==[] : !*(f **

Oou: The Insane Language

Design Goals

• Make you go out of your mind
• Produce multiple meanings and weird homonymic insights
• Alienating, intoxicated effect
• Go against expected conventions of language yet be fully function as a language
• Explore the connections between reality and surreality, meaning and nonsense
• Virtually impossible to understand one another: acts of communication become trippy idea-art
• Sentence meaning flows with your state of consciousness

Alphabet and Sounds

The Oou language has 11 distinct phonemes: 11 vowels and zero consonants. Each vowel is distinctly pronounced in the word, carefully avoiding to pronounce them as semi-vowels. Stress normally falls on the first syllable. Some sounds in Oou are digraphs and are written with two characters. For maximal legibility, Oou is always written in the Courier New, Courier or monospace font.

Punctuation

? is used to end any sentence and corresponds to the English symbols !?.
: is used to insert a break in a sentence and corresponds to the English symbols ,;:-

In Oou, a space is inserted both before and after the punctuation mark ? or :

Grammar

• Word order: OVS
• Words may be any part of speech
• Adjectives follow the noun they modify
• If the subject is =_ (I, you), it is left out and interpreted from context
• No definite or indefinite article
• No verb tenses
• No gender or number

Sample Sentences

As you will see, a single Oou sentence can have many correct English translations, depending on context and your state of mind.

For example, !*(f ** means any of the following: insane language, friendly genocide, friendly language or insane genocide.

[]*_ []=!&_ ?
I take drugs.
I help drugs.
I eat trees.
You help trees.
I eat the sofa.
You help the sofa.
etc.

=_ ^^/~ ?
I love you.
You love me.
I love myself.
I avoid myself.
I avoid you.
I flatten myself.
I flatten you.
etc.

# [](f != []= ?
The lesbian is in the house.
The boat became on the house.
The lesbian came to make destruction.
Stealing is making houses.
etc.

Word List

^^/~      love, turnip, avoid, flat, flatten
^*^       cute, asshole, valley, close, shut
^/~*      silent, quiet, nose, take, fear, afraid
^=        person, idea, tool, glasses
_!/~      rabbit, hare, wonderful, lip
_/~@      go, shit
!*(f      language, genocide
!=        be, come, become
(f^!      friend, wall
[]!       laugh, talk
[](f      return, go back, house, destroy, most
[]*_      drug, tree, sofa, couch
[]=       lesbian, steal, boat
[]=!&_    eat, consume, help
@=!       daughter, toaster
*_        oh, question particle (sentence prefix)
**        insane, friendly
*/~       now, never
/~/~=/~=  happy, shopping centre, mall
&@_       gender, light
#         have, make, of, at, in, by, on (genitive, locative preposition)
#@#=@     computer, flower, cold (disease)
=_        you, I, me, my (normally omitted when subject)
=_^       cat, ask, question, other, passion
=@[]      real, young, room

This fucked up language was created by Sonja Elen Kisa in 2003.

Back to Sonja's Linguistic Surrealscape

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