UKLO 2017

The vowel

HintFour turns, and the language has how many vowels?

The whyOne real syllabary from northern Canada does exactly this: the shape gives the consonant and its orientation gives the vowel. A script for a language with only a few vowels can afford to show them by rotation. Sort the signs by shape first, then by direction.

Indo-European

HintThe family English, Russian, Greek and Hindi all belong to.

The whyMost European languages descend from one ancestor and share number words, kinship words and pronouns. Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian belong to a separate family, the Uralic languages, and one Mediterranean island language is a close relative of Arabic. In a table comparing languages, the outsiders are the columns that share almost none of the basic words with the rest.

unrelated

HintCompare the columns' words for 'mother' and 'two' — which one matches nothing?

The whyThe test for kinship is shared basic vocabulary; odd sound habits are only a hint to look harder. Agree on numbers, family words and pronouns, and two languages are cousins.

isolate

HintA family tree with a single branch.

The whyMost languages sit in a family tree; an isolate is a tree of one. The language of the western Pyrenees is the best-known European example. An isolate can still have borrowed words from its neighbours — so a few lookalikes with Spanish or French prove nothing about descent.

A prefix

HintCompare where the two words differ.

The whyBantu languages sort nouns into classes marked by prefixes, and swap the prefix for the plural. A second prefix can be added in front for 'small', and the noun's prefix is then echoed on other words in the sentence. Cut each noun into prefix + stem and list which prefixes pair up as singular and plural.

Agreeing with its subject

HintLook at which noun's prefix it is copying — the one before the verb or the one after?

The whyAgreement can be a copied prefix rather than a changed ending: the verb (and sometimes 'the' or an adjective) repeats the noun-class marker of the subject. The object's prefix is NOT copied, which is how you tell subject from object when both are nouns. Spot the echo, and you can build any new sentence.

A diminutive

Hint'-let' and '-ling' both do it.

The whyEnglish adds -let, -ling, -ie/-y ('doggy'); Spanish adds -ito; some languages use a prefix that also changes the noun's class, so 'little bird' takes a different agreement pattern from 'bird'. When 'small X' in the translations matches a longer puzzle word with a consistent extra piece, that piece is the diminutive.

Whether the verb has an object

HintCount the nouns in each sentence.

The whySome languages mark the subject of a transitive verb (one with an object) differently from the subject of an intransitive verb (no object) — which instead looks like an object. The pattern is called ergative, and it feels alien to English speakers, but the rule is mechanical: does this verb have an object? If yes, the doer gets the ending. A little helper verb may change form on the same basis.

transitive

Hint'kick' is; 'sleep' is not.

The whyTransitive verbs take an object ('kick the ball'); intransitive ones do not ('arrive', 'fall'). The split matters in puzzles: some languages change the subject's ending, the helper verb or the verb's own form depending on which kind it is. Sort the verbs in the data into the two kinds before hunting for the rule.

An auxiliary verb

Hint'have', 'be', 'do' and 'will' in their helping role.

The whyAuxiliaries attach grammar to a main verb. In some languages this little word carries all the grammar — who did it, how many objects there are — while the main verb never changes; find the word that keeps changing, because that is where the grammar lives, and note the one position it is allowed to occupy.

causative

HintTurkish and Japanese do it with a suffix.

The whyEnglish uses 'make' or 'have' ('I had the car washed'); some languages add a suffix to the verb instead. In a puzzle, a longer verb form whose translation contains 'made', 'let' or 'got someone to' is the causative — and it adds an extra participant, so expect an extra object marker too.

word order; endings; particles

HintHow would Latin, Japanese and English each show who bit whom?

The whyWhatever the method, the question is the same: how does this language show who did what to whom? Once you know it uses endings, stop trusting position; once you know it uses particles, treat each little word as a label; once you know it uses order, keep the order. The first three sentences of any puzzle usually settle which it is.