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Babyish languages

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Babyish languages are a set of artificial languages from a child story called "Stories in Babycasèny", which can be viewed as a pidgin of Cantonese and English.

Babyish languages can basically be classified into two branches:

  • Babyish - characterised by its 5 vowels system (ä and ö are considered part of a and o)
  • Sheepness - besides a, e, i, o and u, they considered schwa as the 6th vowel and coded separatedly, while Babyish will distribute them among the 5 vowels as short vowels. For each of the branch, there are further sub-branches, differed by the suffices and articles used in sentences.

Babyish has its own characters, being some geometric shapes, but was not used beyond illustration. It is transcripted in two ways:

Since Babyish is a pidgin of Cantonese, some words are tonal and require indication of tones. Tonal marks from pinyin is borrowed for tone indication, with an additional mark of "dot below" in indicate "yang" tones.

Characters used in Babyish

Babyish used these characters:

Vowels

VowelsIPAtransliterationSpecial note
Aaaà = /ɐ/ in IPA
Äæae
Eɛeè = /ə/ in IPA
Iiiì = /ɨ/ in IPA
Oɔoò = /o/ in IPA
Öœoe
Uuuù = /ʌ/ in IPA
Üyue

Babyish does not have diphthongs, so when one encounters two vowels being placed together, they are pronounced separately.

Consonants

ConsonantsIPAtransliterationSpecial note
Bpb
Pp'p
Mmm
Fff
Dtd
Tt't
Nnn
Lll
Gkg
Kk'k
Ŋŋng
Ĥxkh
Jʤj
Čch
Rrr
Hhh
zh
Ĉtʂ'cz
Ŝʂ;sz
Ȓʅrh
Ztsz
Cts'c
SssSometimes Ç is used to represent "S" sound
Yjy

Note:

  • /ʨ/, /ʨ'/, /ɕ/ can be written as either "JI", "QI", "XI" or "ZI", "CI" or "SI". The former was the older way to write, and it is proper transcription in Putonghua, but that will confuse /ʨ/ with /ʤ/.

Tones

  • Tones: macron for long vowels, acute, hacek, grave, dot below.
Tone sign Tone value Tone value in Cantonese Tone value in Mandarin
(no sign) 33 or 55 yin ping or Tone 1 yin ping
¯ (macron) 33 or 55
but longer duration
(no equivalent) (no equivalent)
´ (acute) 24 yin shang (Tone 2) or yang shang (Tone 5) rising tone
(hacek) 22 yin qu (Tone 3) or
yang qu (Tone 6)
` (grave) short vowels or 51 (no equivalent) qu sheng
. (dot below) 11 yang ping (Tone 4) (no equivalent)

Some sample text of Babyish

Vocabularies

English Babyish Origin
Cat Uzaza / Miao Original / Onomotopaeic
Dog Azaza / Wou Original / Onomotopaeic
Rabbit Zaza / Déng Original
Sheep Me Onomotopaeic
Panda Siongmiao Mandarin Chinese
Fish Ör Original
Tortoise (or turtle) Wuggwài Cantonese
not yet mǐ- Cantonese
full (after meal) báo Cantonese
hungry (after meal) mǐbáo Cantonese (= "mǐ-" not yet + "báo")
used Yused English
not used Mǐyused Cantonese+English (= "mǐ-" not yet + "yused")
Elder Brother (le) gor Cantonese
Younger Brother (le) sálou Cantonese
Elder Sister (la) sis English "sis" is not pronounced as /sis/, but is pronounced as /dzit/ instead, a pattern occurred in Korean as well
Younger Sister (la) mui Cantonese
Father Baba Cantonese
Mother Mama / Mami Cantonese
Water Sui Cantonese
Clear water Nanasui from "sui"
Tea Cya Japanese (Cantonese)
Tea for guest Oucya Japanese
Tea for sheep Meorcya derived from "me"+"oucya"

Famous Literatures in Babyish

  • "Sheepness stories" series (Yöŋmàn gusi)
  • "The Hero: New R Little Bear" (Sun R xiuhung daihùp)

External link