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Versión en español.

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Dautano (ðaotano) is an artificial language created by the Philology and Linguistics student Gustavo Góngora at the beginning of the 21st century. It has morphological, syntactic, semantic and phonetic features from various languages, among them Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Galician, and Italian. It also combines some characteristic features of the English language even though its proununciation is quite easy and practical.

The name Dautano comes from the toponim, also artificial, of Dauta. It is not officially recognised by any territory or country but, its main aim, apart from officiality, is to work as an accurate and simple system of communication between as many speakers as possible, using an universal model similar to that of esperanto.

Nowadays is spoken by a few number of people, and that is why is considered to be one of the languages with less number of speakers in the world.

Contents 1 Characteristics 1.1 Phonemes 1.1.1 Vowels 1.1.2 Consonants 1.2 Lexicon comparison

[edit] Characteristics

At first glance, and in general, it can be said that Dautano is a postmodern Romance language, whose newest reference is Spanish and, the oldest, Latin. Nevertheless, its spelling system combines Greek symbols in order to distinguish consonants in redundant contexts or between open vowels.

Its phonological system is very simple and equitable. It has only three (open) vowels /a, ɛ, o/ and twenty two consonants /Ɓ, c, ç, d, ð, f, g,ɣ,h, i, l, m, n, ñ, p, r, Ʃ, t, u, Ʊ, x, z/. The correspondence between spelling and sound is simple and reduced.

Concerning vocabulary, Dautano has a high number of Hispanic words - for being its creator a native Spanish speaker -, some galicisms, Catalan and Occitan entries, Latin forms and a series of anglicisms. It is archaic in certain aspects in preserving cult and old-fashioned forms of mediaeval Spanish proper. However, it is innovative when eliminating redundant sounds, simplifying its vocalic system with voiced vowels, and its slang words are up to time. In this way, Dautano, like any other language, is growing all time, developing new forms and expressions, even overcoming the common average of modern natural and artificial languages.

Syntax in Dautano is very similar to the Spanish and Italian one. The person is always the subject of the sentence, followed by the verb and the predicate with its complements. On the other hand, there is a large number of affixes of all kind.

The coniugation system is also quite simple, very reminiscent of that of the English language. This aspect is really significant because it differentiates Dautano from other Romance languages and makes it, in consequence, a close relative of English. The purpose of this organization system is to make Dautano an easy and interesting language for speakers of other foreign languages.

In connection with Semantics, Dautano is a poor language concerning homonyms and polisemic words. There is no way to confusion then when approaching its reduced and simplistic vocabulary.

[edit] Phonemes

[edit] Vowels

Vowel	SAMPA	IPA	Observations
a	[a, A]	[a, ɑ]
ɛ	[e, E]	[e, ɛ]
o	[o, O]	[o, ɔ]

[edit] Consonants

Consonant	SAMPA	IPA	Observations
Ɓ	[b]	[b]
c	[k]	[k]
ç, Ʃ	[s]	[s]
d	[d]	[d]
ð	[D]	[&eð;]
f	[f]	[f]
g	[g]	[g]
ɣ	[ɣ]	[ɣ]
h	[h]	[x]
i	[j]	[j]
l	[l]	[l]
m	[m]	[m]
n	[n]	[n]
ñ	[N]	[ŋ]
p	[p]	[p]
r	[4, R]	[ɾ, ʀ]
s	[s]	[s]
t	[t]	[t]
u	[v]	[v]
Ʊ	[w]	[w]
x	[dz]	[ʣ]
x	[ks]	[ks]
z	[θ̟]	[θ̟]

[edit] Lexicon comparison

Latin	Spanish	Galician	Portuguese	Catalan	Italian	French	Dautano	English
nos	nosotros	nós nosoutros	nós¹	nosaltres	noi²	nous³	noas	we[-others]
frater germānus (lit. "true brother", i.e. not a cousin)	hermano	irmán	irmão	germà	fratello	frère	Ɓratɛlo	brother
dies Martis (Classical) tertia feria (Ecclesiastical)	martes	martes	terça-feira	dimarts	martedì	mardi	marðoç	Tuesday
cantiō(ne, abl.	canción	canción	canção	cançó	canzone	chanson	cañɛço	song
magis o plus	más	máis	mais	més	più	plus	moç	more
manus sinistra	mano izquierda	man esquerda	mão esquerda	mà esquerra	mano sinistra	main gauche	manno sɛstra	left hand
nihil o nulla res nata (lit. "no born thing")	nada	nada	nada	res	niente/nulla	rien/nul	rɛç (también, notɛn)	nothing

Below there are some examples of grammatical persons and the basic structure of Dautano in contrast with English.

• I = ɛo

• You = Toɛ

• He/It = Lɛn

• She = Lɛnna

• We = Noas

• You (plural) = Ɓoas

• They= Lɛnn

• Sunday = ðomɛgoç

• Monday = Lonɛoç

• Tuesday = marðoç

• Wednesday = mɛcrɛs

• Thursday = ðahoɛs

• Friday = Ʊɛrnɛs

• Saturday = SaƁɛgoç

• January = Hɛnɛroç

• February = FɛƁroç

• March = Marx

• April = Aprɛlɛa

• May = Maxoç

• June = Gugnoç

• July = Gulɛoç

• August = Agoɛstoç

• September = SɛpthɛmƁrɛoç

• October = OctoɛƁroç

• November = NoƁoɛmƁroç

• December = ðossoɛmƁroç

• One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten = on, ðoç, trɛoç, coɛtroç, sɛncoç, sɛoç, sɛpteoç, octɛoç, noɛoç, ðɛoç

• Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, a hundred, two hundred = ðoç ðɛoç, trɛoç ðɛoç, coɛtroç ðɛoç, sɛncoç ðɛoç, sɛoç ðɛoç, sɛpteoç ðɛoç, octɛoç ðɛoç, noɛoç ðɛoç, on sɛn, ðoç sɛn.

For example, for a number like "twenty two" it would be ðoç ðɛoç ðoç (literally, "two times ten plus two").

There are no cardinal numbers in Dautano, so ordinals have to be used instead. For instance, "First I went to the job, On ɛnnoɛ a-xa traƁɛlo (the plural of traƁɛlo is traƁɛloç; always the singular forms ending in "o" add "ç", while those ending in "a" and "ɛ" add "s"). For the singular forms which finish in consonant, the last letter has to be repeated once. For example: On (one) = Onn (ones).

Among the basic connectors we find ɛt ("and"), o, prɛt ("but"), amɛç ("besides"), camƁ ("with"), sɛn ("without"), pro ("by"), pra ("for"), ðof ("of"), etcetera.

The structure of the Dautanian sentence is the same as the English one: Subject + verb + predicate. For example: Ana goes to the supermarket, Ana ɛnnoɛ comprɛoç a-xa sopɛrmɛrcaðɛo. Nevertheless, verb coniugation in Dautano is very simple, without important grammatical differences except for those which are determined by the verb tense. For example, if we consider the simple past of the verb "go" in English, we have "went"; while in Dautano the verb ɛnno (go), is always ɛnnoɛ, where the letter ɛ at the end of the word indicates the desinence. For the past participle, instead of adding ɛ it has to be as and we have ɛnnoas (gone). For present tense the verb remains the same, while for the future tense the preffix sɛr- has to be added and we have sɛrɛnno (will go).

Finally, it has to be taken into consideration the fact that Dautano has no accents - the same as in English - except when they are used to substitute the question and exclamative marks ?, !, respectively. Those signs do not exist in the context of this language. Therefore, the diacritics ´ and ^ have to be used instead, always at the end of the sentence in the case of a question and at the beginning of a phrase in the case of an order or exclamation. For instance: Ana ɛnnoɛ comprɛoç a-xa sopɛrmɛrcaðɛo (statement), Ana ɛnnoɛ comprɛoç a-xa sopɛrmɛrcaðɛó (question), Ânna ɛnnoɛ comprɛoç a-xa sopɛrmɛrcaðɛo (imperative). As it happens with English, in Dautano the subject of the verb cannot be omitted. However, there are some exceptions to the rule in spoken language.