Terms and Conditions of Use

I am providing this language free of charge as open source for anyone that would like to use it. Use of this language will indicate your implicit consent to the following terms and conditions:

1. You will use the language in accordance with the language rules as specified.
2. Any new words you add or create based on this language will be added to the Dictionary worksheet and submitted back to its creator, Adam K. Watts, for continued use by the community.
3. The name of the language will not be changed or replaced in your works of fiction to another name. However, in lieu of stating an actual name it can be referred to as "common tongue" or "trade tongue" or similar description.
4. You will not attempt to take credit for this language and any indication you provide for its factual origin will be to its original creator, Adam K. Watts.
5. Letters and symbols for this language will be used as provided. If you choose to create a font using these letters and symbols, you agree to provide that font back to its creator, Adam K. Watts, so that it can be used by the community, including any additional symbols you may create.

Downloads

• Right click here and select "save target as" to download the dictionary as it currently stands.
• Right click here and select "save target as" to download the font.
• Right click here and select "save target as" to download the word document with the key to using the font.

General Information

The written language of Valikari is logical and phonetic in the sense that every Valikari letter represents one sound only. Every sound used in Valikari is represented by a single letter.

What does this mean?

In English, many letters represent more than one sound. For example, the letter C can sound like an S or like a K. (Perversely, it has no sound of its own.) This means that there are two letters that sound like an S and, if you count Q, three letters that sound like a K. In Valikari, you have one character that sounds like an S and one character that sounds like a K.

Also, in English there are sounds represented by multiple letters that are not a culmination of the sounds of the individual letters. In Valikari, the sound for the English CH is represented by a single character. As is SH, TH (hard,) TH (soft) and NG. Since multiple letters do not assume a different sound, successive vowels are pronounced individually. So, "surielin" is pronounced soo-ree-ay-leen.

The Valikari Language utilizes 34 unique sounds and therefore, the alphabet contains 34 unique characters: 9 vowels and 25 consonants. The number of vowels may surprise you until you realize that in English, the letter A alone represents at least 4 separate vowel sounds.

When writing Valikari words with English characters, it will be necessary to try to spell it phonetically in English. Since some of the sounds don't exist in English, a bit of flexibility is required, such as using JH for the soft J sound. Since this sound so closely resembled a ZH I opted to only use one of them in the language.

The script at the top of the webpage says "Valikari Surielin." Surielin [su-ri-el-in] is the Valikari work for "language."

I did create a true-type font using the Valikari alphabet (but the file stopped working some time ago.) Since we only have 26 letters in our alphabet (actually 52, since we have upper and lower case letters) as opposed to the Valikaran 34, you cannot blithely type away with the new font and have it work for you. In Valikari, there is no difference between upper and lower case letters. In many cases, using upper or lower case would produce the same result using this font. However, some of the additional letters would be assigned assigned to upper case keys; this can cause problems if your autocorrect capitalized words without you realizing it.

Another option would have been to incorporate pronunciation symbols for the English characters and have them specifically correspond to the Valikari character. I elected not to do this since most people don't know how to utilize pronunciation symbols while typing. If some scholarly type wishes at some later date to define the Valikari sounds using English characters and pronunciation symbols to correct my English spelling of Valikari words I have no objection.

Language Rules

The following are some of the established language rules for Valikari:

Pronouns and Masculine/Feminine:

One difference to note between Valikari and English is that while the language will allow you to specify gender, Valikari also provides non-gender specific personal pronouns. If one needs to specify "that male person" or "that female person" he/she may do so. However, the Valikari word su simply means "that person" without regard to gender, replacing most instances of "he" or "she." This avoids the clumsy "he/she" method of showing that either or both genders are indicated. This attitude is carried forward and there are no distinctive masculine or feminine forms for words.

When combining roots or adding prefixes/suffixes to create new words: when doing so creates a double letter, the letters may be separated by an apostrophe.

Verb handling:

Noun handling:

Plural: se-
Possessive: (consonant) -i or (vowel) –ri

Adverbs

"-ly" equivalents are not used. Instead of adding this suffix, the word is preceded by the word so, which means "with."

Adjectives

To formulate an adjective from an existing word, add the suffix -kash.

Sentence Structure

Sentences follow the general subject + verb + object sequence. Passive voice allows for an object + verb sequence.

Utilizing verb tenses we can get the following constructions:

Articles:

Articles are usually implied, but may be stated for clarification or emphasis. Usually a singular noun is sufficient without stating "a" or "the."

Questions

Dzu can be used as a prefix to indicate a question. It can also be placed at the beginning of a sentence (followed by a comma) to indicate that a question is being asked.

However, since forms of the verb "to be" indicate the subject of the verb, the subject is normally omitted in all but the most formal spoken conversation:

Dzu al doran ko bo doran.
question + are/be (you) + think + as + am/are (I) + think

"Who are you?" could be correctly stated in either of two ways:

• "Dzudza'al?"
  "what person" + are/be (you)


Or for emphasis:


• "Dzudza al su?"
  "what person" + are/be (you) + you

Pronunciation:

Pronunciation is most similar to Japanese or Spanish. Some of the sounds do not exist in one or the other of the languages.

To Transform a Word Into a Noun

• Suffix affects the word being transformed: -ir
• Suffix affects object: -ira
• Prefix affects subject: ir-
• Suffix refers to all of the above: -ijh

Examples using ssho, which means "to look or see."

• Sshoir means "vision or sight."
• Sshoira means "a sight or a vision. Something seen."
• Irssho means "something that sees or provides vision or sight; visionary; eye."
• Sshoijh refers to the one seeing, the act of seeing, that which is seen, and the inter-relationship of the three. It can also imply that the action is going in both directions. A bo sshoijh can be taken to mean "we see each other."

Compound word structure:

Words may be combined to form new words. Sequence of root components is more of a sound issue than a grammatical one. How further adding of suffixes/prefixes affects the new word combination must be taken into account. This is particularly important when one of the words has both a noun and verb form, as is the case with osoveran,shown below in noun form as osoveranira as opposed to veranosoira or veraniraoso.

Jhemari:	Today
Jhe:	Day	+	Mari:	This
Osoveranira:	Book
Oso:	Big; large.	+	Veranira:	Something written.

Sounds and the Alphabet

The charts below show which keyboard values are assigned to the Valikari characters and the sounds that the characters represent. Above each Valikari character is the key to which the character value is assigned. Below the Valikari character is a pronunciation hint. Note that some of the characters are assigned to more than one keyboard key.

You will note that Valikari utilizes neither silent letters nor diphthongs. Every letter receives full pronunciation.

Vowels:

Consonants:

Numbers and Symbols: