Ayola

Characteristic Features

Phonetic Alphabet
In Ayola there is a one-to-one correspondence between sounds and letters, i.e. each sound of the language is represented by one letter or diagraph (a diagraph is a pair of letters which together represent a single sound). Click on each symbol (in a blue box) below to hear its pronunciation. Consonant sounds are followed by the neutral vowel (schwa). Each sound is pronounced twice with a pause between to allow the listener to repeat it.
These sounds are in Real Media format. (Click here to use the page with MP3 audio files.)

Ayola achieves phonetic spelling using no accents in the spelling of Ayola words. In a manner similar to many natural languages, each letter in Ayola has a lettter name. Note that similar sounding consonants have different sounding letter names. This feature prevents confusion between sounds when one wishes to spell a word or name aloud. For example, in English, the letter names for the letters m and n sound similar and are often mistaken for one another. In Ayola, this confusion is avoided.
Click here to hear the letter names.

Simple Grammar
Ayola grammar is simple in that it does not have arbitrary inflections such as gender of nouns, redundant inflections such as gender-number-case concord of adjectives with nouns, or other inflections such as case of nouns and person-number concord of verbs with the subject. The meaning of these other inflections is expressed in Ayola in other ways: the case inflection is expressed by either word order or the use of a preposition; the person-number concord of verbs with the subject is expressed by explicit statement of the subject.
Click here to see examples of simplicity in Ayola.

Precise Meaning
In Ayola all words have essentially a single literal meaning. Ambiguities such as those occurring in English (the word 'bridge' means 'a game' or 'a structure') do not exist. For the uninflected words of Ayola, i.e. pronouns, articles, connectives, as well as some prepositions and adverbs, this feature is achieved by assigning a unique word to each meaning. For the inflected words, i.e. nouns, adjectives, verbs, and most adverbs and prepositions, this feature is achieved by assigning a unique root and word ending to each meaning. Prefixes and suffixes are also assigned distinct meanings. They are added to inflected word roots when necessary.
Click here to see a list of uninflected words in English that are disambiguated in Ayola.
Click here to see examples of roots that are disambiguated in Ayola.
Click here to see a list of prefixes, suffixes, and word endings in English that are disambiguated in Ayola.

Familiar Vocabulary
Wherever possible, Ayola uses a word which is common to at least several of the major Western European languages and is generally internationally recognizeable.
Click here to see examples of familiar vocabulary words in Ayola.