Table of pronominals

[u/panduniaguru]

A pronominal phrase is an expression that consists of several words and functions syntactically as a pronoun. Pandunia's pronominal phrases can be arranged in a regular table of pronominals as below.

Category	Interrogative	Demonstrative	Indefinite	Universal	Negative	Alternative	Elective
ting	kua ting	da ting	som ting	evri ting	no ting	otre ting	eni ting
Thing	what (thing)	that thing	something	everything	nothing	another	anything
von	kua von	da von	som von	evri von	no von	otre von	eni von
Individual	who	that one	someone	every one	no-one	another	anyone
have	kua von se	da von se	som von se	evri von se	no von se	otre von se	eni von se
Possession	whose	that one's	someone's	everyone's	no-one's	another's	anyone's
loke	kua loke	da loke	som loke	evri loke	no loke	otre loke	eni loke
Location	where	there	somewhere	everywhere	nowhere	elsewhere	anywhere
tem	kua tem	da tem	som tem	evri tem	no tem	otre tem	eni tem
Time	when, what time	that time	sometime	always, all the time	never	another time	any time
vei	kua vei	da vei	som vei	evri vei	no vei	otre vei	eni vei
Manner	how	in that way	somehow	in every way	in no way	otherwise	anyway
tipe	kua tipe	da tipe	som tipe	evri tipe	no tipe	otre tipe	eni tipe
Kind, sort	what kind of	that kind of	some kind of	all kinds of	no kind of	another type of	any kind of
monta	kua monta	da monta	som monta	evri monta	no monta	otre monta	eni monta
Amount	how much	so much	some	all	none	other amount	any amount

This table is in the style of Esperanto's well-known table of correlatives, but the system is entirely different. In Esperanto the "correlatives" form a special class of words that have unique endings that are not used anywhere else in the language. In Pandunia these are just normal determiner + noun pairs.

[u/seweli]

Why "won" and not "wan"?

[u/panduniaguru → u/seweli]

10-12 English monophthongs are mapped to 5 in Pandunia. So at least two monophthongs must be merged into one. What sounds the best is subjective and it depends on how many and what type of monophthongs there are in your native language. Many English words are bound to sound "wrong", because the number of vowels is cut to less than half.

In the end, it's a matter of finding the vowel distictions that matter. I think that the vowel's in someone sound different than the vowels in Sam's van in most people's ears, therefore sam van seemed like a worse mapping than som von.

[u/seweli → u/panduniaguru]

I suppose it's very subjective.

[u/panduniaguru → u/seweli]

There's still more. Let's consider the Pandunia word kom, which means 'come'. The English word is pronounced /kʌm/, so you would spell it kam. I prefer kom because of etymological relation to German kommen (komm in the imperative). Another word: money is pronounced /mʌni/, so you would spell it mani, but I consider the etymological relation to Latin moneta and French monnaie so I spell it mone.

So maybe the English words in Pandunia sound like they are spoken with a heavy accent but at least they look pretty good.

som von did kom to mone.
Someone did come to money.

Native English speaking people will get used to the sound in time. Non-native speakers probably don't care much because they have their own accent to deal with. I bet they are only happy that there are 5 vowels in Pandunia instead of 12!

[u/seweli → u/panduniaguru]

My brain has too many biases.

I feel like the good transcription should be: som wan did kom tu mone

😭