Changes between Beta and Gamma
Here is a quick overview of changes since the Public Beta version of Toaq on http://toaq.org/:
- Sounds and spelling:
- An update to the tones: the ǎ tone for relative clauses is now "rising glottal", and it is spelled ä. The ã tone for adverbs is now "falling glottal".
- There are new consonants z /d͡z/ and nh /ɲ/. There is a new vowel y /ə/.
- There are some new syllable endings, like uoı. They aren't fully set in stone yet.
- Syllables may start with an unwritten glottal stop, like elū (elephant). Within a word it's written with an apostrophe: elū'āı.
- Vocabulary:
- The interjections ha, hıa, hue are gone. Future interjections will probably look like: á, è, m̄.
- A few common words have moved: toaq (language) is now zu. deoq (talk) is now koy. suo (broken) is now zuy.
- The quantifiers update:
- Quantifiers now precede a falling-tone predicate phrase: sa rảı instead of sa ráı.
- sa kủnē binds a variable that may be referred back to using kúnē.
- do (the special variable name word) is no longer used, because every word can act like a variable name.
- baq is now a quantifier. baq pỏq means "people", the kind, rather than "a person" or "some people".
- hoı ("the aforementioned…") is now a quantifier.
- The Small Grammar Update:
- Adverbs no longer work like sủaq dẽ = dẻ sûaq. Instead they just embellish the assertion (like sủaq, na ru dẻ hôq).
- The new pronoun system:
- Miscellanea #2:
- lu now works the same in every tone (it didn't quite before), and always binds hoa.
- la now starts a declaration the way ma starts a question. The fate of "old la" is undecided.
- Instead of lû, say lâ now.
- Miscellanea #3:
- ju takes a full sentence.
- lu is terminated by ky, and relative/content clauses are terminated by cy.