introduction to the O'Leary language but wait I should introduce myself my name is Daniel and before you ask yes I'm a robot my human friend Greg has asked me to narrate this video for him and I'm always happy to oblige now let's get back to it O'Leary is the language of the people of illyrilo a small island in the Pacific Ocean if you've never heard of it you're not alone somehow it managed to escape the notice of the rest of the world until very recently having been isolated for so long O'Leary Bears almost no resemblance to any other language of the Pacific it is also unique among them in having a native written form that goes back thousands of years on the face of it ileary should be quite easy to learn it has just a handful of easily pronounced sounds a simple regular grammar and a very consistent writing system yet most people who have studied aliri say they find it to be extremely difficult perhaps after watching this video you will be able to judge for yourself whether O'Leary is a straightforward language or as some people have speculated it is actually slightly cursed the phonology of O'Leary is very simple consisting of just five vowels and four consonants these are pronounced as they are in most other Pacific languages now I'm not very good at pronouncing a leery myself so I've invited my friend Paula to read the examples her Italian accent makes her sound more like a native O'Leary how are you today Paula then you will thank you Daniel perhaps you can show us how the sounds are pronounced in thanks that was great but before we go any further we need to talk about the orthography because some aspects of both the morphology and the grammar are inextricably bound up with it in the O'Leary script words are represented by lines made up of vertical and horizontal Strokes each word begins with a DOT then an upward stroke represents a a stroke to the left represents e downwards I to the right o consonants occur where the line turns a corner a turn to the left represents L and to the right M Ali amor the consonants R and N are written by placing a dot inside the corner you is special you can only appear at the end of a word and is written as a short stroke in any direction this stroke together with its preceding consonant is called a tail there are four possible Tales you and no these are used as suffixes that perform various grammatical functions depending on the kind of word they're attached to there are a couple of rules that restrict the possible forms a word can take the first rule is that the line must fit within a four by four grid the second rule is that the line cannot cross or touch itself as an exception to the first rule tails are allowed to hang outside the grid this allows any tail to be attached to any word sometimes it is necessary to lengthen Strokes in order to satisfy the second rule this does not affect the sound of the word for example this is how the name of the island is written foreign interestingly ancient texts have been found suggesting that the name O'Leary lowers derived from oralari lolu which means something like island of the beholder how the island came to be named that way no one knows the word order of a basic sentence is subject verb direct object for example this sentence means anuru throws the coconut if there's an indirect object it comes before the subject separated from it by a post position [Music] anuru throws the Coconuts to ilomilu this language does not look difficult at all we're just about to get to the good bit let's look at a different verb suppose I told you that the word means to catch can you guess what this sentence means I don't know someone else catches something else it's actually still an Oru in the Coconut we'll see why these words are different in a moment there are four grammatical genders quartz Granite Limestone and basalt and nouns are not the only words that have genders adjectives verbs and adverbs have genders too in most languages that have agreement rules the verb is inflected to agree with the subject O'Leary doesn't do that instead the subject is inflected to agree with the verb also the direct object any indirect objects and any adverbs furthermore within any noun phrase adjectives are inflected to agree with the noun they qualify finally words that modify adjectives or adverbs agree with the word they modify inflections are applied by performing geometrical Transformations on the written forms of the words for courts there is no inflection for granted we flip the word horizontally for Limestone we rotate the word 90 degrees anticlockwise and for basalt we rotate the word 180 degrees let's look at some examples our first sentence was very simple because the verbal Aura to throw happens to have quartz gender which has no inflection but the verbilla to catch is granite so to make this sentence grammatical we need to inflect the subject and object by flipping them horizontally let's add an adjective adjectives follow nouns in a leery so our base sentence looks like this the noun is limestone so we first inflect the adjective a lily by rotating it 90 degrees anti-clockwise then we inflex all the words in the subjects and objects with the gender of the verb which is granite by flipping them horizontally me notice how a word can receive more than one inflection because not all inflections commute it is important to apply them in the right order when nested structures result in multiple inflections they are applied from the inside out tenses are indicated by inflecting the verb the uninflected form is the present tense for the past tense the verb is flipped vertically for the future tense it is rotated 90 degrees clockwise foreign [Music] will throw the coconut verbs can also be modified by adding tails adding root to a verb gives a continuous or Progressive aspect anuru was throwing the coconut adding mu to a verb forms a gerund um anuru likes throwing coconuts adding new to a verb turns it into an adjective anuru picked up the throne coconut you thought we were done with Tails think again they also have some uses of nouns on ordinary nouns they indicate definiteness and plurality we've seen some examples of this already coconut the coconut proper nouns do not have a gender they also don't usually have tails except for a few special classes roofer male persons loofah female persons mufa Villages and newforka knows we've seen some examples of these two an Oru is a male person's name and elomelu is a female person's name genitives are formed simply by putting one noun after another so that the second noun functions as an adjective an aura catches e lomalous coconut pronouns are constructed in a regular way from three pronomial roots and three Tails leading to this table all right Paula you don't need to read all of them a notable feature is the existence of male and female first and second person pronouns their use is optional also the sex less pronouns can be used not only for inanimate reference but also to refer to a person without specifying their sex a clause is negated by putting the particle array after the verb an Oru did not catch the coconut you can also use it to negate other things other than the coconut placing the particle only after a verb turns the Clause into a question do you want some fish sauce by the way this example shows how important it is to apply inflections in the right order in this sentence the word orally fish is inflected first with Limestone and then with granite if you apply those inflections in the opposite order you get the Limestone Granite inflection of a different word entirely yeah do you want some armpit sauce yeah you probably don't want to mix those up the O'Leary have a unique way of naming and writing numbers there are names for numbers from 0 to 13. plus a few others this strange collection of number names arises because of the way the O'Leary write numbers are written on a three by four grid where Strokes inserting positions represent the first nine Fibonacci numbers here are some examples note that a number is included only when the line passes from left to right not right to left a small cross stroke is added to the end to distinguish numbers from words these short Strokes are added for clarity to Mark the positions of missing numbers when there is no right to left stroke although the lines for numbers resemble words they are not pronounced that way each side of the number grid is read out using the names shown earlier 6. Imam oily Romy 71. larger numbers are expressed in base 89. 48 507. here are some more fun facts about O'Leary words can have more than one meaning with different genders for example analamo can mean either basket or thunderstorm a malamo basket is quartz a malamo thunderstorm is limestone the meaning of an adjective or adverb can change radically depending on the gender of the word it's applied to for example when applied to a quartz or Granite noun illele means big and RMA means more but when applied to a limestone or Basalt noun illele means small and Erma means big also amane means red when applied to a quartz granite or Limestone noun but green when applied to a Basalt noun earlier we saw a case where an inflection of a word happened to coincide with a different inflection of another word this happens very frequently in a Leary and writers and Poets make extensive use of it a typical O'Leary poem can be read in several completely different ways Each of which conveys part of what the author wanted to say such a work can never truly be translated One Is to learn to read a leery in order to fully appreciate it let's finish off with a longer example this is part of a traditional aliri story passed down through the generations about how bees Learn to Fly women all known laws of Aviation imply that it is utterly impossible for a bee to fly hello its Tiny Wings simply cannot support its fat little body of course flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is possible