Elyeb Sudtub wa'Wajhwa-a tza'Rokbeigalmki ta'Web-a

Welcome to the Home of Rokbeigalmki on the Web

Sights and Sounds of the Language

Verb-Noun Roots, and What You Can Do With Them

The Long And Short of Prepositions

An Example: The Babel Text

Sights and Sounds of the Language

Rokbeigalmki has a hefty inventory of sounds - 29 consonantal letters and 16 vowels. Each consonant sound, vowel and diphthong in the Rokbeigalmki language has an individual letter representing it in the Rokbeigalmki-Ziifer script, and one sound has two letters, but only for grammatical reasons.

Because the Ziifer font i made for the R-Z script only exists on my own computer, i'm only using the Latin alphabet equivalents on this page. However, you can now download it! The letters in brackets at the beginnings of the explanations are the Kirshenbaum IPA-ASCII symbols for the International Phonetic Alphabet characters representing the sound.

Consonants:

v - [v] the same as in English vet

b - [b] the same as in English bed

p - [p] the same as in English pigeon

f - [P] voiceless bilabial fricative, similar to the English f but pronounced by blowing between your lips instead of between your upper lip and lower teeth

dh - [D] the th sound in English this and the soft d in Spanish ciudad

d - [d] the same as in English do

t - [t] the same as in English tell

th - [T] the th sound in English think

jh - [Z] the z sound in English azure and the j in French je

j - [dZ] the same as in English jet, but pronounced as one sound, not two like in adjunct

tz - [ts] the ts at the end of English rats and the Hebrew letter tzadi

ch - [tS] the same as in English chicken, pronounced as one sound, not two like in the name Tshernihhovsky

zh - [Z] the same sound as jh above

z - [z] the same as in English zebra

s - [s] the same as in English sea

sh - [S] the same as in English shell

r - [*] a flapping r, like in Spanish pero, not trilled like perro. Similar to the tt in American butter

l - [l] the same as in English like

h - [h] the same as in English here

hh - [H, barred-h] the guttural sound in Arabic naHíf and the Sephardic pronounciation of the initial consonant in Hebrew hanukkah. the voiceless pharyngeal fricative

m - [m] the same as in English mother

y - [j] the same as in English yo!

k - [k] the same as in English king

kh - [x] the Ashkenazic pronounciation of Hebrew hanukkah, the ch in Bach

n - [n] the same as in English no

ng - [n"] a uvular ng sound, farther back in the mouth than the sound in English ring

g - [g] the same as in English get

gh - [Q] the sound of the Arabic letter ghayn and the soft g in Spanish agua, the velar voiced fricative

w - [w] the same as in English wall

Vowels:

a - [a] the same as in English father and Spanish hasta

aa - [&] the common pronounciation of English bat

ai - [e@] the vowel in English bale and the Long Island pronounciation of grass

au - [O] the vowel in English ore

ii - [aj] the vowel in English ice

i - [i] the same as in Spanish sí and English bee

ih - [I] the same as in English is

ei - [ej] the same as in English ray and Spanish béisbol

u - [u] the same as in English rule and Spanish jugar

oo - [U] the same as in English foot

uh - [V] the same as in English but

e - [E] the vowel in English pet or Spanish ser

o - [o] the initial vowel in Spanish ojalá, or as in English bone

ao - [au] the first vowel in the name Mao Zedong

ou - [&u] the sound in the English exclamation ow!, not the stereotypical Canadian about

oi - [Oj] the initial vowel in the exclamation oy vey!

note: English here means the Language, not British. If there is a difference between the British and American pronounciation of a vowel, it's the American one.

In addition to all the letters, Rokbeigalmki also has three diacritics, shown here over the letter A: an accent (á), a tilde (ã), and a circumflex - commonly referred to by me as a "smitchik". (â).

The smitchik is by far the most common. A circumflex is placed over the first letter in each part of a construct-case compound, as can be seen below. A construct-case compound is Rokbeigalmki's equivalent of saying Steg's horse or schoolhouse, as opposed to saying something like the horse of Steg or the house of school. The smitchiks show the reader that what looks like one long word, such as ^gaheish^tzraap, is actually a combination of the two words gaheish and tzraap. By the way, ^gaheish^tzraap means village elder, the contracted version of gaheish tza'tzraap-a, elder of the village. The stresses in words which are part of a construct compound are placed on the last syllable of the word, and the vowel is half-lengthened. The example above can be written redundantly with the accents, ^gahéísh^tzrááp, [ga'he:jS 'ts*&:p]. Circumflexes are also used to mark vowels in foreign words which cannot be expressed in the Rokbeigalmki alphabet (see next paragraph for the consonants).

The tilde is the next common. A tilde is placed on top of vowels that are meant to be time-lengthened. Instead of pronouncing a vowel for what can be considered a normal speech "beat", it is pronounced doubled - but without a stop in between them. Tildes are also used on top of consonants to represent a consonant sound that is not found in Rokbeigalmki, but is part of a word or name from a different language. For instance, the Semitic `ayin consonant, the voiced pharyngeal fricative, is represented by a tilde'd hh, it's voiceless counterpart which exists in Rokbeigalmki.

The accent is also about as common as a tilde. An accent only appears in a two-syllable word where the first vowel is substantially stronger than the second, and therefore becomes half-lengthened, for instance the combination e-ih in méfihs, ['mE:PIs], "moon". Also, accents are used to mark the accented syllables in names, foreign words, and in Rokbeigalmki words with ambiguous accentuation that could affect its meaning - for instance, ^ris^peiwang-tzat is always marked whether it is ^ris^peiwáng-tzat ("the study of thinking"-ness), where the second part of the construct-compound is peiwang, or ^ris^peiwang-tzát ("the study of thinkingness" = psychology), where the second part of the compound is peiwang-tzat.

For some reason, i've never been satisfied with how Rokbeigalmki looks on paper. I've gone back and forth between different representations - versions of the original Ziifer alphabet as well as different ways of transliterating it into 'natlang' (natural language) alphabets - both latin and hebrew.
So here are a few examples of Rokbeigalmki written in the different ways:
(the sentence says "i wrote this in the rokbeigalmki language")

The Original Ziifer-Script of ool-Nuziiferoi

Verb-Noun Roots, and What You Can Do With Them

In Rokbeigalmki, nouns are verbs, and verbs are nouns. The words for [to] place is the same as a placement - netz. The word for a description, sous, is the same as [to] describe. The only difference is the addition of the preposition wa', to.

Conjugation of verbs is incredibly simple. All you do is add on a subject-tense prefix to the front of the verb-noun.

All words relating to a single concept are built from the same verb-noun root - verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs. An example:

telos : all by itself, the root reverts to a noun, fear.

telos-a : there is no separate indefinite article in Rokbeigalmki, but the definite article -a, pronounced with a glottal stop [?a] turns (a) fear into the fear.

telosm : fears - The suffix -m pluralizes a noun.

wa'telos : to + (a) fear = to fear, just like in English.

eze-telos : (you singular) fear! - The subject-tense complex ez you (s.) + e imperative.

eze'nyih-telos : (you singular) don't fear! - The negative infix 'nyih- turns the verb fear! into the "not" form, don't fear!. The other infixes are 'tih-, positive-intensive, (I do fear!), and 'kih-, possibility (I might fear).

telos-tzat : When you add the verb-noun tzat (existance) to the end of a regular verb-noun, it broadens the scope of the normal noun. telos is the plain old emotion of fear, but telos-tzat is the concept of fear itself.

(wa')datelos : The prefix da- turns a simple or reflexive verb-noun, like to fear, into a causative verb-noun, in this case to scare. This new verb-noun is a normal word, just like the word it was spawned from.

wa'datelos-ad : to be frightened. The suffix -ad, the inverse of the prefix da-, means the opposite of it - instead of scaring someone else, in this example, you yourself get scared by someone else!

suddatelos : Frightening, scary. The adjective prefix sud- is added onto the front of the verb-noun. The other degrees of this adjective are saddatelos, scarier, and siddatelos, scariest.

elikuh-telos : The prefix elikuh- is the adverb prefix, fitting over the sud- of the adjective. Adverbs also have degrees - the equivalents of sad- and sid- are elikaa- and elikih-.

datelosh : By just taking the verb-noun root itself, and softening the final consonant - or if that isn't possible, adding a dh to the end - turns the verb to frighten into a "doer" noun, a frightener, a scary person.

^telos^sughelm : The ^s signify this compound as a construct compound, fear of monsters. In Rokbeigalmki-Ziifer script, the "smitchiks" are placed over the first letter in each word, instead of in front of them. Since telos simply means fear, and sughelm simply means monsters, the circumflexes tell the reader that when spoken the accents are always placed on the final syllable of each word in the compound : telóssughélm.

Chart of all Subject-Tense Complexes

The Long and Short of Prepositions

Rokbeigalmki has 16 prepositions, each of which have a "simple", or short, form, as well as an extended, "long", form. All prepositions consist of a single consonant followed by an ending. The short ending is _a' (the apostraphe is just there because short prepositions are attached to the following noun/verb, and something has to be there to distinguish them), and the long ending is _aur. Long forms are used in two places - when two prepositions are combined, the second is lengthened, and the long form (with the definite article -a added) is the noun form of the prepositional concept.

The 16 prepositions are:

ba' - between, without touching any/either of the surrounding objects

fa' - for , in order to

ta' - in, completely inside

ja' - without

tza' - of

sa' - with , using , by means of , next to

sha' - (marks a noun as the direct object of a verb)

ra' - outside of, completely outside

la' - on top of, touching the surface

ha' - (question particle), signifying that a sentence is a question

ya' - by, used with passive verbs to show who did the action

ka' - like , as

na' - under, but touching the underside the way that la' touches the top

nga' - from

ga' - (relative preposition), similar to she- in Hebrew or que in Spanish

wa' - to, used just like in English, both as a direction and to form verbs' infinitives

Some common examples of compound prepositions are:

nga'taur - out of, literally "from inside"

wa'waur - towards , in the direction of

fa'gaur - so that

There is also one non-preposition that can be connected to a preposition in order to form more comlex prepositions - dratz, a verb-noun which means to pass. Compounds which use dratz include ta'dratz, through; nga'dratz, beyond; and la'dratz, over (with regards to movement).

An Example: The Babel Text

Now HEAR the Babel Text in Rokbeigalmki, thanks to RealAudio!

The Babel text is a biblical passage, from the book of Bereishith (Genesis), in the parashah Noahh. It talks about the period after the Deluge, when all humanity lived together in harmony and unity, but they had an unfortunate flaw - hubris. They decided to build a tower that would reach to the heavens, and to "fight with God". As a 'punishment', God caused them all to speak different languages, which is why this is such a popular text for comparing languages. Other natlangs and conlangs can be found at Nik Taylor's Babel Text Page.

Notes about the translation:

In the actual Rokbeigalmki-Ziifer script (see above), the circumflex symbol, a.k.a. "smitchik" is placed on top of the following letter, and the tilde symbol is placed on top of the preceding letter. I.e. ^a = â, and a~ = ã. Since these symbols appear on top of consonants and diphthongs, i've decided to represent them here uniformly as separate from the letter, and not mix-and-match actual diacritic'd characters with non-diacritic-able characters. (except for the â, explaned here:

I translated this directly from the original Hebrew text. Therefore, the words bâvel, perek~, k~edem, and shihnhh~âr are direct Hebrew-to-Rokbeigalmki transliterations, and should be pronounced as if there were no diacritics - the diacritics mean different things than they do in normal Rokbeigalmki words.

daguvdhab-a tza'bâvel
nga'thes-a "bihreishith", "noahh" - perek~ 11:1-9

1. uzu-tezat ^ilu^amal-a khada lesna, i guvdhabm sudzudm.
2. i uzu-tezat tawa ga'uhmzu-mogaur nga'k~edem (cha~razd-a tyekt-a), i uhmzu-ko~z sudfal jeimla ta'amal-a tza'shihnhh~âr, i uhmzu-waj pu.
3. i uhmzu-guvdhab, mald wa'yu-a, "ei! amzii-kek kekm, i amzii-dazek!" i ka'pyet kekm-a fa'uhmsh umzú, i duwal-a uzu-tezat fa'uhmsh ka'mludh.
4. i uhmzu-guvdhab "ei! amzii-bolok fa'ailtzma sha'tzraap, i sha'^waju^goiyat ga'ghalu-a tzu-a ta'marom-a uzíí, i amzii-waz fa'ailtzma sem - fa'gaur nyeng amzii-kark la'^laur^ilu^amal-a".
5. i uhzu-jalag hashém fa'waur kheza~ sha'tzraap-a i sha'^waju^goiyat-a ga'maldm-a uhmzu-bolok.
6. i uhzu-guvdhab hashém, "tii khada amil, i khada lesna uzoi-tzat fa'^ilu^uhmsh - i dhu uzu-diiel uhmshu-waz, i taz nahao uzii'nyih-daleghiid uhmsh nga'waz-a tza'ilu ga'uhmzii-dapeiwang wa'balg.
7. ei! amzii-jalag i amzii-danajou pu sha'lesna-a tzmuh-a, fa'gaur uhmzii'nyih-thule~ mald sha'lesna-a tza'yu-a".
8. i uhzu-dakark hashém uhmsh nga'pu wa'^laur^ilu^amal-a - i uhmzu-tep nga'^bolok^tzraap-a.
9. nga'gaur dhaz uhzu-dasyem ush "bâvel" - nga'gaur pu uhzu-danajou hashém sha'^lesna^ilu^amal-a, i nga'pu uhzu-dakark uhmsh hashém wa'^laur^ilu^amal-a.

the telling of bavel
from the book "breishith", "noahh" - pereq (chapter) 11:1-9

1. the entirety of the world was one tongue, and few statements.
2. and it was when they migrated from qedem (the east / the ancient times), and they found a wide valley in the land of Shin`ar, and they settled there.
3. and they said, one to the other, "hey! we'll make bricks, and ignite [fire]!" and as stone the bricks for them [were], and the clay was for them as glue.
4. and they said "hey! we'll build for ourselves a village, and a tower (lit. house of tallness) that its head in the heavens will [be], and we'll make for ourselves a name - so that we will not be scattered over the surface of the entire land.
5. and Hashém descended to view the village and the tower that the humans made.
6. and Hashém said, "there is one people, and one tongue exists for all of them, and that caused that they did [this], and now nothing will prevent them from the doing of all that they plan to do evil.
7. hey! we'll descend and we'll mix there their tongue, so that they will not hear-and-understand one the tongue of the other".
8. and Hashém scattered them from there to the surface of the entire land - and they ceased from the building of the village.
9. because of this [Hashém?] named it "Bavel", because there Hashém mixed the tongue of the entire land, and from there Hashém scattered them to the surface of the entire land.

This Scattered Tongues site belongs to Stephen "Steg" Belsky.
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this webpage created haphazardly by Stephen "Steg" Belsky, copyright 1998. last updated 5/24/1999 - 10 Sivan, 5759