I'm starting to work on my first conlang "Creole Japanese"
It's inspired by the historical Japanese spoken in places like Hawaii, the Bonin Islands, Yokohama, and Okinawa
where there's contact with English and other languages
Quick overview of Creole Japanese
Retains Japanese phonology
Retains most features of Japanese grammar such as SOV order
Tentatively thinking to retain conjugation Simplified conjugations of adjectives and verbs
Simplified particles, politeness levels, and measure words
Simplification of 'contextual' pronouns (e.g. men having a choice of ore おれ, boku ぼく, and watashi わたし)
Heavy use of wasei-eigo words
Minimal use of wasei-kango words
Written entirely in rōmaji
This is very much a work in progress
I just thought it would be fun to explore a simplified form of Japanese
I'm initially thinking to use the polite form for verb conjugation.
For all verbs we form the present tense polite form by replacing the final "u" sound with "imasu."
To form the past tense polite form, you replace "masu" with "mashita."
Example: kakimasu becomes kakimashita .
By doing this, a bunch of irregular verbs are sidestepped.
As a general rule, creoles tend to simplify grammar.
Two common irregular verbs in the polite form are suru (to do) and kuru (to come).
I will have to decide what to do with them.
Last edited by humuhumunukunuku on 04 Oct 2023 03:17, edited 2 times in total.
The particles e, ga, o, and ne are omitted.
That leaves us with
wa - topic marker
mo - also/too
ni - direction
de - "how" of an action
kara - starting point of an action
to - with
no - possession
yo - strong conviction
ka - question
"I went to school by car at 7"
"sichi-ji ni kuruma de sukūru ni ikimashita"
"I will change my brake pads tomorrow"
"ashita burēki paddo suwappu"
"My dad is Japanese and my mom is American"
papa wa nihonjin to mama wa amerikajin desu
However, what happens if we have more than ten?
In standard Japanese, we would need to use a measure word
In English,
"Can I eat twelve donuts?"
In Japanese, we use "ko" as a measure word.
"Dōnatsu o jyuuni-ko tabete mo īdesu ka"
In Creole, we just continue to add -tsu
"Donut jyuunitsu tabete mo īdesu ka"
Actually, a Creole speaker would probably just say
"Donut jyuunitsu tabete daijōbu desu ka"
Alternatively, we can substitute an English word for the Japanese counter word.
"Can I have twelve bottles of beer"
"Bīru o jyuuni-pon nonde mo īdesu ka"
"Bīru jyuuni-botoru nonde mo īdesu ka" / "Bīru jyuunitsu-botoru nonde mo īdesu ka"
A common feature of Creole is the use of suru する to turn English words into verbs
In Japanese, suru is considered an irregular verb
In Creole, suru is considered a "normative" verb
Ibento no puran suru no wa charenji
"Planning an event is challenging"
ima ame nara doraibu shinai
"If it rains now, I won't drive."
In standard Japanese we drop the い
- くない kunai makes it present negative
- かった katta makes it past
- なかった nakatta past negative
- かったら kattara makes it conditional
