JARRAPUA a COMMON-SPEECH

JARRAPUA 1 is an artificial language designed to function as an international auxiliary language.  For an English speaker, the pronunciation of the word “JARRAPUA”  is approximated by the spelling “chah-rahp-wah”.   JARRAPUA is always written using upper case Roman letters 2.  It uses three vowels (A,E, and U) and ten consonants (F,H, J,K,M,N,P,R,S, and T) 3.  H is only used for a limited and specialized purpose.  

 

All vocabulary is derived from 242 root verbs 4, each of which is denoted by one of the 242 Consonant-Vowel-Consonant  (CVC) 5 syllables possible using just those 9 consonants and 3 vowels. 

Most of the root verbs come in pairs which use the same letters in reverse order from each other and which have meanings that evoke each other, so the second 121 roots is easier to learn than the first 121 6. Further, of most of the root pairs at least one resembles an English word that should help with memorization 7.  In most cases both members of a pair are evocative to English speakers.  For example REF= cool  and FER=warm.   

 

The grammar of JARRAPUA is characterized by a simple but flexible system of clauses that can be used to simulate almost any meaning carried by grammatical structures found in other languages 8.    Roots are inflected in a regular pattern using 9 different vowel and dipthong suffixes, and the set of 2178 inflected roots can be used to synthesize compound words.  In most cases, common vocabulary can be synthesized using no more than two or three roots 9. 

 

JARRAPUA was designed expressly to be as easy as possible to learn, by as many people as possible, without sacrificing the ability to translate almost any verbal expression in any language.