

acceptance emotional indicator

ie

UI

agreement

agreement emotional indicator

i’e

UI

approval

approval emotional indicator

ii

UI

fear

fear emotional indicator

i’i

UI

togetherness

togetherness emotional indicator

io

UI

respect

respect emotional indicator

i’o

UI

appreciation

appreciation emotional indicator

iu

UI

love

love emotional indicator

i’u

UI

familiarity

familiarity emotional indicator

o’a

UI

pride

pride emotional indicator

o’e

UI

closeness

closeness emotional indicator

oi

UI

complaint

complaint emotional indicator

o’i

UI

caution

caution emotional indicator

o’o

UI

patience

patience emotional indicator

o’u

UI

relaxation

relaxation emotional indicator

ua

UI

discovery

discovery emotional indicator

u’a

UI

gain

gain emotional indicator

ue

UI

surprise

surprise emotional indicator

u’e

UI

wonder

wonder emotional indicator

ui

UI

happiness

happiness emotional indicator

u’i

UI

amusement

amusement emotional indicator

uo

UI

completion

completion emotional indicator

u’o

UI

courage

courage emotional indicator

uu

UI

pity

pity emotional indicator

kei

KEI

emotion question

question about what emotion the other side of the conversation is feeling

L’ewa: A Personal Language

1. Introduction

1. L’wea as A Diary Language

2. Changelog

1. [Unreleased]

2. Phonology and Writing

1. Phonology

1. Consonants

2. Vowels

2. Romanization

3. Phonotactics

4. Writing

3. Morphosyntactic Typology

1. Word Order

2. Morphological Typology

1. Alignment

2. Word Classes

4. Fun with Nouns and Verbs

1. Other Noun Things

2. Pronouns

3. Numbers

4. Negation

5. Verb Forms

6. Modality

7. Explicitly Ending Noun Phrases

8. Color Words

9. Connectives

1. OR

2. AND

3. If and Only If

4. Whether or Not

5. Connective Question

5. Sentence Structure Semantics

1. Independent Clause Structure

2. Questions

1. ma

2. no

3. so

6. Lexicon

1. Word Distinctions

2. Family Words

3. Idioms

7. Conversations

1. Greetings and Farewell

2. Feelings

3. Information Structure

4. Discourse Structure

5. Utterances

6. Formality

8. Dictionary

1. Root Words

2. Particles

1. Title Page