Lesson One

This is Lesson One of Ictil. If you notice ANYTHING wrong with the language, this post, or have an idea for it, DON'T HESITATE TO TELL ME! Languages are a group effort. =3

This first bit is very important. Ictil is a tonal language. That means changing the tone can change the meaning of the word. Like Chinese. But you don't have to worry about that too much. The purpose of the tones is to slightly change the meaning of a word to a similar meaning, but totally different. In English, you would use tones to express an underlying meaning. But some people can't do that - so in Ictil, the meaning isn't hidden in the tones, but rather the tones are placed in front of you in an obvious way.

Ictil has seven tones, like Cantonese:

1 High ^
2 High Falling ^-
3 Middle Rising -^
4 Middle -
5 Middle Falling -_
6 Low Rising _-
7 Low _

In general, the higher tones mean the word is stressed more and the lower tones mean that the word is stressed less.

The word "t'ha" - pronounced like a hard 't' sound immediately followed by a 'hah' sound. This is the word for "good."

T'ha^ = Pretty good
T'ha^-
T'ha-^
T'ha- = Good
T'ha-_
T'ha_-
T'ha_ = The lowest form of good without being considered "bad."

See how that works? The higher tone stresses the point, the middle tone is normal, and the lower tone takes some stress off. And everywhere in between is just for using if you want to be exact.

Now, we all know that there are versions of t'ha that are beyond just "pretty good." So, to reach those, you can add an "-e" (pronounced AY at the end of a word) or "-m" to the ENDING - depending on if the end of the word has a consonant sound or a vowel sound. T'ha ends in a vowel sound, so we want to add an "-m" to the end of it.

T'ham^ = Awesome
T'ham^-
T'ham-^
T'ham- = Excellent
T'ham-_
T'ham_-
T'ham_ = Very good

And there are versions of t'ha beyond even that! So to reach those, you want to add "-em" or "-me" (pronounced MAY at the end of a word) to the ENDING. T'ha would become "T'hame" - t-HAH-may

Now that we've covered t'ha, it's time to venture into the dark side and take a look at negation.

To negate a word, you can add "e-" (pronounced EH) or "m-" to the BEGINNING of a word - depending on if the beginning of the word has a consonant sound or a vowel sound. T'ha begins with a consonant sound, so it becomes Et'ha - eh-t-HAH.

Et'ha^ = Pretty bad
Et'ha^-
Et'ha-^
Et'ha- = Bad
Et'ha-_
Et'ha_-
Et'ha_ = highest form of bad without being considered "good."

Naturally, there are things worse than "pretty bad" - so now you have two options. You can either add "em-" or "me-" (pronounced MEH) at the BEGINNING of the word to add extra negative stress - or you can simply add the regular stress to the end of the word. Both of these have the same effect - it's up to you to choose which you want to use.

Examples of possible synonyms - these patterns work with ANY word you can negate!

Et'ha = Bad
Et'ham = Met'ha
Et'hame = Met'ham
Met'hame = Worst version you can possibly think of (for 'bad' it does NOT mean pure evil - there is another word for that because simply adding extra stress to the et'ha just isn't enough for pure evil)

The words "yes" and "no" may be a smidge confusing. They are what the positive and negative stresses are based on AND the positive and negative stresses can be added to these! SO PAY ATTENTION!

Eh = No
Meh = No (often used in a whiny sense like "Do I have to?" meaning you'll do what they're asking, but you're not going to like it - or something along those lines)
Ehm = Yes

Eh_ is a flat-out "no" as in that's final and you won't listen to ANY protests. Generally, the various tones of eh and meh don't have specific meanings except for the low tone. You just know what they mean. Ehm also doesn't have specific meanings for the tones, except for the high tone which means "of course!" To say "of course not" you would say Mehm^.

Now, as for using the positive and negative stresses, that can be just a smidge confusing - but again, you don't have to worry about the tones too much! We'll start with the word "ehm" - to which you can add positive stress.

Ehme - EH-may
Ehmem - EH-mehm

Often, Ehmem isn't used because when spoken aloud, it can sound like you're adding extra NEGATIVE stress to the word mehm. BE CAREFUL!

DO NOT USE NEGATIVE STRESS ON THE WORD EHM! We have another word for that, it's called EH! =P

Eh and meh can be a bit more confusing than ehm because you can add both positive stress and negative stress to it. So here are some posibilities with these and how to use (or not use) them:

Emeh - EH-meh ----- This word looks a little like ehme, but try pronouncing them both aloud. You'll see they're very different.
Ehm ----- Do NOT use this word! Though gramatically correct, it also means YES!
Ehme ----- Again, do NOT use this word!
Mehm ----- You can go ahead and use this word, but BEWARE the high tone generally means "of course not" and this isn't standard in other tones, so be prepared to be misunderstood.
Mehme - MEH-may ----- This is just fine to use.

Now, you probably need an example concerning how to use emeh and mehme, right? xD Oki doki. In the high tone, these two have a specific meaning. They mean "no way" - as in the answer to a request or question. Emeh and mehme are the SAME THING - emeh is adding "em-" to "eh" and mehme is adding "-me" to to "meh." =P Just so you don't get confused on how those are set up.

By now, you're probably thinking, "Hey, what about a neutral word that is neither positive nor negative?" And if you aren't, well, you are now. So here it is:

Ka - pronounced kah

This word is the neutral word. It is used for confirming something that someone else said (like the word "yeah") or for saying that something isn't good and isn't bad, but is still acceptable (generally speaking).

You can also place "ka" at the end of a negated word - no matter what the last sound is - to form a word that is BETWEEN what the positive and negative words are. Except for et'ha and t'ha.

I hope you enjoy this language - we are working very hard on it.