| Guosa | |
| Nativename: | Guosa |
| Fam1: | constructed language |
| Fam2: | international auxiliary language |
| Creator: | Alex Igbineweka |
| Created: | 1965 |
| Setting: | intended for use in West Africa |
| Posteriori: | a posteriori language, derived primarily from Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo. |
| Iso2: | none |
| Iso3: | qgs |
| Iso3comment: | (local use) |
| Ietf: | art-x-guosa (local use) |
| Notice: | IPA |
| Glotto: | none |
Guosa is a constructed interlanguage originally created by Alex Igbineweka in 1965. It was designed to be a combination of the indigenous languages of Nigeria and to serve as a lingua franca to West Africa.[1]
Guosa draws the bulk of its vocabulary from Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo, either taken directly or made from a combination of words from these languages.[2] English also provides many of the more technical terms, either directly or through one of the aforementioned African languages. Additionally, several words were produced a priori via sound symbolism, e.g. Artificial languages: meeh "sheep", Artificial languages: yanmu-yanmu "mosquito", and Artificial languages: wuam "eat".
The different parts of speech are often derived from specific languages. Most concrete nouns are derived from Hausa, while verbs and abstracts are derived from Igbo or Yoruba. Additionally, words from all three source languages are often fused to create a word that resembles all three. For example, the Guosa word Artificial languages: méni "what" is derived from Hausa Hausa: menini, Igbo Igbo: gini, and Yoruba Yoruba: kini, all meaning "what".[3]
The exact phonological values or amount of distinct phonemes in Guosa is unknown. The consonant system is closest to that of Standard Igbo, but with a hard distinction between nasal consonants and plosives that that language lacks, and even adds prenasalized stops. It also adds the /l r w j/ of Yoruba and Hausa, but lacks the glottalized consonants of the latter.
| Labial | Alveolar | Postalveolar/Palatal | Velar | Labiovelar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | (pronounced as /link/) | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Stop/Affricate | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| (ᵐp) | (ⁿt) | (ᵑ͡ᵐk͡p) | ||||||
| pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Fricative | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Rhotic | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||
| Short vowels | Long vowels | Nasal vowels | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Back | Front | Back | Front | Back | ||
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /iː/ | pronounced as /uː/ | (pronounced as /ĩ/) | (pronounced as /ũ/) | |
| Close-mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /eː/ | pronounced as /oː/ | (pronounced as /ẽ/) | (pronounced as /õ/) | |
| Open | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /aː/ | (pronounced as /ã/) | ||||
It is unknown if there are diphthongs in Guosa; all vowels could be pronounced as separate syllables, or several vowels could form diphthongs. The phonology of Yoruba, however, suggests that Guosa vowels do not form diphthongs, as almost all the words with adjacent vowels come from Yoruba, in which all vowels are pronounced separately.
There are three basic tones in Guosa: high, mid, and low; there are also two contour tones: low-rising and high-falling. Mid is left unmarked and is seemingly the default tone, high is written with an acute ⟨◌́⟩, low with a grave ⟨◌̀⟩. On short vowels the low-rising is written with a caron ⟨◌̌⟩ and high-falling with a circumflex ⟨◌̂⟩. With long vowels, the contour tones are split across the two vowels. With long vowels, the contour tones are written as two separate diacritics.
Elision takes place when two of the same vowels would be adjacent, or with certain grammatical particles. For example, when the plural marker é is placed before a word beginning with a vowel: é ómóntàkélé → émóntàkélé "little children". This elision can be written with an apostrophe when the two vowels are the same: ji inang → ji'nang "twenty four". It can also be written as an apostrophe when the elision spans two words that are not particles: sòngí ìsóngà → sòngí 'sóngà "sing a song".
A syllable in Guosa is generally of the form Uncoded languages: (C)(G)V(C), though more specialized loanwords may have the structure Uncoded languages: (C)(C)(C)V(C).
The Guosa alphabet contains 23 single letters, and several digraphs. The letters ⟨q⟩ and ⟨x⟩ are not used, and the letter ⟨c⟩ only appears in the digraph ⟨ch⟩. There used to be two vowel letters that seem to have almost completely disappeared from the current draft of the language: ⟨ẹ⟩ and ⟨ọ⟩. Other than these abandoned letters, diacritics are only used to mark the tone of vowels. The digraph ⟨ng⟩ represents /ᵑg/ word-initially and possibly word-medially, but word-finally it represents /ŋ/
| Letter | IPA | |
|---|---|---|
| a | pronounced as /link/ | |
| b | pronounced as /link/ | |
| d | pronounced as /link/ | |
| e | pronounced as /link/ | |
| f | pronounced as /link/ | |
| g | pronounced as /link/ | |
| h | pronounced as /link/ | |
| i | pronounced as /link/ | |
| j | pronounced as /link/ | |
| k | pronounced as /link/ | |
| l | pronounced as /link/ | |
| m | pronounced as /link/ | |
| n | pronounced as /link/ | |
| o | pronounced as /link/ | |
| p | pronounced as /link/ | |
| r | pronounced as /link/ | |
| s | pronounced as /link/ | |
| t | pronounced as /link/ | |
| u | pronounced as /link/ | |
| v | pronounced as /link/ | |
| w | pronounced as /link/ | |
| y | pronounced as /link/ | |
| z | pronounced as /link/ |
The confirmed digraphs are:
| Digraph | IPA | |
|---|---|---|
| ch | pronounced as /link/ | |
| gb | pronounced as /link/ | |
| gh | /pronounced as /link// | |
| kh | /pronounced as /link// | |
| kp | pronounced as /link/ | |
| ng | /pronounced as /link//, /ᵑk/ | |
| sh | pronounced as /link/ |
Guosa is an isolating language with subject–verb–object word order. Most grammatical meaning is expressed through particles that precede the words they modify, such as é (plural), ng (present progressive), lá (perfective aspect), and kà (volitive). There are no articles. Adjectives follow the noun. There is no grammatical gender or noun class system. Guosa is generally prepositional.
Some Guosa pronouns, unlike the rest of the words in the language, change depending on whether they are the subject or object. Animacy is not distinguished in pronouns, but plural is, and gender is distinguishable, albeit it is optional and only makes the distinction between female and male/neuter. The following is a known list of pronouns. Some of them are defined ambiguously, so the exact pronouns are unknown.
| subject | object/genitive | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st person singular | mò (I) | mí (me/mine) | ||
| 2nd person singular | o (you, thou) | yín (you/your, thee/thy) | ||
| 3rd person singular | masculine/neuter | ó (he, it) | ya (him/his, it/its) | |
| feminine | ta (she) | ta (she/her) | ||
| 1st person plural | àwá (we) | |||
| 2nd person plural | ee (you all) | éyín (you all/all of your) | ||
| 3rd person plural | ha, fa, su (they) | ha, fa, su (they, them) | ||
Adjectives and adverbs are not separate classes in Guosa and are jointly called descriptors, following whatever they modify. Some descriptors only act as adjectives or adverbs, however.
In Guosa there are four regular degrees of comparison. The word jù "more" is used to form a comparative from an adjective: rámá "good" → rámá jù "better". The superlative simply combines the adverb khà "very" with jù: rámá jù khà "best" (lit. very more good). Finally, there is a forth degree of comparison above superlative. Though the superlative might indicate the highest of value in a certain group, the degree indicated by the category higher than the superlative shows that the indicated noun is the absolute best in its entire category; this is done with the khàkáa: rubi "bad" → rubi jù khàkáa "the very worst".
In Guosa, all verbs have one form; there is no conjugation. There is a copula, wù, but it is only used with a predicate noun. With predicate adjectives however, wù is not used, and the adjective behaves more like a verb. Compare the sentences mò wù mámbézè "I am a king" with mò rámá "I am well".
There are several particles that modify the tense, aspect, and mood of verbs. These particles usually precede the verbs they modify, but the particle lá follows the verb instead.[4]
The particle lá is used in a slightly different way, creating an adjective that functions similarity to an active past participle. This form can also take a direct object.
Guosa has a base ten number system.[5] The cardinal numerals are:
The multiples of ten are derived by shortening the first ten numbers.
The number multiples of one hundred are created by using the reduplicated gogo root. These numbers are not treated as compounds, unlike the number 11–99.
The ordinal numbers are formed by using the preposition nke.
Guosa uses a couple particles to derive words from others. For example:
ò - agent, person characterized by the root. In the plural, this is è.
ì - forms both the noun and adjective from a verbal or other noun root:
Much of the word derivation in Guosa is done using just these two particles.
Guosa lessons have been given at the University of Abuja.[6] An AI-powered automated interface to translate text from English into Guosa, is also available online.[7]
There is also a wiki in Guosa, created by Vicente Costalago in July 2023 with the help of Alex Igbineweka.[8]
Guosa has been criticized for having a lack of guiding principles in its design, arbitrarily selecting its words from a few Nigerian languages, rather than proportionally and methodically selecting its vocabulary from a larger variety of Nigeria's languages.[9]