the bakobako script is an alphabet. the four vowels and eight diphthongs have individual glyphs. the six consonants have glyphs, and three more unique glyphs for those that are used as finals. there are seven more unique glyphs for beginning loanwords. the six digits, 0-5, have individual glyphs.
the script is written top left to bottom right. punctuation is not used much, but whitespace is: sentences are terminated with a long space. a circular mark is sometimes used as a bullet point or for asides. a peace mark is frequently used to end chapters or texts.
bakobako romanisation is quite simple. all words are in lower case except for loanwords and the like which are capitalised. loanwords starting with a vowel (pronounced with the /j/ sound) are started with '. all the consonants and vowels are represented in latin script as you'd expect, except for the 'sh' sound which is represented with an 'x' at the start of the syllable a la pinyin, and an 's' at the end. the ng final is written as 'ng'. the 'w' final is written with an 'l'.
here are the consonants: b d k sh n l/w.
syllables are of the form cv(l,n). l is how the romanization writes the w sound at the end of a syllable.
here are the vowels:
high: i
mid: e o
low: a
diphthongs /ie/, /io/, /ia/, /ei/, /oi/, /oa/, /ai/, /ao/ are also allowed for a total of twelve vowel sounds.
stress is placed regularly on the second last syllable. single syllable words may be stressed or unstressed depending on context and surrounding words.
there is very little inflection to speak of. some measure words are class-exclusive. most verbs can take the prefix ke to form the perfect aspect.
be can be appended to words to negate the meaning, as in na "many" and nabe "few".
doubling up a verb forms a noun, as in bako "to speak" and bakobako "speech, language", and dal "to think" and daldal "philosophy".
appending ne to a noun forms a descriptive verb, an adjective. eg sho "water" and shone "to be wet".
verb nominalizer: double up.
ne suffix makes a descriptive verb.
sha suffix is diminutive
do suffix is augmentative
dal suffix refers to a person with that quality, or someone who does that thing
kal prefix refers to a place. kalboka "brothel"
there is one set of personal pronouns
| 1st | bisha |
| 2nd | shi |
| 3rd | di |
it is accepted practice to append na "many" to the end of these to explicitly reperesent we, you all, and they. this tends to only be applied in official contexts or where too much ambiguity would occur otherwise.
| 1st | pl | bishana |
| 2nd | pl | shina |
| 3rd | pl | dina |
a pseudo-obviative is often applied by the appending of nel "other", primarily to the 3rd person. it is not common to see both na and nel applied together.
3rd obv dinelfinally, neda "person" is used as the equivalent of english "one" in formal contexts, but in most writing, it is totally fine to use the first person in a general sense.
this: kido
that: kinel
all demonstratives act as standard nouns.
bakobako has three interrogative pronouns.
subject object verb
badi baki banoEvery noun has a state. The state is a part of the noun. Sometimes two distinct nouns may be separated only by state.
The states are dedi (bone), da (stone), ka (fire), shal (flesh), sacred (wo), water.
Most nouns can be followed by a measure word. If quantity is specified, the quantity comes first. Eg. dedi we shoka del [bone] bean one bowl "one bowl of beans".
when forming polar questions, the question particle "ba" is prepended to a statement.
when forming questions involving an interrogative pronoun, "ba" is prepended and the desired empty space is filled with one of the aforementioned pronouns.
quantifiers come before the measure word, which comes before most nouns.
indefinite pronouns (some, no, all) act as quantifiers.
counting uses base six.
| shoka | sha | kiki | wikabesoka | wika |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
numbers bigger than decimal thirty six are said as "[DIGITS] a b c", where a, b, and c are the three digits making up some large number. but generally, it's not important to express bigger numbers.
the default word order is vso.
it is also common to put the subject followed by a verb, if there is no object - bisha bodo "i am cold".
nouns are preceded by a state word. quantifiers come after the noun. if a quantifier is used, a measure word must also be used.
adjectives and all other modifiers come after the noun but before the quantifier. because most nouns can be used as measure words, they can also have their own modifiers.
bi be bel bo ba bal
di de del do da dal
ki ke kel ko ka kal
shi she shel sho sha shal
ni ne nel no na nal
wi we wel wo wa wal
list of circled numbers: ① ② ③ ④ ⑤ ⑥ ⑦ ⑧ ⑨ ⑩ ⑪ ⑫ ⑬ ⑭ ⑮ ⑯ ⑰ ⑱ ⑲ ⑳ ㉑ ㉒ ㉓ ㉔ ㉕ ㉖ ㉗ ㉘ ㉙ ㉚ ㉛ ㉜ ㉝ ㉞ ㉟ ㊱ ㊲ ㊳ ㊴ ㊵ ㊶ ㊷ ㊸ ㊹ ㊺ ㊻ ㊼ ㊽ ㊾ ㊿