Verbialan

Verbialan is a constructed language designed to explore verb-centric grammar. It is primarily a fictional or experimental language used in conlang communities and speculative fiction. The language places verbs at the center of sentence construction through rich verbal morphology and valency management.

Origin and development: Verbialan emerged in online conlang circles in the early 2010s. A canonical grammar, The Verbialan Grammatical Primer, published in 2016, outlines the standard form and core conventions. Since then, variants and dialects have circulated in forums and fan texts.

Phonology and script: The sound system uses a Latin-based alphabet with about 25 phonemes: vowels a e i o u and consonants p t k s m n l r j w h. Stress tends to fall on the penultimate syllable in most polysyllabic words, and vowel length can mark certain affixes in some forms. The script is Latin-based, with diacritics to indicate length or tone when needed.

Grammar and syntax: Verbialan is analytic in word order but morphologically rich on the verb. The basic sentence order is verb-initial (VSO). Verbs carry extensive inflection for aspect, mood, voice, and argument structure through prefixes (preverbs) and suffixes. The language marks person and number on the verb for the subject and, in many transitive clauses, for the object. Nouns show light case marking—primarily in pronouns and a small set of animate nouns.

Lexicon and usage: The vocabulary blends historically derived roots with fantasy-language loanwords. Verbialan is used mainly in conlang practice, linguistic demonstrations, and speculative fiction. It has an active online community of learners and writers who publish grammars, texts, and sample translations.