The CBB

I kind of botched the last attempt at this language, so I'm overhauling it and starting a new thread. It's still the same backstory, but the language is going to be changed to better suit my goals. My goals for Kumarian are:
- Look and sound like languages of India (Tamil, Sinhala, Hindi, etc).
- Include a base-20 (vigesimal) numeral system, with numeral classifiers.
- Include noun case and articles
- Mark verbs for evidentiality~mood, aspect, and person
- Develope a lexicon of 150≤ words
- Translate 3 texts of various lengths
This thread will act as a scratchpad and update board, and I would be elated to receive input from y'all. I hope to post soon with the phonology and orthography.

Though I am determined to keep the project a-priori, I have thought of an interesting direction I could take this language. I could make it either a descendant of Tamil, or a divergent Dravidian language. The people of Kumari Nadu were supposedly Tamil.

PHONOLOGY

It should be noted that all Kumarian samples are in Germā's idiolect, and so may not be representative of the rest of the language.

Consonant Inventory
IPA | Romanization | Sinhala Script
/p b t d ʈ ɖ t͡ʃ d͡ʒ k g q~qʰ/ <p b t d ṭ ḍ c j k g q> <ප බ ත ද ට ඩ ච ජ ක ග ඛ>
/m n ɳ ŋ/ <m n ṇ ng> <ම න ණ ඞ>
/s h x/ <s h kh> <ස හ ඝ>
/ɾ/ <r> <ර>
/ʋ j/ <v y> <ව ය>
/l ɭ/ <l ḷ> <ල ළ>

Vowel Inventory
IPA | Romanization | Sinhala Script (Independant | Diacritic)
/i i: u u:/ <i ī u ū> <ඉ ඊ උ ඌ> <ි ී ු* ූ*>
/e e: o o:/ <e ē o ō> <එ ඒ ඔ ඕ> <ෙ ේ ො ෝ>
/a a:/ <a ā> <අ ආ> <Ø ා>
*irregular on ක, ග, ත, and ර

Allophony
• Germā seems to consistently drop nasals at the end of words, nasalizing the previous vowel and lengthening it. This is written in Sinhala as an independant vowel + ඤ්. I.e <takam> = තකඅඤ් /takãː/, from තක + ම්(ඉ), my bowl. Unfortuantely, many grammatical endings are just nasals.
• Germā turns /r/s into /d/s between long vowels. I.e ගමාරීජු <gamārīju> /ɡamaːdiːdʒu/, person from Gamā.

Writing Sample
"අ ණොනුමිඉඤ් සීත් දාවතඅඤ්. අ ණොනුමාජඅඤ් නිඉඤ් චුබීඉඤ් ණේමෙතීඉඤ්."
A ṇonuming sīt ḍāvatang. A ṇonumājang nim cubīm ṇēmetīm.
/a ɳonumĩː siː daːʋatãː | a ɳonumaːdʒãː nĩː tʃubĩː ɳemetĩː/
1 home-1-DEF that regret-1.PFV. 1 home-1-NOM-DEF now-1 happy-1.IPFV live.here-1.IPFV
"I missed my home. Now I am happy where I live."

Your writing system isn’t Tamil; what is it?

eldin raigmore wrote: ↑05 Sep 2020 14:43 Your writing system isn’t Tamil; what is it?

It's the Sinhala writing system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhala_script.