3. Ína? / Got it?
We are ready to learn our first Toaq words, and they will all be interjections.
Vocabulary
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ına | gotcha, I see |
| ína | get it? do you understand? |
| ınha | okay, I will do that |
| ínha | okay? will you do that? |
| nho | yes |
| nhó | yeah? is that so? |
| zı | no |
| zí | right? isn’t it? |
| ahı | ouch! |
| áhı | are you hurt? |
| âhı | ouch, that must hurt |
Story
Náo just finished explaining a complicated job to Tóma. She asks…
Ína, ínha?
And Tóma shows that he understood, and will do as she asked:
Nho, ına. Inha.
While he’s working on the job, Tóma cries out:
Ahı!
Náo worries that he’s hurt — then rushes over and sees the papercut on his hand.
Áhı? … Âhı.
Tones
Toaq is a tonal language. The tone mark on the first vowel of a word indicates a change in pronunciation and meaning. We can find three different tone marks in the story above.
Toaq words are pronounced with stress on the first syllable, and tone continuing over the whole word.
| If a word doesn’t have any tone mark, it’s in the falling tone. | If a word has an accent (´) on the first vowel, it’s in the rising tone. | If a word has a caret (^) on the first vowel, it’s in the hiatus tone. |
| ahı | áhı | âhı |
The hiatus tone is a bit special, because it stretches the first vowel of a word into two syllables, as if to make room for the rise and the fall. So, âhı is pronounced a bit like á-ahı.
Parts of speech are affected differently by the tones. We can see from this story that the rising tone turns an interjection into a question, while the hiatus tone turns it into a sort of expression of empathy. But further in the book, we’ll see that (for example) the rising tone turns verbs into nouns, and the hiatus tone turns them into adverbs.
Whenever some grammatical quality is expressed through tone, we’ll make a note of it. For now, just remember the three tone marks.
Dealing with tones
In the next chapters, take care to practice reading words with the correct tone, as indicated by the tone marks.
Choa súq ní kuna dûe ba.
(That means: “pronounce this sentence correctly.”)
Don’t worry too much about doing it perfectly. Producing the tones exactly right is less important than simply being aware of them. If Toaq is your first tonal language, it may take a bit of getting used to, but they’re not something you have to master before engaging with the rest of the language.
Syntactic and lexical tone
Generally speaking, the role of tone is syntactic, not lexical. Due and dûe mean “correct” and “correctly”, respectively, rather than being completely different dictionary words.
But there is a little bit of lexical tone in Toaq as well: na is an interjection meaning “well”, whereas nä is an unrelated grammatical particle. In fact, the tonal patterns found among Toaq’s interjections are vague enough to say that nho, nhó, zı, zí are all just different lexemes.