vowels: /a i u/
consonants: /p s m/
due to the small size of the inventory, a lot of pronunciation variation is possible without losing intelligibility.
syllable structure is (C)V. no vowel clusters or consonant clusters are allowed.
when written in the Latin alphabet, suma sisi is written in all lowercase letters, with each phoneme represented with the same letter as in the IPA.
word order is SVO. for example:
pipa pisi misi.
me eat animal.
i am eating meat.
to negate words, put ma before them. for example:
pipa ma pisi misi.
me no eat animal.
i am not eating meat.
to make a word plural, sa is put before it. for example:
sa pipa pisi misi.
plural me eat animal.
we are eating meat.
modifiers go after the word they modify. for example:
pipa pasa misi sisi.
me shop animal small
i buy a small animal.
Multiple modifiers both affecting the same word appear next to each other with no particle.
pipa pasa misi sisi masi.
me shop animal small good
i buy a good small animal.
place the particle ami before modifiers of modifiers. see "particles" for more information. for example:
pipa pasa misi sisi ama masi.
me shop animal small [modifier modifier] good
i buy an animal of good smallness.
to disambiguate, you can place the optional particle ama before words, to clarifying that they are modifiers. for example:
pipa pasa misi ama sisi.
me shop animal [modifier] small
i buy a small animal.
the following words can appear after verbs to modify their meaning:
yes/no questions are formed by placing the particle a anywhere in the sentence. for example:
pipu pumu a?
it plant question
Is it a plant?
to answer them, a means yes, and ma means no.
other questions are asked using sama. for example:
musi sama pasu ma mipa pipu?
person what cause no life they
who killed them?
these particles can be placed before the verb to clarify tense:
if ma and a tense particle are both used, the tense particle goes first.
by default, all modifiers apply to the root word. like in the example given before, misi sisi masi (lit. animal small good) means an animal that is small and good. if you would like to say that the animal is small in a good way, you must use the particle ami before masi. this marks masi as a "modifier modifier." if you wanted to say that the animal is small in a weirdly good way, you must add amu pami to the end (pami means weird). amu marks pami as a "modifier modifier modifier" (very clunky name. i know). to continue adding modifiers to modifiers of modifiers (and so on), you can use the following:
...and you'll probably never need to go any higher than 9.
the particle pa is the context particle. the word(s) before it give context for the word(s) after it. for example:
pipa pa pumu masi.
me context plant good
to me, plants are good. / i like plants.
commands are marked by placing the particle mu anywhere in the sentence.
mu pipi musu pisa.
command you sense this
Look at this.
ordinal numbers are marked with the particle su before the numeral.
pipi su sapasa.
you ordinal one
You are first.
suma sisi uses bijective octal, meaning that it uses base 8 (octal), but with the digits 1-8 instead of 0-7. it has no word for "zero", but you can place "ma" before a word to talk about none of something.
if a number is one digit long (in bijective octal), sa is affixed before and after the number, and if a number is two digits long, sa is affixed only after the number. this is to disambiguate numbers from normal words. for example, the number 1 is the digit for 1, pa, plus 2 sas to disambiguate: 1 is sapasa.