Nal yat

Ba kom a mo? | What is Ba Kom?

Ba Kom means "the shared language". Ba means "voice" or "language", and kom means "to share".

Ba Kom is a constructed language—a language that was created intentionally.
Ba Kom is meant to be used when people who don't share a language want to talk with each other. It's meant to be used alongside one's native language, and not to replace it. The hope is that Ba Kom will empower people of diverse backgrounds to speak together as equals.

Ba Kom is not tied to any nation, ethnicity, culture, ideology, place, or class.
It avoids the inequality that arises when one people is pressured to speak the dominant language of another, as happens with natural languages such as English.

Ba kom ye bo mo? | What advantages does Ba Kom have?

Ba Kom does not favor speakers of one language over any other. Its core vocabulary is not based on languages of any particular region or family.

It can be written in many different scripts, including a Braille script and a script devised specially for the language, known as the xol ba kom.

Ba Kom is easy to learn. The vocabulary is small, and the grammar is simple and regular. There are no verb conjugations, no singular or plural forms, no cases, no articles, no classifiers, and no grammatical gender.

For instance, the word a, “to be”, does not change in these sentences:

• Mi a yalik.
  [I] [be] [teacher]
  "I am/was a teacher."

• Si a yalik.
  [you] [be] [teacher]
  "You are/were a teacher."

• O a yalik.
  [he/she] [be] [teacher]
  "He/she is/was a teacher."

• Mim xei a yalik.
  [we] [experience] [be] [teacher]
  "We used to be teachers."

• Sim a le yalik.
  [you] [be] [later] [teacher]
  "You (plural) will be teachers later on."

Ba Kom is easy to pronounce. There are 18 consonants, 5 vowels, and 4 diphthongs. Consonants are always separated by vowels.

Ba Kom is easy to write. Spelling can be determined from pronunciation, and pronunciation can be determined from spelling.

Compare all of this with the current global lingua franca, English.
English grammar and spelling are irregular and random, and it has many synonyms and obscure words.
Its dominance results from a long violent history of invasion, colonization, slavery, and suppression of native cultures.
English gives an unfair advantage to native English speakers.
Thus, mastering English is very expensive in time and money, and its use perpetuates cruel inequalities between the peoples of the world.

Ba kom lai mo? | What is Ba Kom like?

Ba Kom's vocabulary is smaller than any natural language. It has almost no synonyms. New words are formed by putting two other words together, or by adding a prefix.
Because of this, the vocabulary is very transparent and logical. The meaning of an unfamiliar word, even one used in a specialized field, can often be guessed.

Words are short. Most roots are one syllable, and none are more than two.

The parts of speech are: verbs (divided into active verbs, stative verbs, and adverbs); nouns and pronouns; prepositions; and particles, which includes conjunctions.

Most roots are verbs; there are very few root words which can only be used as nouns.

Each word has a single form that is never inflected.
Nouns have no singular or plural; pronouns have no subject, object, or possessive forms; verbs do not inflect for tense, mood, person, or number.
Such information is shown with word order, with separate words, or it is left up to context.
For example:

• paum nan
  [apple] [one]
  "one apple"

• paum lip
  [apple] [five]
  "five apples"

• Om kim mi.
  [they] [believe] [I]
  "They believe me."

• Mi kim om.
  [I] [believe] [they]
  "I believe them."

• Mi yon le ka bil.
  [I] [go to] [later] [place] [commerce]
  "I'm going to the store later."

• Mi yon xon ka bil.
  [I] [go to] [yesterday] [place] [commerce]
  "I went to the store yesterday."

Pai san | Vocabulary

Most words don't come from any existing natural languages. However, some do take loose inspiration. These are mostly words for plants and animals, which are based on indigenous languages of the speceis' native ranges.

Some examples are:

• wein xim, "strawberry"; literally "heart berry", a calque of Potawatomi démen.

• suwan, "salmon", from Haida sg̱waag̱an.

• gon, "crocodile, alligator", from Kinyarwanda-Kirundi ingona.

• nat, "seal", from Iñupiat natchiq and Inuktitut nattiq.

• nawi, "maple", from Mi'kmaq snawei.

• mawi, "yucca, agave, aloe", from Taíno mawei.

• jek, "tilapia, peacock bass", from Swahili ngege.

• kangul "kangaroo", from Guugu-Yimidhirr gangurru.

Because the vocabulary is small, Ba Kom words make extensive use of metaphor and analogy to derive additional meanings. This is called yat nom, "to have an extended meaning".
For example, the basic meaning of the word dul is "to harness, to shackle, to fetter, to yoke". But it has the extended meanings of "force, coerce", which in turn has the extended meaning of "rule, reign, govern", so that the word for "king" or "emperor", yadul, literally means "one who shackles" or "one who coerces".
Here are some more examples of yat nom:

• ba — "voice" → "language"; "opinion" → "vote"

• mei — "eye" → "to look at, to see", "sight"

• yun — "circle, ring" → "repeating cycle" → "week"

• bu — "fruit, crop" → "result, product, success"

• bol — "flower" → "prosperity; sweet or enjoyable part"

• di — "land" → "origin, basis, grounds", "resources, funding, capital"

• tul — "disappear" → "sunset" → "west"

• yam — "appear" → "sunrise" → "east"

• maun — "hill, mountain" → "rustic"

• xein — "natural spring, well" → "source, origin"

• xal — "to propel, impel" → "row (a boat)", "ride (a horse or bicycle)", "drive (a car)"

• wil — "to weave, to braid" → "to compose, compile"; "to organize, arrange"

• bun — "level, even, flat" → "calm, composed"

• cou — "slow" → "unfriendly"

• jel — "bare, naked" → "frank"; "plain, minimalist"

• jing — "plain, pure" → "element"

• mung — "be pregnant" → "harbor in one's mind, brood on, ponder"

Demonyms are always derived from endonyms. Usually they are transliterations, but sometimes they are also calqued.
Some examples of calqued demonyms are:

• di be pai
  [country] [coast] [wealth]
  "Costa Rica"

• di maun sum
  [country] [mountain] [black]
  "Montenegro"

• di it daun
  [country] [tooth] [elephant]
  "Côte d'Ivoire"

• dom hau bo,
  [city] [air/wind] [good]
  "Buenos Aires"

• dom dim
  [city] [deity]
  "Bangkok"

• dom xein
  [city] [natural spring]
  "Finfinne"

Ba kom ye nikang mo? | What are some challenges of Ba Kom?

One difficulty of Ba Kom is that a word’s part of speech (e.g., whether it is a noun or verb) is not clear just by looking at it. Most words can act as either verbs or nouns with no change in form.

However, while the part of speech is not shown on the word itself, it becomes clear when one considers context, word order, and surrounding grammatical words like particles or adverbs.